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Message:: [QUOTE="Peter T Davis, post: 27922, member: 1"]I'm reminded, on this thirty-first anniversary, of the little "Goodwill Ambassador" of the Cold War.  When she was ten years old, Samantha Smith of Manchester, Maine, caught the attention of the world by writing a letter to (and receiving a reply from) Yuri Andropov.  Andropov was the leader of the Soviet Union for a short time, late 1982 to early 1984. Her letter to Andropov was simple, as you'd expect for a ten year old. I remember these days very well, I was in high school then and the Soviet Union was the "Evil Empire" and we were taught to fear them.  That comes out very clearly in her letter.  The remarkable thing was that this letter got the attention of the leadership in the Soviet Union, and I imagine that someone on Andropov's staff wrote the response. Samantha Smith went on to visit Moscow.  Sadly, she never got to meet Andropov in person.  Andropov's time as leader of the Soviet Union was short, and much of it spent suffering from the illness which would claim his life shortly thereafter.  Smith's exciting and full of promise life was cut short by tragedy, when she was just thirteen, she died in a plane crash with her father. She is commemorated in this stamp issued by the Soviet Union shortly after her death.[ATTACH=full]799[/ATTACH] Anyone have one of these?  I'd love to get one.[/QUOTE]