Day 263 - Mr. Chişinău Airport, Part II

Image of Chişinău airport by Chris Radcliff,
via Flickr.com

Alex didn't get just that one phone call from the women at the airport. One Saturday evening, it was snowing heavily, so Alex didn't want to stick around any longer than he needed to. Very shortly after he returned home, the phone rang. It was one of the women at the airport to ask if he could help them get home. Normally they would walk to the main road and take the bus into town. Alex asked if there were any taxis at the airport. He knew that taxis were a very expensive option, so when they said there were a few taxis still around, he told the women to tell the taxi drivers that Mr. Alex would bring cash to the airport the next day to pay them for taking the women home. They did. He did. And the women were all the more appreciative of Alex after that.

In spite of the weekly shipment of pouches, there were times when we couldn't get in either the quantity of supplies and materials we needed by air or the items that we needed shipped in were too large to fit into the belly of the plane. About once every two months, those larger, bulky items were shipped in by plane from Frankfurt. These support flights provided equipment for all of what were referred to as the northern tier of newly independent states, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belorussia, Ukraine, and Moldova. The flights headed from Frankfurt to the northern-most of those posts, stopping along the way at the others with Moldova as the final stop. For that reason, we didn't always know when the flights would arrive. But we did know that by the time the crew arrived in Moldova, they would be tired and wouldn't want to be on the ground any longer than necessary.

Alex arranged to have all the embassy's trucks at the airport so that whatever needed to be offloaded could be moved into a truck as quickly as possible. He was able on most occasions to get the trucks to the support flight planes, get the plane unloaded, and then get off the tarmac so the plane could take off within 30-40 minutes. The crews were always impressed with how little time they had to spend on the ground in Moldova. Moldova began getting a reputation for being a place where things worked, in contrast to the other posts of the northern tier.

When Alex learned that the Senior Executive Corps was willing to send retired business professionals to the newly independent states for consultation, he suggested that getting retired professionals with experience at airports would be something that would benefit both Moldova and the embassy. The ambassador agreed and arranged for the visit. Alex identified the airport officials who should be invited.

The first time Alex and I left Moldova together, for a vacation back in the U.S. to attend our son's graduation, Mr. Cherednatski walked with us to the plane and handed Alex a bottle of brandy because he knew he wouldn't be in Moldova when we got back the following month. He was being transferred to Moscow.

The last time Alex and I left Moldova, all the women who worked at the airport came for the departure so that they could all say good-bye to Alex. When we got to the VIP area, the women were lined up, many of them with presents in their hands, all of them wanting to give Alex a hug and best wishes as we left. The ambassador of another embassy was leaving on the same flight and when one of that embassy's staff members came to the airport staff to complain that their ambassador was being kept waiting, the women responded that he would have to keep waiting until they had finished saying good-bye to Mr. Alex.

Months later, as Alex and I walked down one of the corridors at the Main State building at the end of the day, a man who had just turned right at the corridor intersection we were approaching from the left took just a few more steps before he stopped, turned around and said, "Hey, you're Mr. Chişinău Airport. What are you doing here?" He was one of the many diplomatic visitors who had come through Moldova during our assignment there.