To the Editor:

It was a Sunday morning in 1953 at the big stone and brick house we owned on Washington Street in Prairie City. My brother and I were upstairs in the bathroom getting ready for Sunday school. My parents were downstairs, with Mom preparing a pork roast for Chinese noodles in a pressure cooker. Out of nowhere there was a blast that to two young boys seemed like a tremendous explosion.

I immediately grabbed my brother and exclaimed, “Mike! It’s the Russians!” A plugged safety valve caused the cooker to explode, and I interpreted it to be a nuclear bomb. I was only 8, but during this period older kids and grownups also lived in fear of a nuclear attack.

The monster of Europe (Stalin) had just died and been replaced by Khrushchev. The Cold War continued between the free world and the communist world for nearly 40 more years. I am not overlooking the fact that it was the United States that developed the atomic bomb, and it is the only nation to ever use it in war to bomb an enemy country. However, through the Cold War years I never believed that there would ever be peace between Russia and the Western nations. What a wonderful moment it was when the Berlin Wall came down, followed later by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Now, after nearly 30 years of managing to get along with Russia, Putin is proving to be every bit the monster that was Stalin. The fact that he has just put his nuclear forces on high alert is frightening. As I watch the carnage that the Russian War has brought on the peaceful nation of Ukraine, I’m heartbroken. Here I am, nearly 70 years later, filled with the same dread as I had when I was an 8-year-old.

Terry Steele

Ritter