To the Editor:

Friends and acquaintances of Otti Hanses and Harold Miller can meet and greet them at the Berne Town Park on Sept. 22 from 2 to 5 p.m.

Otti Hanses was an exchange student from Germany who lived with the Hubert Miller family and went to school at Berne-Knox in 1953-54.  She and her daughter will be here for a few days in September and we have reserved the town park so that all of her friends can visit her, catch up, and reminisce. 

Harold (Hal) Miller, who lives in Mexico, will also be visiting to see Otti and our mother, Frances Miller.  Hal would like to have his friends, relatives, and classmates stop to visit him.

He spent many years and countless hours working on the history and genealogy of the Hilltowns.  He has just completed a second book about the early families of Berne and Knox.  The new book, “Our German Heritage,” and reprints of “Our Heritage” will be available.  

Our family has a long history, beginning with Otti, of welcoming people from other countries, and visiting them in return.

Otti was an exchange student from Germany and was one of many who were brought to the United States after World War II by a Grange program.  I believe there were at least hundreds and perhaps thousands of young people who came here.

I knew at least two others, one of whom was at a farm in Rensselaer County and one that I met later as a fraternity brother at Cornell.  

Otti was the beginning of an involvement with foreign exchanges that has continued to influence our family for 65 years now.  My parents had other exchange students for various periods of time. At least one was from Mexico.

We kept in contact with Otti for a few years and then lost her.  In 1996, we re-established contact and Jan and I visited her in Paris.  She had married a Frenchman of Jewish faith, been essentially disowned by both sets of parents, and moved to Paris.

Since that time, Otti and her husband, Fernand, have visited us in the United States a couple of times.  My children and grandchildren have visited her and Jan and I have been to her home several times, at least once with Pat Favreau who was one of Otti's classmates at BK.

Now Fernand has died and Otti and her daughter will revisit Berne to see my mother, who is 96, one more time.

Gretel, who was the exchange student in Rennselaer County, has revisited the United States several times and stops to see our family and her family in Valley Falls.  She also sent her son Thilo to stay with my parents for a summer in 1970.

Jan and I followed up on this exchange experience by having a girl from Colombia in 1978-79 and a boy from Norway in 1986, each of whom attended BK for a year.  We visited Angela in Colombia for a week in 1979 and our daughters and niece visited her at another time.  We are still in contact to some extent through cards and Facebook.  We also visited Karl and his wife and daughter in Norway.

Jan participated in a Fulbright exchange with a teacher from Hemel Hempstead (17 miles north of London).  We exchanged jobs, homes, and cats for a year.  Jane took Jan's job at Schalmont.

We followed up with student exchanges between Hemel Hempstead and Schalmont students on at least two occasions.  Jan and I were good friends with fellow teachers, Pat and Nick, and we have exchanged numerous visits in the United States and Britain with them.  Jane, who was Jan’s exchange teacher returned a few times and eventually married the postmaster from Berne and she is now a principal at Granville, New York.

Our daughter, Karen, went to Germany for a year and we visited her and her family at that time. Her family came here for a week.  Since then, we have been back to Germany several times to stay with her German sister, and the sister and husband have visited us for extended vacations.

Our granddaughter spent a semester in Dublin and another a semester in England. A grandson was in vet school for four years in Edinburgh, Scotland where he met and married a Glaswegian.  We have visited her family and traveled in Scotland with Allen and Anna.

We have also done exchanges with students and faculty from the fine arts school in St. Petersburg.

Ralph Miller

Berne