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Authors: Siobhan Darrow
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Moscow as a sound technician, told me his father was planning to organize the Goodwill Games in Moscow. Ted, whom I got to know later, was disgusted with the way the Olympics and other international sports events had been constantly hijacked by politics instead of being used as a way to bridge political differences, so he decided to organize his own Olympics and exclude nobody. Instead he would hold them in the country that was often the one being barred: the Soviet Union. Allowing the Goodwill Games to take place at all was a sign that the Soviet Union was changing under Gorbachev’s stewardship.
I liked the idea and was hired to help set up the games. It meant doing things that were unheard of in that country before Gorbachev had begun his process of glasnost, or openness. We arranged to bring in Xerox machines. It took weeks of negotiating and paperwork to allow such a dangerous capitalist tool into the country, but the Soviets finally relented. We arranged to have hundreds of frozen pizzas flown in, again with massive paperwork and permission slips to get them through customs. Ted Turner brought in hordes of people from Atlanta to put on this Western-style sports extravaganza. Many of them had never left the state of Georgia, let alone come to the heart of communism. In my mind, it marked a turning point. Gorbachev had allowed a trickle, but an avalanche would pour in over the coming years. For me personally, it was also a turning point. With the country opening up, I knew it was only a matter of time now before Dima would get his exit papers and leave Russia.
When a relationship with him was becoming a real possibility, and he was going to be able to live in the same country as me, Iwanted out of it. The deficiencies in our marriage were magnified when Russia was no longer part of the bargain.
My work at the Goodwill Games won me a job offer in Atlanta with CNN. I decided to end my marriage to Dima, in spirit anyway.
“I’ll stay married to you until you get out,” I told Dima, once I had decided to take the CNN job. “But I need to take my life out of this holding pattern.”
Dima and I were about to exchange each other’s worlds. He was going to finally get his coveted America and I was going to get more Russia than I ever bargained for. Part of me was afraid to brave Russia without him. He had always been my guide. Now I would have a new ticket to Russia through CNN. But not before a detour to Atlanta.
Life on the Plantation
W ith everything I owned in the back of a used car, I drove south from New Jersey to start a new life in Atlanta. It was September 1986 and I was twenty-six. For the first time in my life, I had a real job with medical benefits and a pension plan. It was not exactly glamorous television work: I was going to be a tape logger. It was an entry-level job at CNN, a network that was still largely unknown, even in America. I was thrilled.
In 1986, CNN was still small, operating out of the site of an old Southern plantation, with a garden pockmarked by giant satellite dishes. The newsroom was in a basement, and at night the professional wrestling matches held on the main floor above us created a deafening thud every few seconds. Space was so scarce, with not nearly enough desks to go around, that many staff members were apportioned the edge of a desk. We had twenty-four hours of airtime to fill every day, and we had to do it with minimal resources, asmall number of foreign bureaus, and a large number of inexperienced journalists. Such a fledgling operation felt like a family. I was at home in the quirky chaos and the constant crises. Just getting a simple story from a correspondent edited and properly broadcast on the air often seemed like a huge achievement. Many things could go wrong, and they often did.
I started at what might have been the worst job in the entire network, the overnight shift as a tape logger, labeling a huge pile of tapes. As soon as I had labeled some, more stacks were
I liked the idea and was hired to help set up the games. It meant doing things that were unheard of in that country before Gorbachev had begun his process of glasnost, or openness. We arranged to bring in Xerox machines. It took weeks of negotiating and paperwork to allow such a dangerous capitalist tool into the country, but the Soviets finally relented. We arranged to have hundreds of frozen pizzas flown in, again with massive paperwork and permission slips to get them through customs. Ted Turner brought in hordes of people from Atlanta to put on this Western-style sports extravaganza. Many of them had never left the state of Georgia, let alone come to the heart of communism. In my mind, it marked a turning point. Gorbachev had allowed a trickle, but an avalanche would pour in over the coming years. For me personally, it was also a turning point. With the country opening up, I knew it was only a matter of time now before Dima would get his exit papers and leave Russia.
When a relationship with him was becoming a real possibility, and he was going to be able to live in the same country as me, Iwanted out of it. The deficiencies in our marriage were magnified when Russia was no longer part of the bargain.
My work at the Goodwill Games won me a job offer in Atlanta with CNN. I decided to end my marriage to Dima, in spirit anyway.
“I’ll stay married to you until you get out,” I told Dima, once I had decided to take the CNN job. “But I need to take my life out of this holding pattern.”
Dima and I were about to exchange each other’s worlds. He was going to finally get his coveted America and I was going to get more Russia than I ever bargained for. Part of me was afraid to brave Russia without him. He had always been my guide. Now I would have a new ticket to Russia through CNN. But not before a detour to Atlanta.
Life on the Plantation
W ith everything I owned in the back of a used car, I drove south from New Jersey to start a new life in Atlanta. It was September 1986 and I was twenty-six. For the first time in my life, I had a real job with medical benefits and a pension plan. It was not exactly glamorous television work: I was going to be a tape logger. It was an entry-level job at CNN, a network that was still largely unknown, even in America. I was thrilled.
In 1986, CNN was still small, operating out of the site of an old Southern plantation, with a garden pockmarked by giant satellite dishes. The newsroom was in a basement, and at night the professional wrestling matches held on the main floor above us created a deafening thud every few seconds. Space was so scarce, with not nearly enough desks to go around, that many staff members were apportioned the edge of a desk. We had twenty-four hours of airtime to fill every day, and we had to do it with minimal resources, asmall number of foreign bureaus, and a large number of inexperienced journalists. Such a fledgling operation felt like a family. I was at home in the quirky chaos and the constant crises. Just getting a simple story from a correspondent edited and properly broadcast on the air often seemed like a huge achievement. Many things could go wrong, and they often did.
I started at what might have been the worst job in the entire network, the overnight shift as a tape logger, labeling a huge pile of tapes. As soon as I had labeled some, more stacks were
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