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One trip, dozens of friends, one marriage, two kids
and 20 years later
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It’s 2005, and I can’t believe it’s been almost 20
years since my adventure with People to People Student
Ambassadors. To say that the experience had a positive
impact on my life would be a drastic understatement. I
have been married to a fellow Ambassador alumna, Megan
McNish, for eight years, and we have two small boys
Sam, 4, and 2-year-old Ethan.
A recent conversation with fellow alumnus, Paul Walwyn,
prompted me to write. He and I met on our 1987
Ambassadorial experience and have remained great
friends ever since. We were reminiscing a bit
about the trip and how one day we would like to
lead a delegation for other Student Ambassadors. |
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The Cooper family
benefited greatly from dad Brian and mom Megan’s experiences as
Student Ambassadors in 1987. Also pictured are future Student
Ambassadors, Sam, 4, and Ethan, 2. |
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Our delegation, consisting of 34 delegates from
Tennessee, had an itinerary which covered Russia,
Finland, Sweden, Denmark, England and Scotland, with
home stays in Sweden, Denmark and England. The
memories are far too many to mention, so I’ll simply
share a few of them.
New Friends
While in Moscow, as a planned event our group went to
a disco with other youth from Russia. This was prior
to the Berlin Wall going down, “glasnost,” etc. We
shared our music with them, John Cougar, Madonna, even
Run DMC (rap), and they shared theirs with us, and the
whole grouped danced until late in the evening. We
made some great acquaintances, and I remember thinking
for all our cultural differences, we had far more in
common. Although the event was somewhat choreographed
ahead of time, certainly the sense of joy, curiosity
and understanding was real. When we finally left, it
was past midnight. We walked outside, only to find
that the sun had not gone below the horizon and it was
still light out . . . what a night.
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Brian Cooper and Paul Walwyn are still
good friends today. Here they are shown in a garden at Peter the
Great’s Summer Palace in 1987. |
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Gothenburg, Sweden was the setting for my most
memorable home stay. The entire group had been anxiously
looking forward to of our first home stay, but all of
my personal anxiety disappeared upon meeting Joachim
Weibull, who lived with his mother, Christina, and
grandmother, May. All were gracious and wonderful.
Joachim, 21, was a professional tennis player with
aspirations of becoming a pilot. He looked a bit like
James Dean with his blond hair and blue jean jacket –
a fact that did not go unnoticed by some of the girls
on the trip – and he had an insatiable curiosity about
anything American including football, movies
(particularly Clint Eastwood movies), music, history
and military aircraft. Joachim and I struck up a
friendship that would last for several years. On
Joachim's first visit to Nashville, my father, a
former Air Force F-4 fighter pilot, shared pictures
and other military memorabilia with Joachim who seemed
to eat up every minute of it. Joachim did eventually
move to the United States and pursued both his tennis
career and pilot’s license. I once visited him in Los
Angeles, and went to Indian Wells to see the NCAA
tennis championships. In the ensuing years, he moved
back and forth between Sweden and the U.S., and we lost
touch, but I know we’ll reconnect again someday. |
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Fast Friends
A key component of the success of my 1987 trip was not
just seeing the sights and sounds of foreign
countries, although that did play a huge role, but
even more so, it was the experience of being around
the other kids in our delegation. Most of us would be
going off to college that following fall, and we were
just beginning to shape our identities as young
adults. Everyone seemed to be full of good humor and
eagerness for new experiences. No matter who you were
going into the trip, the chemistry of the group
dictated that you would grow in confidence and
maturity (or Mary Warwick and Rob Meyer, the group’s
satirists and both future lawyers, would put you in
your place). The bond our group had was evident at the
impromptu pajama party we had in Scotland on the last
night, as we all sang the Beatles’, “Yesterday.” We
all knew we were not the same people anymore.
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Old New Friends
After that summer it was off to different
colleges and careers for Paul, Megan and I. In
January 1994, our paths once again crossed in
Knoxville. Paul was attending law school at The
University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Megan,
living in Athens, Georgia and working as a
nurse, was visiting friends. I was living in
Nashville and working in the health care
industry, and was visiting a friend as well. By
sheer coincidence, I ran into Megan and her
friends at The Old College Inn, a bar and grill
on campus. I was already planning on seeing Paul
later that evening, and I insisted that she meet
up with us to have a few laughs about the summer
of ‘87 and to catch up. We did, and Megan
promised to phone me the next time she was in
Nashville, a promise she kept two months later.
Our friendship |
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Megan Cooper (McNish)
was quick to make friends with Russians Dema and Cerus at a Moscow
disco in 1987. |
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continued to grow and she visited again in
April, which turned out to be the last time we would be
separated. She moved to Nashville, and we married in 1996.
Our delegation had a ten-year reunion, and hopefully, we will
continue that tradition in the future. If anyone from our
group reads this, we would love to hear from you.
For reasons on many different levels I owe so much to
the People to People for who I am today. While I
realize that not all the youngsters who travel to
foreign countries with People to People will benefit
in the same way I did, I do know that People to People
is a tremendous opportunity to learn and grow. People
to People, thanks for the memories, and more
importantly, thanks for a world view that is truly
worldly.
Sincerely,
Brian Cooper |
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