I went to college, studying modern foreign governments among other things, in the era of Lech Walesa (so much did it affect my college years and learning that I thought the song, Safety Dance, was actually, Save Gdansk) and the Solidarity Movement. Additionally, I’m a quarter-Polish – my paternal grandfather came over as a stowaway in a pickle barrel during the later part of World War I.  My first boyfriend was Polish Catholic and while the irony was lost on me, it did kind of freak out my parents.

So this incredible loss, also mentioned in Joe’s TMV post here, while indescribable to me, must be even more so to the people of Poland, including its Jewish community, of which my ancestry makes me a part and which has grown and experienced a renaissance over the last couple of decades. Additionally, as YNET reports, President Lech Kaczynski and his wife were considered great friends of Israel. Talk about the times they are a-changing.

But there is a nexus I think of when broad losses like the one that Poland’s political leadership must now face occur.  It’s an incident I learned about when I was going through a two-year leadership training institute and it was mentioned to us as an example of how even the most tragic losses still can give rise to extraordinary re-birth and re-creation.  The incident to which I’m referring is the Orly crash of 1962 (the year I was born, incidentally).

On June 3, 1962, many of Atlanta’s civic and cultural leaders were returning from a museum tour of Europe sponsored by the Atlanta Art Association when their chartered Boeing 707 crashed upon takeoff at Orly Field near Paris, France. Of the 122 passengers that died, 106 were Atlantans (eight crew members also died; two stewardesses sitting in the tail section survived). In an instant the core of Atlanta’s arts community was gone. Thirty-three children and young adults lost both parents in the crash. Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. traveled to Paris to assist with the recovery efforts.

You can read more here about the tragedy.  But the legacy of this loss has become what is considered one of the world’s strongest, vibrant arts communities, powered by the Atlanta Arts Alliance, which rose out of the ashes as a perpetual memorial to those who died:

After the Orly disaster the Atlanta Art Association evolved into the Atlanta Arts Alliance, which would eventually administer the High Museum of Art, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Alliance Theatre, the 14th Street Playhouse, and the Atlanta College of Art. Builders broke ground for the Atlanta Memorial Arts Center on June 3, 1966. The center was opened to the public in 1968, when a casting of Auguste Rodin’s The Shade (L’Ombre) was presented by the French government to the city of Atlanta, in memory of those who died at Orly. The campus of the Atlanta Arts Alliance has continued to evolve, and the Memorial Arts Building is now situated amid other buildings at the Woodruff Arts Center campus. The building remains a vibrant memorial to those who devoted their energies to the betterment of humanity through art achievement in Atlanta and beyond.

Deep sympathies to the loved ones of those who died and to the people of Poland as they work to recover and continue forward.

Comments and dialogue welcome here.

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