Word: laddered
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...match for Henry Kissinger in a debate over the Vietnam War, but at the 1995 Gerald R. Ford Foundation board meeting, the former Secretary of State indeed lost a heated argument on the subject to one Fred Meijer of Grand Rapids. At issue was an 18-step metal ladder, utterly unremarkable except that in April 1975 thousands of desperate South Vietnamese, fleeing capture by the invading North Vietnamese for freedom in the U.S., had clambered up its sturdy steps onto the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon and into American helicopters perched there. To Meijer, the gray ladder...
...Then I saw the ladder from the evacuation," Hank Meijer relates. "My first thought was, That's an important piece of history; perhaps I can pay somebody a few hundred bucks to weld it off with a blowtorch, then crate it up and ship it back to Michigan for display at the Ford Museum." He resisted, but when he returned to Grand Rapids and told his father about the ladder, Fred Meijer was captivated, and determined to put those "18 steps to freedom" on permanent display before the American people. He figured his fellow board members at the Ford Foundation...
Somewhat startled, Meijer held his ground. "Henry, if we don't acquire the ladder, it will end up in the bowels of the Smithsonian." To which, an annoyed Kissinger shot back, "That's a good place...
Then the ex-President spoke up for his old friend Meijer, likening the "freedom ladder" to the concrete slab from the Berlin Wall that adorns the museum's entrance. "No one knows more than I how humiliating it was," Ford reminded his Secretary of State. "As you recall, I had to sit in the Oval Office and watch our troops get kicked out of Vietnam. But it's part of our history, and we can't forget it." The decision was made to get the ladder. "To some, this staircase will always be seen as an emblem of military defeat...
...Anderson. Moreover, a world of teachers dispensing knowledge and guidance has been reduced to a single white professor who is more interested in keeping knowledge from his black students than sharing it with them. The characters in Kennedy's play-intelligent and capable African-Americans trying to climb a ladder towards success specifically designed to keep them down-live in a world apart. A stark, empty, isolated world...