A Time of Transition

By Paul Glen

"A professional man in his 50's and in a 2d career is sent to a former communist country to help it make the transition to free market management. In the country, he is requested to teach businessmen with the help of Gabriela, a skilled translator. Gradually, they become very close and together enjoy many pleasant adventures, but complications of family and distance interfere with their relationship."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781503515505

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Copyright © 2014 by Paul Glen.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 11/13/2014

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1 You’re Not Getting Older, You’re Getting Better

Chapter 2 Into the Land of Dracula

Chapter 3 Early Impressions of Bucharest

Chapter 4 Gabriela

Chapter 5 Romania in Transition

Chapter 6 The End of the Tour

Chapter 7 Life Back in the United States

Chapter 8 Bucharest in December

Chapter 9 Frustrations

Chapter 10 Does It Ever End?

Chapter 11 A Visit From Mr. Dumitriu

Chapter 12 Bittersweetness

Chapter 13 The Return

Chapter 14 Discovery

Chapter 15 Hope for the Future

Chapter 16 More Information, More Worries

Chapter 17 Anticipation

Chapter 18 A Month of Agony

Chapter 19 Heartbreak

To Gabriela

CHAPTER 1

You’re Not Getting Older, You’re Getting Better

I N MID-1990, CHUCK McClendon was casually reading the New York Times when an advertisement captured his attention: Retired Business Executives - Your skills are needed by former communist countries that are trying to develop free market practices. Teachers and consultants are desperately needed… The advertisement was from the organization Retired Executives in Service to America and had the name, address, and phone number. Chuck excitedly took down the address and phone number and reached for the phone.

That evening, his wife, Connie, was waiting for him in their suburban, ranch-style house in Columbus, Indiana, with dinner almost prepared. As he started to relax on the family room couch, she asked him to make a drink for her. Without comment, he suppressed his annoyance and did her bidding. He loved his wife of thirty-two years. She was attractive and pleasant to be with, but they differed in point of view in many areas.

Why, he groused for the 1,546th time, am I expected to pour the drinks? It’s like this is a quid pro quo for her because she prepared the dinner. My belief is the quid pro quo from me is that my money paid for the dinner. But no matter. It was just a small annoyance. There had been others that were more important, generally on the subject of house repairs, social responsibilities, his lack of attention to Connie’s feelings, or his sex requests. Everything stayed the same.

He poured two glasses of white zinfandel wine for them, and as was their habit, they went to their family room and dined in front of the TV set. She liked the MacNeil–Lehrer NewsHour. He preferred CNN or WTBS then to watch Wheel of Fortune. She always said his interest was primarily in Vanna White. He couldn’t say she was entirely wrong.

On this evening, he interrupted her news-watching. How would you like to travel to Europe?

When, where, how?

You mean you’d like to travel to Europe and stay for a while?

Yes, of course. You know I’ve always wanted to take a vacation to the British Isles and to France. How can we do it?

Well, it’s not that part of Europe that I had in mind. I saw an advertisement asking for retired businessmen to go to the former communist satellites of Eastern Europe. I called the office in charge, and the person I spoke to said that I sounded like an ideal person for their program. He asked me for a résumé and some references. I asked him what the pay would be, and he gave me a figure that didn’t sound like much, but he assured me that the cost of living in Europe is very low.

Would I be able to come with you?

Yes, of course. That’s why I asked you if you’d like to travel to Europe. As I said, the pay didn’t sound like much, but we’ll probably be able to pay our mortgage payments from my retirement pay and still be able to save a little money. My only concern is that maybe I’m too old for this kind of adventure.

Connie smiled sweetly. Hey, darling, you’re not getting older—you’re getting better! I’ve been hoping something like this would come along. We’re not ready to be put out to pasture. This should be a highlight of our lives if we can get to Eastern Europe. How long would we stay?

Either five or ten months, whichever we choose. I can get a leave of absence from Indiana Lutheran and come back here after the assignment in Eastern Europe.

Let’s go for ten!

Chuck McClendon had never thought much about getting old. At an even six feet in height and 195 pounds, he was not exceptionally athletic but not sagging much either. He was sort of a physical fitness buff and just assumed that he’d stay around for at least twenty or thirty years more—teaching classes another ten years, jogging a few miles each week, lifting weights frequently, playing tennis now and then, but what else? He never really thought about a new venture before that day.

Chuck had taken early retirement from his position as controller of a manufacturing company, gotten a second master’s degree to go along with his MBA, and taken a job teaching at a local university, Indiana Lutheran. The pay was not making him wealthy, but with his company retirement, he was comfortable. His three kids were college graduates, all married, and had careers ahead of them, so he didn’t worry much about them. Connie, his wife, had enough money to buy her clothes and things for the house and for the kids and grandkids, so everything should have been perfect, but it wasn’t. From time to time, he’d think, What was I put on this earth to do? The good Lord must have had something else in mind for me.

He had been in the teaching job for seven years and had a vested second pension that he could draw from after the age of sixty-two. He taught principles of accounting and principles of finance regularly and occasionally principles of management. At first, he was enamored with teaching. The university was a teaching university, not a publish or perish place that puts demands on faculty to perform research, so he felt very comfortable doing his teaching and counseling students, plus helping with registration and sitting with the faculty as they discussed curricula issues. He was an adequate teacher—yes, even a good teacher. His students liked him because he was always available to help them. They could call him at home, as well as at the office, for assistance in working out accounting problem sets or capital budgeting problems, and he was willing to meet them to help at hours other than those he had posted.

A recurrent happening was that he fell in love with many of the female students every semester—at the age of fifty, when he began his college teaching, and he was in an environment he had never known as a student. He had been married most of his years as an undergraduate, so he didn’t have a wandering eye for the coeds then. Later, as a graduate student, he was struggling to support a family of five, working full time, and going to school at night. Now here he was, a college professor, and still young and virile. It wasn’t as though his wife didn’t please him, but their love life was predictable and unexciting. With his vasectomy acquired years ago, he often speculated to himself, What would I do if Bo Derek offered herself to me as she had to Dudley Moore in the movie 10 or as Kelly Lebeau had offered herself to Gene Wilder in Woman in a Red Dress? He had also looked clandestinely then hastily disposed of issues of Playboy or Nugget or Gent and read torrid love affairs and seen pictures of nubile maidens that aroused flames in him that pathetically died unrequitedly.

The same was true of his fantasies about the female students, although he never once made any overtures to any of them to get involved. There were times when it appeared that a student coming for extra help might give something extra in return, but Chuck stayed at arm’s length to them. He feared the consequences of a discovered affair with a student both from the university and from his wife.

Unfortunately for Chuck, his roving eye seemed to be all too obvious when he was with Connie, his beloved wife of thirty-two years. She was forever nudging him and whispering, Stop staring!

To which he always innocently asked, Who? Me?

Of course, I mean you. You’ve been following that woman’s movements all over the room. At that, he would secretly agree, making a note to be more discreet in the future.

Fortunately for him, this was the age of sexual harassment. Otherwise, he might have become entangled with a coworker. He had been attracted to one of the female staff coordinators. He and Patricia Price had worked together on some administrative problems having to do with regional accreditation of the business programs. Often they were alone together in her office. She was a petite brunette, married to a rather large boisterous individual. Once he had noticed that she seemed downcast and asked her what was wrong. She didn’t say anything about her home life, but he was pretty sure that was the problem. She just said, I’d feel better if you’d give me a hug. He was more than glad to do it, and she felt like a wonderful doll in his arms. After that, the occasions for hugs were frequent when they were alone. He once maneuvered her under the mistletoe at a Christmas party, and they exchanged a very nice kiss that seemed to hold promises of future adventure with the delightful Patricia.

Not a month later, a scandal erupted, implicating a fellow professor who had gotten too friendly with a lady professor. The man claimed that he hadn’t done anything unusual for that working environment—things like bumping into the lady and telling her she looked nice, telling her jokes, and acts that had gone unnoticed before at the office. No matter how innocent the miscreant thought he had been, the dean had him twisting in the wind for a few days. The professor wasn’t fired because he had tenure, and there wasn’t enough serious evidence against him. But an adverse letter was put into his file, and his case caused a cold chill to go down the collective spine of the male members of the college staff. From then on, there was no way that Chuck would try to get close to any members of his work group—and certainly not to any female students. Patricia was understanding of his new arm’s-length policy, but she was never as friendly with him again as before and even criticized him about small errors he made or differences of opinion they had. He made a mental note to avoid any physical contact with coworkers ever again.

This was about the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Most of the teaching staff took scant notice of this happening, but it was an electrifying event for Chuck. As a major in the army reserve, he had been called to active duty when the Berlin Wall was put up in 1961. During the call-up, he was sent to Germany to an armored cavalry regiment near the Fulda Gap. The unit had spent three months straight on alert for the beginning of World War III. He was sent back home after six months but remained very aware of happenings in Europe during the Cold War.

When the Berlin Wall came down, it was an unbelievable event for him. Chuck had gone to a professional meeting for business faculty in St. Louis, staying at the Marriott Gateway to the West Hotel with Connie. They had enjoyed some barbecue and coleslaw at a restaurant in the downtown area before returning to the hotel for the night. When they turned on the television set, there it was: East Germans battering down the Berlin Wall. What a happening! He had accepted the belief that the West would be facing a hostile Soviet-led opposition for the rest of his life. The unthinkable was happening: the Soviet empire, Ronald Reagan’s Evil Empire, was falling apart. Soon, he learned that communist governments were disappearing in all of the satellites!

Back at Indiana Lutheran, life didn’t hold the same challenges. Chuck wanted to be a part of the changeover that was taking place in Europe. He talked about the changed situation to his wife, to his colleagues, to the university administrators. He tried to get them to accept his excitement about the challenge of helping the former communist countries change their economies. However, they saw nothing in the situation for them. Then he saw the advertisement from RESA or Retired Executives in Service to America.

CHAPTER 2

Into the Land of Dracula

T HE BOEING 767 droned eastward across Greenland and Iceland. Some excited passengers were making the trip to Europe for the first time, and some were repeaters. Many were locked in conversation after the ample dinner they had been served.

Connie began her litany. You should have held out for Poland or Czechoslovakia! Even Hungary. But Romania! What do we know about Romania? What Romanians do we know? We just know that it’s the land of Dracula and AIDS babies. Yechh!

We’ve been through this already, Connie. The New York office says Romania needs me, and there was only Bulgaria and Albania as alternatives.

Well, Chuck, I guess you’re right. I asked for adventure, and from what the agency told us, we are going to have quite an adventure.

Yes, my dear. Now try to get some sleep. The plane lands in Frankfurt, Germany, in about five hours, and we’ll have missed a whole night’s sleep. Romania is eight hours ahead of Indiana.

Chuck also had many misgivings about Romania. After getting the warning order that Romania would be his station to teach free market business practices to managers who had been under a communist system for forty years, he had read everything he could about the country and tried to learn some of the language. He had learned from the travel guides that the country had beautiful mountains, rich soil, a popular seaside resort area on the Black Sea, and a more or less homogeneous population which was almost 90 percent Romanian. The second largest group was the Hungarian minority which made up 8 percent.

Communists had forced the last king, Michael, to go into exile in 1948. The regime of the dictator, Nicolae Ceauşescu, that had ruled Romania from 1965 to 1989 had been one of the most despotic and hypercentralized of all the communist governments. From about 1980, the country had been virtually closed to the outside world as Ceauşescu’s megalomania dominated the nation’s psyche. Actually, it was both Ceauşescus—Nicolae and Elena—that concocted schemes to sell off most of the country’s food to pay for their grandiose projects such as the Casa Poporului, House of the Peoples, which would be the world’s largest building when it was finished and the Bucharest ship canal, which would link the capital city to the Danube River and make Bucharest a seaport.

Ceauşescu had wanted Romania to be self-sufficient both industrially and agriculturally. For years, before World War II, Romania had been known as the bread basket of Europe, able to feed itself and many other countries with its agricultural output. By 1985, Romania was having to import grain to be able to put bread into the hands of its twenty-three million people, and there was little else for them to eat.

The Ceauşescu industrial program had gotten off to a good start, and the country was making three kinds of automobile plus tractors, locomotives, rail cars, low quality TV sets, as well as armored cars and tanks. To provide the workforce needed by the factories, a large part of the peasant population had volunteered to be transferred to the cities. All enterprises—industrial, commercial, touristic, cultural, medical, and educational—had been state-run. All decisions were made by the ministries in Bucharest and sent forth to the enterprises to implement.

As Chuck and Connie were winging their way to Bucharest, the Ceauşescu regime was no more. It ended in a hail of bullets in December 1989 that killed Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu and, unfortunately, many innocents who were in the way of the Romanian Revolution. In the place of the Ceauşescus was a group of second-line communist party functionaries who had taken over the government and called themselves the National Salvation Front.

The leader of the NSF, Ion Iliescu, had been a close advisor to Ceauşescu in earlier times but had fallen out of favor with the dictator after a visit to North Korea. Ceauşescu had seen how Kim Il Sung was revered by his people and decided that he also wanted such adulation. Iliescu claimed that he argued against such a system because he didn’t believe it suited the Romanian people. For the disagreement, Iliescu was exiled to a technical printing house for the next seven years.

However, Iliescu was a devout communist who had even been to the Frunze Academy in Moscow at the same time that Mikhail Gorbachev had been there. Apparently, Iliescu and Gorbachev had become friends there. Shortly after the opening shots of the revolution, Iliescu called Gorbachev and told him, I am in charge here. I will bring order to this chaos. Immediately after that, he made a speech in which he said he did not favor the abolition of the socialist system, but he wanted to purify it and make it serve the people as it was originally designed to do.

Iliescu was elected to the presidency of Romania in the elections that were held in May 1990. There had been a lot of unrest and many demonstrations against the NSF in the time leading up to the election. A large contingency of student protestors had occupied the university area around the Piata Universitate for several weeks, demanding that Iliescu step down because he was a communist. Iliescu is said to have made a deal with the coal miners who work near the city of Tirgu Jiu, promising to give them transportation to Bucharest, sustenance while in Bucharest, and a pay raise after they returned to the mines if they would clean out the