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May 4, 2023
It was the summer of 1968...
And while the rest of the world was trying to move past the recent tragic events and looking forward to better times - I was super excited because I had just been given my first Sport Coat with an Inside Pocket.
You see, in my still developing 10-year-old pea brain - getting a Sport Coat with an Inside Pocket meant that I was now an adult.
I would finally have some place to store my wallet, glasses, no-filter cigarettes and flask of whiskey!
Thankfully, none of which I actually had at the time...
The reason I was given the Sport Coat was because my family was going to be traveling by jet on an international flight - and people got dressed up to travel back then.
Especially if you were flying on a glamorous Pan Am 707 from New York City to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
We were headed to Rio because my Dad had been assigned to the United States Embassy there - as a Finance Officer.
Or so I thought - but that is another story for another day.
When we landed in Rio, we were transported to the luxurious Hotel Gloria - Rio de Janeiro's equivalent of the Plaza Hotel in New York City - for what we thought would be a short stay.
The staff at the Embassy had already picked out an apartment for us to live in that they said had a view overlooking the famous Copacabana Beach.
But when we went to inspect the apartment, we found that it was a bit run down and far too small for our family of six.
And while it technically did have a view of Copacabana Beach - that view could only be achieved by leaning far out on the small balcony that was attached to the kitchen.
So my Dad decided to find us a place to live.
Which is how six months later we ended up in a newly constructed house with a view of the ocean from a roof-top patio and perched on the side of Corcovado mountain - which is topped by the famous statue of Christ the Redeemer.
The world was a very different place back then.
We were living in a tropical paradise and while we were careful about where and when we went out - we did not have much concern for our personal safety.
Which is why my parents allowed my older brother Mike and I to take the public bus to the Embassy to have lunch with my Dad on a regular basis.
On the way home we would often stop to take in an American movie because at the time Brazil had a rule that required movies to be shown in their native language with Portuguese sub-titles - go figure.
Everything changed on September 4th, 1969, when the new US Ambassador - Charles Burke Elbrick - who had been in Brazil for less than two months was kidnapped a few miles from our house.
The kidnapping was orchestrated by two student revolutionary groups - the National Liberation Action (ALN) and the October 8th Revolutionary Movement (MR8).
The groups claimed they took Elbrick to protest the United States support for the military dictatorship that was in power at the time.
They threatened that they would torture or kill him if their demands to release 15 political prisoners were not met.
After four days of negotiations Elbrick was released in exchange for the political prisoners, who were then exiled to Mexico.
The story of the kidnapping was made into a 1997 movie called "Four Days in September" which starred Alan Arkin as Elbrick.
We stayed in Rio for another year after Elbrick was released - but there were a lot changes.
All Americans associated with the Embassy were issued ID cards and the bus trips to the Embassy and movies with my brother became fewer and far between.
A military field radio also mysteriously appeared in my parents' bedroom.
Embassy staff were accompanied by a security detail more often than not when traveling.
We used to joke that the first thing my my Dad would do with each new assignment was to make friends with the local clergy and the US Marines who guarded the Embassy because you never know when you will need help from above - in divine or secular form...
Turns out that was actually smart planning.
For the next year we tried to live our life as normal as possible but the threat of some terrorist group disrupting our daily routine was real and we had to take extra precautions.
I remember my brother Mike started carrying a pocketknife with him everywhere we went, and my hobby of trapping Tarantulas in empty Mayonnaise jars took on new importance.
My brother and I also started buying and saving more fireworks that we purchased from the surrounding Favelas - or shantytowns - located on the hillside of Corcovado a few miles from our neighborhood.
Fortunately we never needed to use the fireworks that we had accumulated - so unbeknownst to our parents we hid them in the bottom of our footlockers when we returned to the US in the summer of 1970.
Since everyone in our family had Black Diplomatic Passports - this meant that neither my bother's nor my footlocker would be subject to inspection by the authorities.
So when we arrived back in New York we breezed through Customs with enough explosives to destroy a small village.
Ok, so in retrospect I guess technically we might have been arms smugglers but we were 12 and 13 at the time and I am sure that the statute of limitations has expired.
Fortunately we did not encounter any villages that we felt compelled to destroy - so we kept the fireworks hidden until the 4th of July in 1971.
That's when my brother and I surprised our parents by setting off an unexpectedly robust fireworks display from the back yard of our house in Vienna, Virginia.
It was a long time ago and the world was a very different place back then.
But I still remember that the fireworks display that Sunday afternoon was spectacular...
