PartnersStories - Submitted by David Luria

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There are all kinds of ways to strengthen relations between peoples of the Americas. There are pacts, grants, contributions, handshakes, treaties, and linkages between major universities. But In late 1972 this awesome task was carried out by six heifers from Pennsylvania, accompanied by a young, clueless associate director from the Partners of the America staff, me, David Luria.

Before the age of the Internet and Skype, intercontinental communications were handled by an ancient instrument called the telephone, and, when that became too expensive, by amateur radio. In 1972 much of our north – south communication over the Partners network was handled by the chairman of the Maine–Rio Grande do Norte Partners, an amateur radio expert named Ernie Bracy.

One day in November 1972 I was on the phone with Ernie, explaining to him that the PennsylvaniaBahia Partners had developed a unique project to improve the cattle breeding programs in their Partner state of Bahia, Brazil. What they wanted to do, I explained, was to send six of their best heifers from the Pennsylvania Cattlemen's Association down to Salvador, Bahia, but they faced the problem of how to get them there, healthy and alive.

Ernie called back a few days later, saying that he had found a solution: an airplane freighter line that carries tropical fish from Brazil to the United States and then runs back to Brazil with empty cargo would probably have room to take the heifers. I cleared that idea with the Pennsylvania-Bahia Partners, and they were delighted. So we arranged for the six heifers to be delivered to the international airport in Philadelphia, to be placed on the DC for aircraft for their flight to Brazil I then made the mistake of volunteering to go along with the heifers. Raised in New York City with no farm experience at all, I had no idea what I was getting into.

I arrived at the airport in my natty tan suit with necktie and went out on the tarmac, as directed, to meet the truck sent by the Pennsylvania cattlemen's Association with the six heifers, in order to assist putting them onto the plane. This meant we had to put a ramp from the cargo door of the plane down to the tarmac, so that the heifers could climb up the ramp and into the aircraft, which had been fitted inside with a corral and with plenty of hay for their culinary enjoyment.

Our heifer loading operation was suddenly interrupted by the sirens of an airport police car, which came racing over. The cops piled out, shouting at us: "what the heck do you think you are doing?"

Dressed in my natty tan suit and necktie and clutching an official-looking clipboard, I explained that this was an official project of the Pennsylvania-Bahia Partners and the Pennsylvania Cattleman's Association and that it had the blessing of the Partners of the Americas which was funded by USAID, which is a government agency that reports to President Richard Nixon, who was a close friend of Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo! All this doubletalk managed to convince the police officers that we were legitimate.

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What we did not understand is that the heifers were not that anxious to go to Brazil! They demonstrated their reluctance by proceeding to defecate all over the ramp leading up to the cargo door and then slipping and sliding their way up to the door to be pushed into the little corral inside the airplane. This was not a good beginning.

Dressed in my natty tan suit suit and necktie and still clutching my clipboard - as any self-respecting associate director of an important Washington institution should be-I made my own slippery way up the ramp and into the cargo area of the plane, leaning over the fence posts of the corral to make sure that the heifers were okay, and wishing them a Bon Voyage.

Accompanied by an airplane crew member, I then settled into one of the three little chairs in the back of the plane for the first leg of our trip to Brazil, with a stopover at the Miami international Airport.

We arrived at the Miami airport without incident and the heifers were taken off the plane to go into the international quarantine station so that the heifers could be inspected before their trip to Brazil.

Unfortunately, nobody had asked the heifers whether they wanted to be inspected, and they were very reluctant to get off the airplane and be herded into the quarantine station, and they made their disgust known by proceeding to defecate some more all over their corral and on the ramp from the cargo door down to the tarmac.

Dressed still in my natty tan suit with necktie, and clutching my official clipboard, I took each heifer by the collar around its neck and led him/her into the steel gates of the quarantine station so that the cow could be thoroughly inspected from bottom to top. This took about three hours. The heifers were not happy. Nor was I. Finally, at about 8 PM we took off from the Miami airport en route to Brazil with the refueling destination being the city of Belem, Brazil. I managed to get some sleep in the back of the airplane and awoke the next morning to find that we were coming down, about to land. As I looked out of the window, I noticed that the flags flying from the flagpoles that lined the tarmac were French, not Brazilian, and I wondered what had happened.

The answer came when the pilot, dressed in a World War II aviator jacket and cap with a white scarf flowing around his neck came bursting out of the cockpit, leaned his elbows on the corral, looking over the heifers and shouting back to us to passengers: "Gentlemen! You may have noticed that we have not landed in Brazil! In fact, we have landed in Cayenne, French Guiana! Perhaps you noticed that we lost power in two of our four engines early this morning and so we figured we should make an emergency landing here in Cayenne. Welcome to Cayenne! "

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He then instructed us to disembark, taking the cows with us down to the tarmac, so that repairs could be made to the engine. These purebred heifers from Pennsylvania, accustomed to the robust weather of Pennsylvania, were not happy about the fact that the temperature on the tarmac in Cayenne was 104째. We managed to tie them down on a grassy area of the airport so that they could munch quietly while the crew made repairs to the engines.

The crew indicated it would take several hours to make the repairs, so they suggested that we go into Cayenne to look around and come back later on for our flight to Brazil. In the meantime, because I speak French, I got into conversations with the police at the airport. They were all unhappy young members of the French foreign Legion, most of whom had done something wrong which had caused them to be exiled to this hot, steamy, uncomfortable outpost, the site of the legendary Devils Island.

They were not happy about being in Cayenne. The heifers were not happy. I was not happy. Nobody was happy. But at least I was nattily dressed in my tan suit and necktie, clutching a clipboard in the 104 degree heat and upholding the image of the self-respecting DC bureaucrat!

Because we had literally dropped off the radar screen to make our emergency landing in Cayenne, nobody knew what had happened to The Plane That was Taking the Cows to Bahia! Fortunately, we were able to make radio communication over the airplane's radio with Ernie Bracy up in Maine, and he reassured the staff at the Partners office, and my family, that we were still alive.

Finally we were able to take off once again with four working engines and we made our way to Belem in order to refuel before making the final leg to Salvador, Bahia. We did manage to land without incident in Belem, and once again the poor heifers had to be subjected to the inspection of all of their body parts to pass quarantine. The pilot then indicated that he did not think the airplane would be able to make it all the away to Salvador, so with help from Ernie Bracy's amateur radio we arranged for a truck to take the six heifers from the Belem airport all the way down to Salvador.

A few days later the heifers did arrive in Salvador, but one heifer died enroute. In any case, dressed in my natty tan suit and my necktie and clipboard, I was able to have the satisfaction of having delivered MOST of the cows to Bahia and I assume that their children and grandchildren and great grandchildren have now greatly improved the quality of heifers in Brazil, thus strengthening the ties of lasting friendship between people of the Americas!

-E.David Luria