It was a thrilling yet surreal time for the Dayton community, with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic shopping at the Mall at Fairfield Commons, dining at Amber Rose, or catching a Wright State basketball game.
We paid no heed when Milosevic dissed us even before setting foot on our soil. We took pride in being the kind of town that was loathed by a brutal dictator. “What? You are going to keep me locked up in Dayton, Ohio? I’m not a priest, you know,” he told a reporter.
A hopeful spirit permeated Dayton on Nov. 1, the opening day of the negotiations. Many local organizations placed ads in the Dayton Daily News. Bluffton College president Elmer Neufeld penned an open letter to Milosevic, Bosnia President Alia Izetbegovic and Croatian President Franjo Tudjman: “We want you to know that the Bluffton College community...is praying for the surprising, creative and refreshing intervention of God‘s spirit in your discussions.” wrote Bluffton president Elmer Neufeld. Another ad invoked the spirit of the Wright brothers, urging, “May Dayton’s Spirit of Innovation Guide the Bosnian Peace Process.”
My assignment was hardly a glamorous one. I spent much of my time along the chain-link fence surrounding the Hope Hotel, a literal and symbolic barrier between the press and the diplomats and world leaders bunkered within. “They were so sequestered, we really didn’t know what was going on inside,” recalled my former colleague Tom Beyerlein, my frequent companion along that perimeter.
The tedium of our Hope Hotel vigil was broken from time to time when Milosevic took a stroll in the parking lot, or when protesters swarmed the fence line. Members of the Kosovan community flocked to Dayton from all over the country, angered that the case for Kosovo’s independence hadn’t been part of the peace talks. “Recognize Kosovo, U.S.A.!” the protesters chanted again and again, in a lilting cadence that rings in my ears to this day.
A Kosovan man in a trench coat and fedora approached Beyerlein, looking “like something out of Casablanca,” he recalled. “He reached into his jacket and pulled out of a snapshot of a dead man lying in the grass. And he said, ‘This is what’s happening in my country.’”
Back in the newsroom, “A lot of our experience was frustrating because we couldn’t get access,” said former assistant metro editor Vince McKelvey.
That news blackout was hardly an accident. Chief negotiator Richard Holbrooke proved more vigilant against leaks than the legendary Little Dutch Boy. As his widow, author Kati Marton, revealed to me in a recent interview, “Richard knew how to keep the press at arm’s length until such a time as he wanted you guys to get the word out.”
Our industrious staff found scoops where they could, from Milosevic’s purchase of boots at the Fairfield Mall to food critic Ann Heller’s revelation that the seating chart at Kettering’s four-star French restaurant, L’Auberge, had degenerated into a diplomatic nightmare.
It was the dawn of the digital age, and I remember editor Max Jennings’ excitement as page clicks soared to unprecedented numbers. “My recollection is that the online hits were extraordinary and immediate,” recalled Ellen Belcher, then assistant editorial page editor. “It showed the power of the Internet before we fully understood it.”
An undercurrent of anxiety at times disturbed this heady environment. What if Dayton came to be synonymous with failure, not peace? What if the negotiations failed to bring peace to the Balkans – to a region and a people who so desperately needed it?
The framework for an accord agreement was reached Nov. 21, and Holbrooke came out of hiding, as eloquent after the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords as he had been taciturn throughout the negotiations.
I wrote a story for the next day’s newspaper headlined, “Glow of Peace Could Illuminate Dayton.” CNN hailed “the big breakthrough in Dayton, while President Bill Clinton praised “the single-minded pursuit of peace in Dayton.” As Downtown Dayton Partnership president Ed Armentrout explained to me, “Dayton could forever be linked to this historic event.”
Case in point: Our city became shorthand for diplomatic breakthrough, as in, “We need a Dayton here.”
Observed McKelvey, “It became part of the lexicon in diplomatic circles.”
But the long-term impact on Dayton turned out to be far more than the glow of a burnished reputation. Noting that “globally, Dayton means peace,” the website for the International Cities of Peace describes it this way: “The ‘Dayton: City of Peace’ initiative is not owned by any one organization or group but comprises a diverse, regional, cross-culture of citizens intending to bring the promise of peace home to the Dayton region. Since 1995, an array of peace initiatives have made Dayton a true international hub of peace.”
More than 25 organizations are listed on the website, from the Dayton International Peace Museum to the Dayton Literary Peace Prize to the Dayton: “Anchored in Peace” Churches – the enduring legacy of those three weeks in November, 1995, when the world came to Dayton.
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