There once was a time after dinosaurs and before Twitter, when people got breaking news from cable news channels. It was a chief reason why I began my career working at one whose initials start with a C and end with an N, decades ago.
I remember one incident late in August 1985. It was after midnight. We were reporting on a small commuter plane that crashed in Maine, killing all eight people on board. The supervising producer looked stunned as he hung up the telephone and told us, “Samantha Smith was on that plane.”
Samantha Smith. Largely forgotten today, she played a starring role in the Cold War’s closing act. Her story is both sad and inspiring.
In the early 1980s, President Ronald Reagan was adopting a new get-tough policy with the Soviet Union. They had deployed nuclear missiles to eastern Europe, we did likewise in the West, and soon, people here and abroad worried the world was about to end in a thermonuclear firestorm.
Samantha Smith heard all this as a student at Maine’s Manchester Elementary School in late 1982. The USSR’s longtime boss had just died and been replaced by Yuri Andropov, the type of dour, lackluster bureaucrat who gave the Politburo its dour reputation.
Struggling to make sense of things, little Samantha told her mother somebody should write a letter to Andropov asking if he wanted a war. Her mom replied, “Why don’t you?” So Samantha picked up a pen and wrote:
“Dear Mr. Andropov:
“ …Congratulations on your new job. I have been worrying about Russia and the United States getting into a nuclear war. Are you going to vote to have a war or not? If you are please tell me how you are going to help not to have a war … I would like to know why you want to conquer the world or at least our country. God made the world for us to live together in peace and not to fight.”
As she licked the envelope and dropped it in the mailbox, little Samantha didn’t know her life had just changed forever.
When her correspondence arrived on some apparatchik’s desk in Moscow, he realized he had struck gold. Then, the Soviet propaganda machine rolled into action.
Six months later, Samantha came home from school to find a letter from her new communist pen pal.
“ … Yes, Samantha, we in the Soviet Union are trying to do everything so that there will not be war on Earth … We want peace for ourselves and all the peoples of our planet.”
There were several more lines of proletarian drivel, and then, he got to the point. “I invite you, if your parents will let you, to come to our country, the best time being this summer. You will find out about our country, meet with your contemporaries, visit an international children’s camp … and see for yourself: In the Soviet Union, everyone is for peace and friendship among peoples.”
“Y. Andropov”
Central casting couldn’t have provided a more quintessentially American-looking child. With a sweet, glowing smile and pretty face, you could picture Samantha hopscotching down a sidewalk while eating a slice of apple pie.
When she visited in July 1983, the Soviets put her in the Young Pioneer uniform worn by girls her age and trotted her around before every TV camera they could find. The media ate it up. How you could not love an adorable girl speaking out for peace?
Back home, Samantha became a bona fide celebrity, doing one TV interview after another. She was invited to attend the Children’s International Symposium in Japan and even met the prime minister. She wrote a book called Journey to the Soviet Union, hosted “Samantha Smith Goes to Washington” on the Disney Channel, and even landed a role in a primetime TV series.
She and her father were flying home to Maine on Aug. 25, 1985, after shooting for her new program wrapped up in California. Their plane hit the treetops while coming in for a landing, causing a crash that killed everyone in it, including 13-year-old Samantha.
More than three decades have passed. The Soviet Union eventually disappeared into history’s dustbin. It’s difficult to imagine what Samantha would be like today at age 47, perhaps still a famous actress, maybe even a mother. A small bronze statue on the grounds of Maine’s Capitol keeps her legacy alive, a reminder of the time a little girl’s voice was heard in a big way.
J. Mark Powell (@JMarkPowell) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He’s vice president of communications at Ivory Tusk Consulting, a South Carolina-based agency. A former broadcast journalist and government communicator, his “Holy Cow! History” column is available at jmarkpowell.com.
