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Updating relationships unlike any others • By Richard Greene
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After learning more about the origins, mission, and purpose eventy years ago, many of the 8,000 residents that made up of the partnership between the two towns, we put together the city’s population at the time did something that almost a delegation of a couple dozen folks, including fellow city anyone looking on would see as quite remarkable. council members, who were prepared to fund their own way to The year was 1951, and our country was just six years removed Germany to visit our sister city. In 1988, I was privileged to lead from the German surrender that ended World War II in Europe. that group as Arlington’s first mayor to visit there during the Communities throughout the war-torn country needed help to 37-year relationship. begin restoring their daily lives. That trip was a remarkable experience for us all. To say we One such Bavarian town there, about the size of Arlington, were welcomed by the community we had helped those years was Bad Konigshofen, where the citizens were among those in ago is a wholly inadequate way to describe our experience need of things like shoes, clothing, essential household items, of being treated as royalty in a and almost everything else to foreign land. support their recovery. The heartwarming reception The people of Arlington and accommodations we received learned of the plight of people were far more than a courtesy; it across the Atlantic they had was an outpouring of gratefulness never met, nor did they even for what the people of Arlington share a common language. had done for them in their time of Despite such barriers of time, need. It was a major celebration distance, and culture and led by their elected officials that setting aside any reservations of included not only those in the helping fellow human beings so community who had received the recently regarded as adversaries, relief supplies initially, but their Arlingtonites stepped up. children, who were very much They went to work rounding aware of who we were, where up not just a few things they we had come from and what our thought would be needed to help, fellow citizens had done for them but across the next few years, and their families. they sent freight train boxcars Another trip there took place and ships loaded with supplies in 1993 to commemorate Bad to the people of Bad Konigshofen L to R by row: The first sendoff of supplies from Arlington’s depot; the parade Konigshofen’s 1,250th anniversary that had become Arlington’s around BK’s town square; my son Brian and his daughter Ashley at BK’s city hall; Burgermeister Helbling tries his ceremonial chain of office on Ashley, Burgermeister and we returned 25 years later in sister city. Behr and Mayor Greene exchange gifts; 15 German bands at BK’s celebration playing 2018 to celebrate their 1,275th as After those initial years The Yellow Rose of Texas for their visitors; my wife Sylvia and daughters Stacey and Amy in the BK parade; the 1988 visiting delegation; Arlington and Bad Konigshofen well. Now, three generations of of getting the relationship friends atop the church tower; Helbling and me signing the visitors log. my family have made the journey established, contact between to visit our German friends, as they in turn have visited here the two towns began to fade. Arlington’s growth had exploded on numerous occasions, and the experience is always the same, while Bad Konigshofen remained and today still is about the reflecting the remarkable bond Arlington shares with them. same size it was when the relationship began. So here we are in the fall of 2021 marking 70 years of the Early in my tenure as the city’s mayor that began in 1987, my partnership that ranks Arlington’s place among sister city assistant Lynda Freeman-Weekley insisted that I consider the relationships across the country as one of the oldest and longest importance of responding to the interest she was aware of from lasting of them all. our German friends who wished to restore contact with us. Richard Greene served as mayor of Arlington from 1987-1997 and was inducted into the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame in 2019.
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ARLINGTON TODAY • October 2021 • arlingtontoday.com
