Itinerary 64 • Finish Line

Updating relationships unlike any others

• By Richard Greene

Seventy years ago, many of the 8,000 residents that made up the city’s population at the time did something that almost anyone looking on would see as quite remarkable. After learning more about the origins, mission, and purpose of the partnership between the two towns, we put together a delegation of a couple dozen folks, including fellow city

The year was 1951, and our country was just six years removed council members, who were prepared to fund their own way to from the German surrender that ended World War II in Europe. Germany to visit our sister city. In 1988, I was privileged to lead Communities throughout the war-torn country needed help to that group as Arlington’s frst mayor to visit there during the begin restoring their daily lives. 37-year relationship.

One such Bavarian town there, about the size of Arlington, That trip was a remarkable experience for us all. To say we was Bad Konigshofen, where the citizens were among those in were welcomed by the community we had helped those years need of things like shoes, clothing, essential household items, ago is a wholly inadequate way to describe our experience and almost everything else to of being treated as royalty in a support their recovery. foreign land.

The people of Arlington The heartwarming reception learned of the plight of people and accommodations we received across the Atlantic they had were far more than a courtesy; it never met, nor did they even was an outpouring of gratefulness share a common language. for what the people of Arlington Despite such barriers of time, had done for them in their time of distance, and culture and need. It was a major celebration setting aside any reservations of led by their elected ofcials that helping fellow human beings so included not only those in the recently regarded as adversaries, community who had received the Arlingtonites stepped up. relief supplies initially, but their

They went to work rounding children, who were very much up not just a few things they aware of who we were, where thought would be needed to help, we had come from and what our but across the next few years, fellow citizens had done for them they sent freight train boxcars and their families. and ships loaded with supplies Another trip there took place to the people of Bad Konigshofen in 1993 to commemorate Bad that had become Arlington’s L to R by row: The frst sendoff of supplies from Arlington’s depot; the parade around BK’s town square; my son Brian and his daughter Ashley at BK’s city hall; Konigshofen’s 1,250th anniversary sister city. Burgermeister Helbling tries his ceremonial chain of offce on Ashley, Burgermeister and we returned 25 years later in

Behr and Mayor Greene exchange gifts; 15 German bands at BK’s celebration playing

After those initial years The Yellow Rose of Texas for their visitors; my wife Sylvia and daughters Stacey and 2018 to celebrate their 1,275th as of getting the relationship Amy in the BK parade; the 1988 visiting delegation; Arlington and Bad Konigshofen friends atop the church tower; Helbling and me signing the visitors log. well. Now, three generations of established, contact between my family have made the journey the two towns began to fade. Arlington’s growth had exploded to visit our German friends, as they in turn have visited here while Bad Konigshofen remained and today still is about the on numerous occasions, and the experience is always the same, same size it was when the relationship began. refecting the remarkable bond Arlington shares with them.

Early in my tenure as the city’s mayor that began in 1987, my So here we are in the fall of 2021 marking 70 years of the assistant Lynda Freeman-Weekley insisted that I consider the partnership that ranks Arlington’s place among sister city importance of responding to the interest she was aware of from relationships across the country as one of the oldest and longest our German friends who wished to restore contact with us. lasting of them all.