My
speech for Charles Godfrey's
98 year birthday, Sept. 26th 2015
I am a bit nervous
since I have never made a speech for
a 98-year birthday before ...
....and probably never will again
:-)
I want to say a few words to you,
Skip, because you are a true life
saver. I do not just mean that you
have saved your own life for almost
a hundred years.
And I don’t refer to you as a doctor
although I do think it is worth
mentioning that you throughout your
life used all your vacations away
from the hospital and your private
practice in Toronto to fly out to do
free volunteer work as a doctor in
many poor countries. And I don’t
mean the work you carried out as
president for CARE Canada.
No, I am standing here today to
celebrate you for the four times you
saved my life.
First time
The first time was when I invited
your daughter, Kristin, to stay with
me in my slummy backyard dwelling of
a former funeral coffin store and
pornographic store in Copenhagen. We
still had some coffins with hard
core porno magazines standing. As a
result you in the winter of 1967
invited me to Tunisia where you were
doing volunteer hospital work living
right on top of the ruins of Cartago
next to the presidential palace of
Bourguiba, the only decent president
they had until the Arab spring.
That trip also became an Arab spring
for me, since I was right then going
on trial for selling hashish – lost
as I was as a young high school
dropout hippie with no future.
Meeting you and your wife there and
seeing your devotion to humanity
gave me new inspiration. For when I
right after the trip was going to
court facing a severe sentence, I
decided to cut my hair and put on a
nice business suit. Then I stood up
in court declaring that I really
felt so sorry for my past behavior,
but that I had now managed to change
my life around because I had just
“seen the light” when I had a vision
in the Arab desert. Well, I must
have been very convincing, for to my
surprise the judge set me free
without even giving me a fine :-)
What my vision in the Sahara really
was I have a hard time describing
because my sight was certainly very
much reduced by having your
wonderful daughter sitting in front
of me on the camels. And I can tell
you that it was a very sexy
experience to sit right behind
Kristen .....rolling like this from
side to side through the desert.
Nevertheless, I do remember being
strongly affected by seeing all the
poor sick and especially blind
people all over, and having just
experienced your devotion to those
people in an Arab hospital
reawakened a childhood dream in me
of one day building a jungle
hospital like the one Albert
Schweitzer had. And that dream you
helped me realize many years later
by once again saving my life.
Second time
The next time was when your wife,
Margaret, in 1969 came to Copenhagen
to visit Kristin and me and decided
to invite me to Canada. At that
time, I had become completely
radicalized by the Vietnam War and
that was something Margaret really
liked to see. I should have come
over right away, but got deeper and
deeper into my revolutionary
struggle – increasingly with a new
vision that the only way to save
humanity was through a violent
struggle. Therefore, I did not
really have time to go to work on
your farm.
Kristen had now gone home to Canada
and wrote me letter after letter
about coming soon, but I got deeper
and deeper into something very, very
close to terrorism. What made me
suddenly decide to come over to
Canada extremely fast was when I
again faced trial – this time for
having destroyed a bridge and some
equipment of the American military
during a joint NATO military
exercise for which I had to pay a
huge sum of money for the damages.
By fleeing it all, I literally
became a political refugee from my
own country. So thank you, Charlie,
for taking a terrorist under your
wings for a while ....and in that
way again saving my life.
:-)
When I fled Denmark it was with the
idea to only briefly recuperate on
your farm in Canada before going to
Guatemala to join the guerrilla
movement there. You will recall how
I was taking Spanish courses up in
my little cabin on the farm, but
meeting your loving family started
to change my life around once again.
I really enjoyed for the first time
in life being a farm hand –
especially in these beautiful
surroundings up here. I did not
right away give up my revolutionary
ideal and thus named all the 12 red
cows, I had to take of, Lenin, Marx,
Che, Trotsky, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel
etc. Some neighboring farmers
probably thought I was crazy when I
ran around on their land shouting
“Trotsky, Trotsky, come home”
whenever they ran away from the farm
:-)
It was not very hard work. Except
for the weekends, which I hated. For
that was when you got home from
Toronto and commanded the whole
family to do hard work in the fields
– workaholic as you were then, and
still are. What made the hard work a
bit pleasant after all was when you
put up big loud speakers outside
playing Beethoven while we were
spreading manure and building
fences.
The only hard work I remember was
when you wanted to put water into
the barn and wanted to buy a trench
digger to dig the 5 feet deep trench
all the 400 meters from the house
down to the barn. I came from a
country where we did not have so
much farm machinery at the time and
thought it was a crazy idea to buy
an expensive machine for such a
little job. Therefore, I offered
that I would dig that trench in only
one week. I must confess that I had
no idea how many rocks there were in
the ground and how deep I had to
dig, so this is probably the hardest
job I have done in my life.
Nevertheless, I wanted to win the
bet that I could do it in one week –
and I did it.
Recalling that you paid me only 200
Canadian dollars a month, you can
see how many thousands of dollars
you saved by not buying that
expensive trench digger. Instead you
had the job done for lousy 50
dollars by your cheap Danish labor.
:-)
However, I felt more than rewarded
when from now on you and Margaret
always introduced me to your guests
on the farm or friends such as Prime
Minister Trudeau as “the fastest
trench digger in Canada.”
What you did not understand at that
time was that I had other subversive
ideas with that trench. For I was
actually training to build trenches
for the guerrilla warfare I wanted
to join in Guatemala afterwards. And
what you didn’t see while watching
my nice cover up as an innocent farm
worker in the daytime was all the
subversive activities I carried out
at night.
For every night, I was sitting in
the kerosene light in my little
cabin decorated with posters of
Lenin, Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara
writing my revolutionary pamphlets
and tons of letters to friends and
family. How crazy I was I just want
to show you here. Night after night,
I was by hand writing producing such
a huge stack of pages, which I
afterwards typed with one finger on
150 stencils – using correction
whitener all the time I made
mistakes. Afterwards on my days off
I took this stack of stencils
to the office of the Trotskyites in
Toronto and used their printing
machines to print out my first book
– even my first picture book, as you
can see here in “A Youth rebels
confessions – with important notes
about how to change the world”. I
think I printed at least a hundred
copies of this book – far wordier
than my later far more well-known
book American Pictures – and then
mailed them to friends all over the
place. Many of my friends still have
them laying around, but they have
promised never to show them to
anybody. For today, I am not very
proud of seeing my fanaticism in
that period.
Third time
And the reason is that you in the
meantime saved my life for the third
time. For as you know I had long,
long talks with Margaret that year
where we often spend half the day
sitting in the kitchen talking.
Margaret had a deep respect for my
revolutionary visions since she had
herself in her youth been a
Communist. However, she had changed
and come to realize that there were
better and more democratic ways to
change the world. And with her wise
and reasonable thinking she ended up
having more influence on me than I
first would have thought. Today when
I myself work on de-radicalizing
young radicals I can see how
important it was that her clever
advice and warnings to me came from
a former insider in a very caring
and loving way. If a reactionary had
told me the same things I would not
have listened. And also that her
thinking had time to sink in on a
quiet farm with plenty of time for
reflection.
However, I was still very hard
headed and when I left the farm
after Christmas 1970 I was on my way
down to Guatemala. Yet all the time
I was letting myself being detracted
from my goal by hearing Margaret’s
inner voice and instead joining
various more peaceful black
struggles such as the Black Panthers
on my way. Yet, in the summer of
1972, I made a decisive attempt to
hitchhike to Guatemala with a Black
Panther friend. We were the Syrian
fighters of that time. He soon gave
up because nobody would pick up such
an angry black man, but I made it
alone all the way to the mountains
of Guatemala and tried to find the
guerrillas.
It was a crazy idea since I did not
speak Spanish and I had been thrown
out of the army two years before for
refusing to shoot a gun. I did not
find the guerrillas, for when I
stood there in the jungle I heard
Margaret’s voice inside me stronger
than ever. I have no doubt today,
Skip, that it was either your wife
or God himself who kept me away from
joining that bloody struggle which
has never really ended in Guatemala
and would no doubt have killed me in
the end. Either way, God manifested
himself in the shape of Margaret as
my saving angel. I returned to
America and slowly changed into a
believer of non-violence and through
non-violent communication ended up
instead making American Pictures.
One reason I could get back into
America and continue traveling there
was the 1100 Canadian dollars I had
earned and could show the American
immigration I had on a Canadian
bankbook when I had to go up here
every 3 months to get a new visa. I
forgot to bring that old dear bank
book with me today. I could never
use those 1100 dollars and therefore
traveled for 5 years in the USA for
no money at all. Not until the end
did I use the money to buy a boat
ticket home to Denmark for me and
the American wife I brought with me
home. So also in that way did you
enabled me to make American Pictures
by helping me to stay as a poor
vagabond in America for 5 years.
So why am I thanking you for all
this, Skip, when it was your wife
who saved my life? Well, the point
here is the influence you had on
Margaret. You met each other at a
debate when you were young – you as
a Christian and she as a Communist –
and out of that engaging dialogue
you later formed your family. Yet
the dialogue continued in your
marriage and slowly you manage to
de-radicalize Margaret in the same
way she as a result later could do
it with me. Therefore, it all goes
back to your Christian inspired
peaceful vision of saving humanity,
Skip.
And through the inspiration you gave
me already in Tunisia you in that
way also helped me later to realize
my childhood dream of building a
hospital in Africa. For some of the
funds from American Pictures
eventually went into a small jungle
hospital which I helped finance for
the anti-apartheid guerrilla
movement in their Kwanzu Zul head
quarters in Angola.
Libertina
Amathila who became free
Namibia’s first minister of health
was running the nursing school and
small hospital in it.
As you can see
here it saved human lives.
Fourth
time
In that way, you also helped change
my life once again. For after
hitchhiking around Africa to see
other projects I could support I
soon gave up when I saw the racism
of much of the development aid. I
swore I would never have anything to
do with development aid again.
However, as president for Care
Canada you were 10 years later in
1991 coming to Copenhagen for a
meeting with Care Denmark.
Therefore, I walked into CARE’s
office to find out which hotel you
and Margaret were staying in so you
could come to dinner with me and my
wife.
Well, when CARE saw me they got the
idea to send me to a new project in
Bolivia to make a slideshow about it
since I was now a fairly well known
person. At first I said no, because
I had often in my revolutionary days
heard you talk about CARE and just
imagined that it was some kind of
emergency aid for the poor. That was
nonsense for me at the time when I
felt that only revolutionary change
could end poverty effectively.
However, now I saw how CARE’s way of
working could create real long-range
change without the racism involved.
Therefore, I can also thank you for
my many years of involvement with
CARE. In fact, in May this year I
received Care’s humanitarian price
for having worked as an ambassador
for 25 years with no salary. I wish
I could show you the statue I got
with the price, but the statue was
so heavy that I could not myself
carry it home :-) Today we in CARE
are doing a fantastic job saving
people from the effects of climate
destruction.
However, all of my life saving work
I owe to your vision of saving human
lives which you so early planted in
me. Without you knowing it, you also
saved my life in the process.
Thank you, my incredible hard
working saving angel, Skip, and also
here a great thank to Margaret whom
I last saw in her coffin standing in
there on the living room floor
happily saying goodbye to the world
after a rewarding life.
A toast to you, Skip, and all my
saving angels in this wonderful
family.
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