Breaking Ground: From Landmines to Grapevines, One Woman's Mission to Heal the World

INTRODUCTION

Coincidence is a miracle in which God prefers to remain anonymous.

—UNKNOWN

I’m not an everyday mom. I’ll admit that up-front. All my life, I’ve taken risks, broken tough ground, and—as difficult as this is to admit—put my family at risk. How did I get this way? Part of it may be genetic: I come from a long line of pioneering women. Part of it may be good luck: I’ve had a lot of breaks. A big part of it comes from being stubborn: I don’t know how to take no for an answer.

There is another reason why, all my life, I’ve been willing to take chances a more reasonable person would decline: I’m a believer. I believe in God, I believe in people, and I believe in myself. There have been life-threatening moments when even my stubbornness was not enough to save me, my children, my husband, or other loved ones from harm. Those were times when I knew from the core of my being that a Higher Power intervened.

I have no intention of making anyone reading this book into a believer. What I wish to convey is that we, as humans, are capable of doing great good in this world. It doesn’t matter whether we see ourselves as ordinary or extraordinary, however those words might get defined. But I know, from a lifetime of real-world experience, that if your cause is just and your determination strong, you can achieve things beyond your wildest imagination. Let me tell you my story, and you can judge for yourself.

CHAPTER ONE

THE EPIPHANY TOAST

Ask, and it will be given to you.

Seek, and you will find.

Knock, and it will be opened to you.

—MATTHEW 7:7

One morning in January 1997, television news featured footage of Princess Diana walking through a minefield in Angola. The country had gained its independence from Portugal in 1975, but civil war had soon broken out and Angola had become an international battleground, with Soviet, Cuban, and American forces adding to the extreme tension. The end of the Cold War in 1985 did little to end Angola’s internal conflict, with all sides escalating their purchase of weapons on the international market. By the time of Diana’s visit, warring factions had buried millions of landmines across the country.

Diana was there to raise awareness for the work of the HALO Trust, an Anglo-American charity dedicated to removing explosives from civilian territories by engaging locals to rid their countries of mines. At the time, I remember wondering Who is revitalizing the farmlands? The television newscast showed Diana wearing protective clothing as she walked through the deadly minefields. That was inspiring: a British princess with the courage to step out of the trappings of her royal life to work with disadvantaged people she had never met in a part of the world she had never visited before.

Several years earlier, I had undergone treatment for cervical cancer and had made a deep promise before going under the surgical knife: Dear God, grant me the gift of life, and I will do something extraordinary with my life. Princess Diana gave me a sense of what that something extraordinary might be.

I had been a reporter and producer for CNN in what was then the Soviet Union during my early thirties, and the diagnosis of cancer stopped me dead in my tracks. Cancer is a landmine for humans, just as explosive landmines are a cancer for the Earth. The remedy for both is removal.

Miraculously, I not only survived cancer surgery, but a decade later, I also became pregnant and delivered our fourth child, Christian, an affirmation of life after a potentially terminal disease. In August 1997, while nursing my healthy newborn son, I watched another television report about Princess Diana. This time, she was walking through the war zones of Bosnia-Herzegovina and visiting a hospital where doctors cared for children who had been maimed by landmines. Her next stop was the village of Tuzla, where she greeted a former soldier who had lost both his legs in a landmine explosion. In those days, the world called Diana the People’s Princess, a beautiful, fashionable woman with a heart for helping others. I admired this British royal whose interests extended way beyond England, a princess who had forged a place for herself as a global humanitarian.

On August 31, 1997, while fleeing paparazzi in Paris, Diana and her companion, Dodi Al-Fayed, died as the result of a tragic car accident. That day, the world lost more than a glamorous young princess; it lost its most vibrant advocate for eliminating landmines. Her death would impact innocent children whose lives might have been saved by her efforts. Diana stirred not only my political conscience but my maternal instincts as well.

It was around this same time that the Diplomatic Conference on an International Total Ban on Anti-Personnel Landmines, convened in Oslo, was finalizing a treaty intended to ban production, stockpiling, export, and use of landmines. Kofi Annan, then secretary-general of the United Nations, addressed the meeting only a few days after the world’s brightest light for the landmine issue was extinguished. Soon after Diana’s death, I learned that a small delegation was arriving in San Francisco for a reception intended to raise awareness of the treaty.

Unfortunately, just a few days before the announced reception, the delegation was informed that another event had already been booked at the proposed venue, the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. It was an incredibly serendipitous moment, as there were many influential people in the region, but somehow, I was contacted. Aware of my international background as a former CEO of NewsLink International, working with various international news agencies, the organizers reached out to me by phone and asked if I would receive the delegation in my home. I enthusiastically agreed, but no sooner had I hung up the phone than it hit me: What had I just agreed to take on? Our house was a disaster, the result of four wild and carefree young children. How would I ever get the mess cleaned up, send out invitations, organize food and drink, all with a nonexistent budget? It had been an impetuous move on my part, but I’d been like that all my life—taking chances, attempting to do more than I should.

Responses were strong to my phone invitations. (This was in the days before the internet was widely used.) Even on short notice, more than a hundred people agreed to show up. As far as food was concerned, there was time after my children went to bed for me to make appetizers and hors d’oeuvres by hand. But wine was a bit more of a challenge. Our home was in Marin County, overlooking San Francisco Bay, near one of the world’s great wine-producing regions. Guests from the region would expect me to serve the best if they were going to open their wallets to the anti-landmine committee. What to do?

Two days before the event, I was driving with my four children through the takeout lane of a local Burger King. My thoughts wandered back to my days as a reporter for CNN, which in turn churned up memories of a news story I’d produced about film director Francis Ford Coppola. The story had been seen by 17 million viewers, which put me in a good position to ask for a favor.

Two thoughts came to me as I sat in the car waiting for our takeout order. First, I should ask Francis to supply wine for the fundraiser, and second, it wasn’t enough to just extricate mines from the land. We had to replace them with something. Why not grapevines? The thought of replacing death with life fit well with transubstantiation, the miracle of turning blood into wine that I’d learned about as a child going to weekly Mass. Images of a similar miracle danced in my mind: Blood was shed on vineyards in war-torn lands. Perhaps that land could be revived postwar, bear fruit, and be made useful once more. The laughter of my four children in the car brought me back to reality and only intensified the urgency of the vision to help make the land safe for families all over the world. My heart began to pound.

I called the team at Niebaum Coppola Winery in Napa Valley, and they reminded Francis of the CNN story. He remembered it fondly and graciously donated two cases of wine for the event. Encouraged, I called on two other friends, John and Desire Hart, who owned the winery Hart’s Desire, and they donated a case. It had been Princess Diana’s heart’s desire to eradicate landmines, so the label was most fitting.

On September 21, 1997, three weeks after Diana’s tragic death, the dinner party honoring the group of anti-landmine activists took place in my family home. One of the first to arrive was Jerry White, who had lost his leg to a landmine and had escorted Princess Diana to Bosnia-Herzegovina with Ken Rutherford only weeks before her fatal accident. After meeting purely by chance, these two American landmine survivors had decided to form the Landmine Survivors Network. Jerry was also a parent of four and had a great sense of humor. As he was introducing himself to my children, he casually took off his prosthesis. My children had met many guests to our home, including Japanese people who customarily took off their shoes, but no one had ever taken off a leg. This was Jerry’s life, and he was not embarrassed about having lost a limb. He asked my children to escort him to a chair.

Call me Robot Man, he joked so they would not be afraid. He told my oldest son, Brooks, You always have to get up when life knocks you down. And with that, he grabbed Brooks by the arm and hopped to a chair by our fireplace, where he began speaking with other guests. The purpose of the reception was to raise awareness of the landmine issue, and Jerry had literally jumped right in. He told us the following story.

In 1984, he said, "I was a young Irish Catholic boy from Brown University, twenty years old, hiking the Golan Heights with two American buddies. It was a beautiful day in April, and we’d wandered off the beaten track to camp on a beautiful hilltop. We didn’t realize it was Tel Azaziat, a battlefield in the 1960s. The sun was shining, and the three of us were young and optimistic. Then, boom! I looked down and, to my horror, my leg was gone. ‘My God, where is my leg?!’ I exclaimed. The hilltop was a live minefield."

Pausing for emphasis, Jerry went on to explain, My two friends managed to carry me out of there. Somehow, we made it down the hill without stepping on another landmine. It took me six months to recover in an Israeli hospital and learn to walk again.

He took another long pause to let his story settle in, then shifted gears back to his later tour of Bosnia-Herzegovina with Princess Diana. "I invited her to come as a commoner, which meant not as royalty. She beamed and said, ‘That sounds like heaven.’

Of course, Jerry went on, the British security wasn’t happy about what they thought of as Diana’s impulsive decision to travel with Ken Rutherford and me to Bosnia. We were glad they relented. It turned out to be her last visit to a minefield.

He grew sad as he described her funeral in London and personally watching Diana’s boys, Will and Harry, bravely walking behind her casket. He told us how proud the boys were when he described for them their late mother’s compassion for others. Jerry’s stories moved everyone present. I felt a shiver run down my back when I realized my own boys were the same age as Will and Harry.

The evening continued with a presentation by the anti-landmine advocates. They were exhausted from their travels, but their voices were strong and their words powerful. When they finished, Dr. Michael Pelfini, a kindergarten friend and neighbor of mine who had become a respected pianist, performed Candle in the Wind, the song Elton John had sung only a few days earlier at Princess Diana’s funeral in Westminster Abbey. There was a deep reverence in the room, and each note reminded me of the sadness experienced on the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. On that historic day, my classmates and I at the Dominican Garden School were sent home after being told by our teacher, Sister Patricia, to pray for peace. I lifted my glass and softly offered a toast.

May the world go from mines to vines!

It was meant as a simple summary of the challenge before us, but it came out like a well-prepared metaphor. Where did it come from? I had had a high fever earlier in the day, and maybe that had raised images in my mind. Native Americans often call it a fever dream, but to me it was a very clear vision. My husband and four children looked at each other in surprise. The room was silent. Slowly, guests gathered around, encouraging me: Mines to vines! You must take that message to the world! they said. I nodded politely. It took a while before I could consider that this just might be the fulfillment of the promise I’d made when going into surgery for cancer: to do something extraordinary with my life for the sake of others, and to make my footsteps count. By removing landmines, we could ensure that millions of innocent footsteps would be free of risk. And by replanting the seeds of life, we could heal the wounds of war. Landmines are a cancer on the one Earth we all share, and we must remove them for sustainable life to flourish once again. It was an epiphany.

The emotion of the evening was palpable. At the end, as Jerry White stood at our family front door, he impulsively reached into his jacket pocket and gave me his own photograph of Diana, taken in a minefield in Bosnia-Herzegovina only a few weeks before. You have the heart of the Princess, he said, and it is your responsibility as a mother to take this vision out of the living room of your home. It was a defining moment, and I faced a choice: I could rest on the laurels of a beautiful evening, or I could take the aura from my backyard into the world. With no blueprints for peace, I chose the latter.

Mines have been killing innocent people for hundreds of years. At the time of the reception in our home, there were somewhere between 70 million and 110 million landmines buried in seventy or more countries. Another estimated 250 million landmines were stockpiled worldwide. On average, every twenty-two minutes of every day, someone stepped on a landmine. These devices killed or maimed more than 26,000 people each year, nearly half of them children. At the then-current rate of extraction, it would have taken 1,100 years and $33 billion to clear them all. The more I learned about the crisis, the more I felt compelled to do something.

On October 10, 1997, only a few days after the mines-to-vines toast, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Peace Prize to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and campaign coordinator Jody Williams. Ambassador Hans Ola Urstad of Norway had been in the living room of our family home, and when I had shared my dream, he had told me that attaining it was highly improbable. Yet overnight, the subject of landmine removal had been published and broadcast worldwide.

A few weeks later, I was invited to the New York Marriott Marquis Hotel to attend the UNA-USA Global Leadership Award dinner. This annual event, sponsored by the United Nations Association, a nonprofit organization that supports the United Nations, that year honored Ted Turner, CEO of CNN. (A gala dinner for Wine Spectator hosted by Marvin Shanken, the magazine’s publisher, was also held there that weekend; the concept of mines to vines appeared to be taking root.) Stunning a black-tie audience of diplomats and dignitaries at the award dinner, Turner stood up and offered $1 billion to the United Nations, saying, Let’s not turn our backs on the world; let’s join hands and change it! Indeed, we have no other choice. Turner designated the funds to benefit programs aiding refugees and children by clearing landmines and fighting disease, and the United Nations Foundation was formed.

In addition, I was introduced around the room and, as inspirational conversations flowed, a vision for the concept of transforming minefields into vineyards worldwide began to come into focus.

In November 1997, I again imposed on our vintner neighbors, this time to join me as witnesses to the historic signing of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production, and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction, also known as the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty, scheduled to take place in Ottawa the following month. More than 160 countries had agreed to sign, but 32 had refused, including China, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Russia, Turkey, and the United States. By attending the signing with me in Ottawa, the Napa Valley vintners would be demonstrating their concern for farmers around the world who risked their lives to harvest grapes in landmine-infested fields. Humbly, I approached the world’s most prominent vintners and shared my dream.

The convergence of the untimely death of Princess Diana, news of the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the ICBL and Jody Williams, and Ted Turner’s $1 billion gift had catapulted the issue of landmines to the forefront of the international agenda within weeks, and three compassionate California winegrowers agreed to walk with a mother armed only with an idea to transform mines to vines. These included legendary vintner Robert Mondavi, who sent his Canadian national manager; Tor Kenward, senior vice pesident of Beringer Vineyards; and Eric Wente, owner and CEO of Wente