When I was a child, I always had
mixed emotions about New Year’s Day. It
was either, “Yaaay, Happy New Year,” or “Boo, I have to go back to school
tomorrow.” When I was in my late teens,
and working full-time for the U.S. Federal Government, I felt the same way
about New Year’s Day—glad to celebrate a new year but not ready to go back to
work after a few days of holiday vacation time.
My way of thinking changed once
again when I was twenty-one. That New
Year’s day, I was alone in my apartment in Arlington, Virginia. I had just returned from visiting my family
for the Christmas holidays. While unpacking
my suitcase the telephone rang, and I quickly answered, expecting to hear
Sergei’s voice. Instead I heard these
life-changing words ...
“They got him! They got
Sergei,” my boss shouted into the
phone.
Shortly after midnight on January
1, 1973, Sergei Kourdakov’s life ended abruptly. He was just twenty-one years old. It has been forty-seven years since the unexplainable
happened.
That phone call … and those words
… slip into my mind each year.
They got Sergei.
* * * * *
