Turning the pages back... April14, 1996 (04/13/03)

Turning the pages back...

April14, 1996

Back on April 14, 1996, The Weekly carried a feature article about Melanne Verveer, the Ukrainian American deputy assistant to the U.S. president and deputy chief of staff to the first lady, who had just delivered personal reflections and a slide presentation on the historic May 11-12, 1995, visit of Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton to Ukraine - the first time a U.S. president had been welcomed in Kyiv on a state visit to independent Ukraine.

Ms. Verveer told the audience gathered for her presentation at St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic School in Newark, N.J., that tens of thousands of people - 40,000 according to police estimates - turned out to welcome the presidential entourage; near the Shevchenko Monument, the crowd chanted "Clinton, Clinton."

Ms. Verveer began her recap of the state visit by noting, "I felt privileged to be on the first state visit by an American president to Ukraine." On a personal level, she added, visiting Kyiv "felt as though I were going home." She pointed to such highlights of the Kyiv visit as the first ladies' tea, a breakfast for women involved in Ukraine's newly emerging civic associations, a visit to the Babyn Yar memorial, commemorations of the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, and a visit to a maternity clinic that was part of a joint program with the University of Pennsylvania.

The "most extraordinary moment," she said, was at Shevchenko State University, where Mr. Clinton received an honorary doctorate. "The students' reaction to this young president was exuberant," she noted, showing a slide of a multitude of young hands reaching out to touch the U.S. president's outstretched hand.

Ms. Verveer also observed that the Clintons took an off-the-record tour, as she put it, of Kyiv, visiting St. Andrew's Sobor and the Monastery of the Caves. The crowds lining the streets as the presidential entourage made its way through Kyiv were 10 to 15 people deep, she recalled. To close her presentation, Ms. Verveer showed a shot of students holding flags. "The sight of the American flag next to the Ukrainian flag," she emphasized, "is a symbol of the new reality" of the U.S.-Ukraine partnership.

Source: "Clinton administration staffer shares impressions of state visit to Ukraine," by Roma Hadzewycz, The Ukrainian Weekly, Vol. LXIV, No. 15, April 14, 1996.

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