The Summer of Hope

By Tom Quiner

As seen in the Des Moines Register on Saturday, July 24, 2010

Millions turned out to see the Man in White

It began on June 2nd.  The year was 1979 when the Alitalia jetliner set down in a land that history forgot for 123 years of its thousand year history.  A Man in White with kind eyes stepped onto the tarmac.  He knelt and kissed the earth.

His next nine days in Poland would change the world.  For objective reporters on the scene, he would spark a revolution with 37 well-crafted speeches, delivered with the intelligence of a scholar and the heart of a poet.  [Continued here …]