A stay in a central Soviet hospital.

It was 1959, and I was a naive 18 year old kid from a small town in West Virginia. I was not familiar with international diplomacy and world affairs, but I was beginning my first college term at the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, some 60 miles from my home. In addition, I was eager to join the student newspaper as a cub reporter. On the 23 September I presented myself at the office of the university's student newspaper, The Pitt News, to offer my meagre credentials (a prep school class in journalism and practical experience as a writer and editor for the school newspaper and the school yearbook). Then I begged for a chance to prove my. potential. An unimpressed student editor told me that all new people on the paper began by rewriting press releases, not to get my hopes up for anything exciting, and to come around at 8 o'clock the following morning if I was still interested. Disappointed at the thought of starting at the bottom again but ever hopeful I arose the next morning, skipped breakfast and the morning newspaper, and rushed to the newspaper office to meet the 8 o'clock deadline. When I arrived I found the door open and the lights on, but no one in the office. Thinking that they had gone out for a moment, I sat down and waited. About 10 minutes later the telephone rang. It rang six or seven times before it occurred to me (in my eagerness to be a part of the newspaper) that perhaps I could abandon etiquette, answer the phone, and take a message. Picking up the phone, I heard a woman's voice. When I told her that nobody was in the office at present and offered to take a message, she anxiously asked: "Do you work for the Pitt News?" I said, honestly, that it was my first day on the job. With even more anxiety she blurted out: "Well, I don't know if you're aware who's coming to visit the campus this morning, but if you want to endear yourself to that newspaper you'll get over to my office immediately. The Pitt News has been promised the chance to have one reporter accompany the family during their visit to the campus, but the Secret Service needs to clear that individual by no later than 8 30 am. So get over here now!" It took me about one millisecond to decide where my duty lay. Racing to her office, I wondered how I would explain this to the editor I -was supposed to meet, but decided that I would either win a position by my initiative in responding to an emergency or lose it by my presumptuousness in posing as a reporter. All this excitement was centred on His Excellency Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party since 1953 and Chairman of the Council of Ministers (Premier) of the USSR since 1958. His official visit to the United States in the fall of 1959 included a much publicised meeting with President Dwight D Eisenhower at Camp David, Maryland; a widely reported statement of his displeasure in being refused permission to visit Disneyland in California; and a tour of the United States that included a half day stop in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The reason for his Pittsburgh visit was in large part related to the survey of Soviet higher education done in 1958 by the University ofPittsburgh's chancellor, Edward H Litchfield, and his reciprocal invitation to Khrushchev to view American universities. It was Khrushchev's only visit to a university during his 1959 US tour.