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On Wednesday we ran a story remembering Samantha Smith. She was the 10 year old American girl who wrote to Soviet leader, Yuri Andropov, in 1982, to ask why the United States and the Soviet Union couldn’t live in peace. Well, our story brought this response from Jeff Henigson, of Brooklyn, New York:
“Thank you for your piece on Samantha. In 1986, four years after Samantha wrote Mr. Andropov, I was diagnosed with what was expected to be terminal brain cancer. I was 15 at the time, and an organization offered me a wish. I asked to travel to the Soviet Union and meet with Mr. Gorbachev so that I could appeal for an end to nuclear weapons and the Cold War. I traveled there two years later after finishing my last round of chemotherapy …
I share this because I remember watching stories about Samantha on television. While I wasn’t thinking of her when I was offered the wish four years later, I’m sure I’d been influenced by the path she had laid. Thanks for reminding me of her once again.”
Marco Werman talks with Henigson.
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MARCO WERMAN: On Wednesday we ran a story remembering Samantha Smith. She was the 10-year-old American girl who wrote to Soviet leader, Yuri Andropov, in 1982, to ask why the United States and the Soviet Union couldn’t live in peace. Well, our story brought this response from Jeff Henigson, of Brooklyn, New York.
JEFF HENIGSON: Thank you for your piece on Samantha. In 1986, four years after Samantha wrote Mr. Andropov, I was diagnosed with what was expected to be terminal brain cancer. I was 15 at the time, and an organization offered me a wish. I asked to travel to the Soviet Union and meet with Mr. Gorbachev so that I could appeal for an end to nuclear weapons and the Cold War. I traveled there two years later after finishing my last round of chemotherapy. I share this because I remember watching stories about Samantha on television. While I wasn’t thinking of her when I was offered the wish four years later, I’m sure I’d been influenced by the path she’d laid. Thanks for reminding me of her once again.
WERMAN: Jeff Henigson thanks for getting in touch with us and joining us now on the radio. Clearly, you survived your battle with cancer, but when you got offered your one wish back in 1986, why did you want to go to the Soviet Union?
HENIGSON: I actually wanted to go into outer space first, but that wasn’t an option. So it was my second choice. I had always had a really strong awareness, I guess a political awareness, awareness of Soviet-US relations. My father’s a very political guy and I just – I found the whole nuclear situation abhorrent particularly seeing, when I was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, seeing all of these young kids around me getting sick and dying. And then I’m thinking we’re sitting here pointing nuclear weapons, nuclear missiles at each other. It just made no sense and I was infuriated. It really came out of anger.
WERMAN: I guess the Soviet Union in 1986 was much like outer space. You got a sense of what was going on there when you went and you got quite a bit of publicity in the Soviet Union when you were there and lots of letters. What happened to those letters?
HENIGSON: The letters were sent from the newspaper, which was called [PH] Snana, a Leningrad newspaper, to the US embassy in Moscow. And I received a phone call three months after I returned to the United States from Jack Matlock who was the US ambassador to the Soviet Union at the time. And Mr. Matlock said, son, what did you do here exactly? And we had a great conversation. I told him all about it and he said, well, listen we’re not the US postal service here, but I’ll send you a package of letters. Apparently he’d received boxes. The package that I ultimately got had about 70 letters.
WERMAN: And who was writing to you and what were they saying?
HENIGSON: They were people of different ages and backgrounds. I mean most of them were young women, but there were some veterans of the Second World War who wrote, really quite a range. I can read you actually some of these if you like.
WERMAN: Yeah. Give us a taste of one at least. Yeah.
HENIGSON: Sure. There’s a 17-year-old girl, her name in Marina, and she talks about her friend [PH] Deema, who I think was her boyfriend, and he was serving his international duty in Afghanistan. She says that often people think about the meaning of life and about purpose of existence during difficult periods in their lives. That’s exactly what happened to me. On April 16, 1988, I lost the dearest friend of my life. Deema died serving his duty. And it just made me think about, we are there now. All in the name of peace. There’s also a very interesting letter to my parents that mentions Samantha Smith. It was by a mother. I don’t think it was ever intended for me to see and it said, I wish you health for the rest of your life. Take care of yourself. Our children will always remember the names of children like Samantha Smith and Jeff Henigson.
WERMAN: So beating cancer you got this new lease on life. What do you do now? What do you do today?
HENIGSON: I’m actually working on a documentary about this whole experience. The film’s called Letters From Leningrad and it’s a story about a journey that I’m about to embark on to find these people who reached out to me 20 years ago. And what was going on in their lives then that motivated them to write and what’s happened to them since. And what do they think about the world that’s been realized.
WERMAN: You’ve already been in touch with some of those letter writers, those correspondents that you received letters from. What have they said so far? What kind of communication have you had with them?
HENIGSON: Only one person had written in English and she left a phone number. And I just decided, what the heck, I’ll give this number a try and she answered on the second ring.
WERMAN: Wow.
HENIGSON: And she’s since become a real advocate for this project and an investigator, a researcher, for us. So she’s tracked down a whole bunch of the folks who wrote and she’s put us in touch. We’re trying not to talk to them just yet because we want to meet them in person and have those conversations, but really looking forward to getting over there as soon as we can.
WERMAN: Jeff Henigson, former teenage peace envoy, following in the footsteps of the late Samantha Smith. Jeff, very good to meet you. Thank you so much.
HENIGSON: Nice meeting you. Thank you.
WERMAN: You can find a link to Jeff’s website, Letters From Leningrad, at TheWorld.org. And don’t forget to get in touch with us if you have something to add to any of our stories. You can reach us by leaving a comment at TheWorld.org or by emailing us at TheWorld@PRI.org.
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