Krimsky was well worth following

The email came in November.

It was from my good friend Bob Tinsley at the International Center for Journalists in Washington. Bob has directed a number of programs there, and over the past 15 years or so I’ve often found myself working for him.

The subject of his email was our mutual friend, George.

George Krimsky. His health was failing then. He died about 10 days ago.

George could only be described as legendary. 

He’d grown up in Connecticut, attended a prestigious prep school, been accepted to the very competitive Middlebury College in Vermont, then dropped out. He joined the U.S. Army, and because he had picked up some Russian language skills soon found he was in demand. He served part of his time in uniform in Berlin, and when he got out of the service he gravitated toward journalism.

It wasn’t long before he was working for The Associated Press, and it wasn’t much longer before he was AP’s top foreign correspondent in Moscow.

This was in the 1980s, and the Cold War was set at full-chill.

George was soon in the thick of it. Because of his Russian, he was able to get in touch with Soviet dissidents. Among those dissidents was Andrei Sakarhov, one of the most prominent scientists to oppose the Soviet regime. He and George were in regular contact, and the KGB wasn’t too happy about that.

At some point, irritated that the U.S. had kicked out some spies, the Soviets decided to kick George out as well.

From there, the AP decided to send him on a safer assignment: A civil war in Lebanon.

Fast forward about 20 years and our paths crossed, something I’ll always be grateful for.

George, along with Jim Ewing of the Keene, New Hampshire,, Sentinel and Tom Winship of The Boston Globe had founded the International Center for Journalists in 1985, hoping to improve the world’s journalism one reporter at a time.

But in 2002, George had taken another step back and was working for the ICFJ, coordinating a journalism training project in Central Asia. And it was then our paths crossed.

From the moment we met, I’ve felt like a Krimsky acolyte. He was the pathfinder. I was one of those following in his wake, often struggling to keep up.

That first encounter, as I recall, was in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Chris Wren, recently retired from the New York Times, and I had flown out together from D.C. to meet George there for a five-week project. We were doing our best to get along, but I suspect that I was already getting on Chris’s nerves. NYT types aren’t accustomed to rubbing elbows with editors from Podunk, Indiana.

And then it was on to Kostanai.

Someone at ICFJ had screwed up and had leaked the fact that 10 of the seminar participants would be selected to go to Washington for more training. The U.S. trip was the prize, and everyone was lobbying for it, some subtly and some not-so-subtly.

The most aggressive U.S. trip lobbying campaign came from the folks from Lisakovsk, a barren outpost of a city in western Kazakhstan/southern Siberia. While Chris (wisely) stayed behind to get over jet lag, George and I traveled way too many hours out into the hinterlands for a wining-and-dining festival during which we were the main targets.

Details are a little fuzzy in my memory. I recall that at one point a regional editor thought it would be useful to show us that he was carrying a gun. And I remember getting stuck for awhile in a tiny restroom because of one of those crappy Soviet lock mechanisms.

At any rate, they took us to a collective farm run by a guy who had been in charge during Soviet times. Now it had been privatized: He owned the whole thing and everyone else was an employee. His nickname Zhakia translated as “boss."

The festivities included a meal in which we were served the head of a sheep. Gulnara, the local journalism prof, was offered the tongue. I was given an ear. George, as I recall, was offered an eyeball as the senior guest in attendance.

Not exactly the usual buffet.

They later — in no particular order — had us on horseback, steaming in the sauna, swimming in the boss’s private pool and shooting pool with towels wrapped around us to keep out the breeze.

The good news is that George and I made it back to Kostanai alive. The better news is that none of the lobbying efforts worked. They didn’t make the cut for the U.S. trip.

The next stop was Karaganda, one of those Soviet cities built around a slave labor/prison labor mine. Then Tashkent. Then Bishkek.

To say it was a memorable experience does not do it justice.

And I’m proud of the fact that we worked well enough for George to have me back in Central Asia in 2003 and 2004. That vote of confidence meant a tremendous amount to me.

Today, I’m assuming that I’m retired from overseas shenanigans.

But if George Krimsky had called again with some crazy idea halfway around the world, my first answer would have been, “Yes.” 

Only then would I have asked, “Can you tell me about it?”