The last wish is a meeting with Gorbachev: how an American teenager with cancer visited the USSR

In 1986, American teenager Jeff Henigson was diagnosed with brain cancer. Doctors predicted that he had two years to live. When a charity volunteered to grant his wish, he asked to travel to Moscow to discuss a world without nuclear weapons with Mikhail Gorbachev. Writes about this with the BBC.

Photo: Shutterstock

In the summer of 1986, when Jeff was 15 years old, he rode his bicycle to the nearest electronics store for spare parts for the superlaser, which he was then assembling. But on the way he was hit by a car.

“She was coming the other way, and the woman who was driving didn’t see me, so the car crashed right into me,” Jeff recalls. “I was thrown out of the saddle, flew three meters and hit the back of my head.”

The boy was driving without a helmet and lost consciousness from the blow. He woke up already in the hospital. But Jeff was doing well and was discharged the same day.

But a week later he began to have epileptic seizures. He returned to the hospital for a CT scan, which showed no injury from the accident. But she found a tumor.

“I had two thoughts,” Jeff said. — The first is a plan on how to stop being a virgin in the summer. I admit that I never succeeded. The second is to complete my laser.”

Jeff had big plans for life - he dreamed of working for NASA. And he thought that he could impress the space agency by building “the coolest laser”, the rays of which could reach the reflector left on the Moon by the Apollo 11 astronauts. The laser also allowed him to find common interests with his father, a surly man who served in the Navy during World War II.

“I didn’t know then what caused it - the war or something else, but my father kept his distance from all of us. And I thought: this is what we have in common - an interest in science and space. That’s why I did it,” says Jeff.

My father never talked about his service in the Pacific during the period when the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki took place. But he could talk for hours about nuclear weapons, the threat of nuclear war, and the relationship between the US and the USSR. This obviously influenced Jeff.

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“There was a movie in the 1980s, The Day After, about the Soviet Union bombing the United States with nuclear weapons. I was probably 11 years old and he scared the living daylights out of me. As soon as I fell asleep at night, I started having nightmares about nuclear war.” - Jeff recalls.

Jeff dreamed not only of working for NASA, but also of the agency starting to cooperate with the USSR, and not compete with it.

“Even when I was quite young, I understood how fruitfully the United States and the Soviet Union could cooperate,” he says. “It always seemed pointless to me to point nuclear warheads at each other, even though we could cooperate and do incredible things in space.”

But it turned out that Jeff not only did not have time to lose his virginity, but he also failed to complete his laser. The guy urgently needed surgery. The teenager spent six hours on the operating table - and doctors managed to completely remove the tumor. And after that there were an agonizing seven days while he waited for test results to determine whether it was cancerous.

“When the doctor entered the room, I knew from the expression on her face that she brought bad news. She said, "I'm sorry, but you have a malignant brain tumor, and it's a very aggressive, fast-growing type of cancer." Jeff asked how long he had to live. “Perhaps two years,” the doctor answered.

Jeff underwent radiation and chemotherapy and tried to return to school. He also became involved in a support group for teenagers with cancer. “They told me about their wishes that came true—to visit Disneyland or meet a famous athlete. I answered them: “But only little children make such wishes?” And they said: “We are children.” But I didn’t think about myself that way.”

The last wish is a meeting with Gorbachev

The Starlight Children's Foundation helped to fulfill the wishes of sick children. Jeff's mom contacted her and two volunteers, Matt and Teri, came to visit them in South Pasadena to discuss his wishes.

"I said, 'I can't help but ask, can you arrange a seat for me on the crew of the next Shuttle that goes into space?' They looked at me like that... they probably thought, “Well, you’re a joker.” And then they answered: “Of course not.”

Matt and Terry asked Jeff if he had a second wish. And he had it. He had just watched The Day After, the same movie that gave him nightmares, and decided to go to the library to learn more about the topic.

“I was very angry that we were investing so much money in nuclear weapons. I thought it could be spent on cancer research instead,” Jeff recalls.

So he responded to the volunteers: “I want to go to the Soviet Union and meet with Mikhail Gorbachev to discuss a plan to give up nuclear weapons and end the Cold War.”

There was an awkward pause.

Matt and Teri then asked Jeff if he had another wish - perhaps they were hoping for something easier to do. But he didn't want anything else. "I said, 'I understand if you can't do it, but that's my only desire.'

Amazingly, the Starlight Foundation took the teenager's request very seriously. They included Jeff in the delegation of the Young Ambassadors of America organization going to the USSR and began to look for ways to contact Gorbachev. They promised Jeff they would do their best, but they did not guarantee success.

Jeff's views of the Soviet Union were shaped in part by films such as Red Dawn, in which Soviet troops and their allies invade the United States.

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“In these films, the Soviet people were shown to be very warlike and determined to destroy the United States. Frankly, I expected to see a warlike country with warlike people,” Jeff admits. “And I was very surprised by how different the people I met were.”

Spies

The participants in the trip to Moscow were constantly looking for spies in the crowd, trying to notice the attentive looks and people in raincoats. But in Leningrad, to their disappointment, they saw nothing suspicious.

But in Moscow, a member of the group discovered surveillance. “We say: “It can’t be! You are sure?" And he answers: “Absolutely sure! When I turn around, he turns away and pretends to look away.” It was just like in the movies. And he was wearing a cloak. It was cool!"

One of the teenagers suggested that everyone count to three together, turn around and say “Hello” to their pursuer in Russian. But Jeff had doubts - he did not want to lose the chance to meet Gorbachev. “But in the end I gave up. And so we count, turn around and shout “Hello”, and he turns away and looks at the wall, although there was nothing to look at there. Classic,” Jeff laughs.

In their hotel rooms, the guys noticed pieces of wallpaper that didn't quite match the others. One of them punched a hole and found a microphone. They were auditioned.

“I guess the only time I was truly scared was when one of the girls walked into her room and found two men rummaging through her things,” Jeff recalls. — It was an alarming moment. I wondered if my things would be searched. I had a gift for Gorbachev, and I didn't want them to steal it. This was my graduation album, in which everyone at our school signed it. It was a stupid gift, but I liked it and I hoped he would like it too.”

Meanwhile, Jeff was told that they were trying to arrange a meeting with Gorbachev. And one day he was asked to be at eight in the morning in the hotel lobby dressed in a suit taken for this occasion.

“I wanted to ask him if there was any hope for giving up nuclear weapons,” Jeff explains. “And I also hoped to talk about American children, about what we want.” That this is not too different from the desires of the Soviet guys. We wanted to study, travel, visit each other's countries. The military confrontation between our countries does not help any of this, and I wanted to tell him about this and get his opinion.”

But at the moment when his dream was almost fulfilled, everything suddenly collapsed.

Meeting not with Gorbachev

In the hotel lobby Jeff was met by one of Gorbachev's assistants and told that the secretary general was busy. Jeff said he could meet the next day, but the official replied that Gorbachev would not be able to meet with him at all.

“Who knows what became an obstacle to that meeting with Gorbachev. Maybe it wasn’t planned at all,” Jeff recalls. “I was pretty upset.”

But the official said that the teenager was arranged to meet with another important person. He was asked to put everything he needed for an overnight trip in a backpack, put him in a limousine, and taken him out of town. At the same time, the boy was not explained with whom exactly he would talk.

“I ended up visiting a very nice couple. We had a wonderful time and great conversation over a great dinner. They talked about different philosophical ideas about how to make life on Earth better and how our countries can coexist peacefully,” Jeff recalls.

It was only upon returning to Moscow that Jeff told the trip coordinator the name of the family who was hosting him and realized who he had met. “She said: “Have you met Evgeniy Velikhov? Do you even understand who he is?

Velikhov is one of the leading Soviet nuclear physicists, she said, and Gorbachev's right-hand man on nuclear weapons issues.

Jeff did not meet with Gorbachev, but he spoke to a man who played an important role in the arms limitation negotiations.

The conference came to an end, and his graduation album with the signatures of the entire school was handed over to Gorbachev's assistant. Jeff returned to California.

Homecoming

His parents met him at the airport, but the atmosphere was little like a warm welcome. To his disappointment, they didn't ask a single question about the trip. When he himself raised the topic, his father broke the silence. “Dad said: “I have a question - have you met Mikhail Gorbachev?” I said "No". And that's where our conversation ended. I felt like I had let everyone down."

The course of treatment ended before the trip, so Jeff returned to his normal life.

But a month and a half later, he received a call from Moscow.

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“I ran to the phone, and on the other end of the line was Jack Matlock, the US Ambassador to the Soviet Union. He said, "Man, we have thousands of letters for you."

The fact is that in Leningrad, Jeff was interviewed by a famous Soviet journalist. He wrote an article about the last wish of an American teenager - a trip to the USSR. At the end of the note, the author invited readers to write letters to Jeff. Thousands of people from all over the country responded to the call of the Smena correspondent.

“Matlock told me, 'See, we're not the US Postal Service, we can't send you all these letters, but we'll send you a sample. Good luck, buddy."

Only a couple of letters in English reached Jeff, but the Russian school teacher translated the headline of the article about him in the newspaper: “As I leave, I remain...” This was a reference to his illness.

“It made me feel like death was approaching again, and I didn’t want to be talked about as a teenager with cancer. So I took these letters, put them in a box and wrote “Nostalgia” on top in capital letters.

But contrary to the dire prediction, Jeff was not on the verge of death. He hid the box away and went on with his life. Time passed, and there were no new tumors. He entered the London School of Economics, moved to London, and then returned to the United States and continued his education at Columbia University. I got a job at the UN. And the cancer never came back.

Russian friends

In the summer of 2008, 37-year-old Jeff and his wife returned to their childhood room at their parents' house. He threw out old and unnecessary things, collected what he wanted to take with him, and packed the parts of his laser, abandoned many years ago. While sorting things out, he found a box labeled “Nostalgia.”

It was a difficult moment in his life. Due to epileptic seizures caused by the scars left after the operation, he had to resign from the UN. His marriage almost fell apart. And this time he was interested in this box.

“Twenty years ago, these letters made me sad because I didn’t want to be associated only with cancer. But this time they were very useful,” Jeff noted.

One of the letters was written in good English and had a phone number at the end. Jeff checked what time it was in St. Petersburg and decided to call. After the third ring on the other end of the line, a female voice answered in Russian.

Jeff asked if it was Svetlana. And indeed, Svetlana answered him. Twenty-three years ago, she wrote a letter responding to an appeal in the newspaper. She was amazed that he was still alive, and she offered to help Jeff translate other letters and find their authors.

“Several people volunteered to translate the letters. Evgenia Zhurbinskaya especially helped. I decided I wanted to connect with these people. I was interested in documentaries, and the directors with whom I discussed this topic suggested that I gather a film crew, go to Russia and talk to the people who wrote me letters.”

In the summer of 2011, Jeff flew to St. Petersburg with the group. Over the course of 10 days, they spoke with several of the letter writers they could find. He came twice more, but the film never came out.

“There were absolutely amazing stories,” Jeff recalls. — For example, a certain Nina Ivanovna Dmitrieva, who was then over 80. In the 1940s, as a child, she was walking down the street in Leningrad and heard a roar in the sky, and then the sound of an explosion above a neighboring house. The building fell right on top of her, and the debris damaged her skull. She underwent three brain surgeries during the siege of Leningrad and still survived. And she was operated on in the same areas of the brain where the tumor was removed from me. That was incredible! She treated me like her child."

Jeff also warmly remembers geologist Nelly Slepkova, who was also over 80 years old. “She told how she was looking for uranium. When I asked why, she looked at me like I was an idiot. “For nuclear weapons, of course,” she replied.”

Jeff also met with the journalist who wrote the very article about his fate

“We had a rather tense conversation. He kept trying to tell me about his success, but unlike the other Russians I met on this trip who wrote me letters, he didn't say anything about his family. When I finally asked him, he stopped, looked at me and said, “I had a very difficult relationship with my father.” And this was clear to me, because I myself could not build a relationship with my father.”

It took a very long time to fix them. It wasn't until Christmas in 2013, when Jeff was visiting his parents, did he ask his father why he was always so distant. And then he added that it was hard for him to be the son of such a person.

“When I finished speaking, he thought about it and said: “It’s hard for me to hear this... these claims.” At this point I was starting to get angry, but he continued: “Exactly the same ones I had against my own father.”

For the first time in Jeff's life, his father remembered his childhood. He said his father, Jeff's grandfather, was a Hollywood producer and suffered from a gambling addiction. “It happened that he would bring home to his always neurasthenic wife a small fortune earned from a successful film, and that same evening he would spend the money on cards,” recalled Jeff’s father.

Apart from anger, the children saw nothing from him, and their life was of little interest to him.

“My father was just as cold, but he took care of us. He made a living. He took us on vacation. He always came home for dinner, although sometimes it was two or three hours later than my friends and their families usually had dinner. He just turned out to be incapable of emotional connection. “He didn’t know how to express his feelings,” Jeff explains. “Shortly after that, for the first and only time, he brought our whole family together and told us that he loved us. A month later he died. And I am very grateful to him for this reconciliation.”

Now 49 years old, Jeff is trying his hand as a writer, whose first book, Warhead, tells his own story. He is currently working on a novel for teenagers.

Jeff's recent MRI hasn't found any problems. But he no longer hopes that the epilepsy will pass.

He stays in touch with pen pals from Russia and even their English-speaking grandchildren. Geologist Nelly Slepkova is in good health, but he has not heard from Nina Ivanovna, who survived the siege of Leningrad, for a long time.

Jeff is saddened that Russia and the United States are as far from mutual trust as ever. He remains concerned about their nuclear arsenals and the threat of further proliferation of nuclear weapons. He considers this process "a very real and ever-growing threat to the existence of humanity."

“Apparently, Iran wants to get nuclear weapons, and if it succeeds, Turkey and Saudi Arabia will not sit idly by either. The United States has withdrawn from a key arms control treaty, the INF Treaty, and is not going to renew the other, START-3, says Jeff. — Russia is creating new types of nuclear weapons, and China could double its nuclear arsenal over the next decade. I no longer have nightmares, but the prospect of nuclear war seems increasingly likely to me. This is a real cause for concern."

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