Regrets Only: An Africa Journal: July 2010

Saturday, July 24, 2010

In Memoriam: My Dad

Alexander J. Belida, 92, the son of Russian immigrant millworkers who aspired to a career in aviation and rose to the rank of Lt. Colonel in the U.S. Air Force, died Wednesday, July 21 at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Md. of congestive heart failure.

A longtime resident of Lowell, Massachusetts, where he was born on June 27, 1918, the son of Demitry and Vera (Belinsky) Belida, Col. Belida had resided at Riderwood Village in Silver Spring for the past three years with his wife of 64 years, Rosalia (Filipiuk) Belida, who survives him.

His early years were spent in Chelmsford, Massachusetts where he attended school. He attended the Luscombe School of Aeronautics in New Jersey and became a certified aircraft mechanic. He later received a Bachelors Degree from the University of Maryland.

After working for Pan American Airways in Miami, he entered the Army Air Corps as an aviation cadet in 1942 and was commissioned as an officer and received his pilot’s wings in 1943. As a B-17 pilot, he served in the European Theatre in Italy and after the war was part of the occupation forces in Austria. He returned to the United States in 1947. Subsequent assignments in the Air Force were at various bases in the U.S. and in Germany, including service as an Intelligence Officer that drew on his knowledge of the Russian language. He also was an Assistant Professor of Air Science at Lowell Technological Institute from 1959 to 1963. He retired from the U.S. Air Force in`1965 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio after completing 23 years of service. He was a recipient of the Air Force Commendation Medal

In 1965 he began a second career as a member of the faculty at Lowell High School in Lowell, Massachusetts where he taught until his retirement in 1980.

Col. Belida held membership in the Air Force Association, the Retired Officers Association, and Longmeadow Golf Club in Lowell. He was a member and past president of the Middlesex North Chapter of the Retired Educators Association of Massachusetts.

Besides his wife, he is survived by a son, Alex Belida, a senior advisor for news at the Voice of America in Washington D.C., and a daughter-in-law, Patricia Reber, the Washington-based Americas’ editor for the German Press Service DPA, both of Rockville, Md. He is also survived by three grandchildren, Adam, Brian and Katherine Belida, and a sister-in-law, Dorothy Belida of Tewksbury, Massachusetts. He was the brother of the late Peter Belida of Chelmsford, Mass. and Anthony Belida of Tewksbury, Mass.

Why?

It is October, 1997. I am standing in a rubble-strewn Brazzaville street as the city returns cautiously to life after a bloody civil war. Armed men are all around me, most of them looting, occasionally firing off bursts of bullets in celebration. But I am not concentrating on this anymore. Instead, with the hand holding my microphone limp by my side, my tape running senselessly. I am looking at another corpse -- this one of a man, perhaps in his 20's, his legs charred. I know there will be no voice to record. But his lips are apart, his arms outstretched, fingers together, as if in prayer. It seems another one of Africa's dead is trying to speak to me. And I feel I owe him this one last consideration. I think maybe he wants to share his anguish, his despair, his pain. Or maybe a last word to a parent or a wife or a child. I feel badly -- because I do not know for sure. I do know though that I have seen corpses like this before -- victims of war, or of genocide, or of famine, or of sickness. A symbolic path of the dead now runs through my mind -- a personal collection reflecting the real path their corpses have left across much of Africa: from arid Somalia in the northeast, across Sudan and into northern Uganda, down through steamy Rwanda, Burundi and Congo in the center of the continent. Some have been young men in uniform, their bodies shattered by a bullet or a shell. Some have been old men, thin beyond belief, weakened by hunger or disease. Some have been women, their dresses in tatters, their faces etched with silent agony. Some have been children, too young to die, their skulls cleaved in half. Some I have met in battle-scarred streets, some in burned-out buildings. Some I have seen sprawled amidst flowers in an open field, some floating, limbs bound, in muddy water. Some I have found in groups thrown into a dirt pit, some alone in the aisles of a gutted church. I have, at times, had imaginary conversations with these dead of mine -- their unrecorded voices playing on endlessly inside my head, sometimes loud, sometimes just a whisper. I tell them I am sorry and if it were in my power, I would restore them to life. But I can't. It's not in my power. Perhaps the only help I can give is to try to tell their story.

The Reporter

Alex Belida has been in international broadcasting since 1971. He spent nearly eight years in sub-Saharan Africa as a correspondent for the Voice of America, based first in Nairobi (1993-1996) and then in Johannesburg (1996-2000). He covered conflicts and humanitarian crises in Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Burundi, Congo-Kinshasa and Congo-Brazzaville, northern Uganda, Angola and Lesotho as well as political unrest in Zimbabwe and catastrophic flooding in Mozambique. He suffered gunshot wounds while reporting in Somalia.
While in Africa, he was elected Chairman of the East Africa Foreign Correspondents Association in Nairobi and served as Treasurer of the Foreign Correspondents Association of Southern Africa during his Johannesburg assignment.
Before going to Africa, he served as VOA's Senior White House reporter for four years following stints as coordinator of the 1988 Presidential Election coverage and as National News Editor. Before those Washington assignments, he was based in Germany, where he served as Soviet affairs, East-West security and German affairs correspondent (1982-1985).
Following Africa, he served as Pentagon correspondent. In 2004 he was named Managing Editor and in 2007 became Senior Advisor for News at VOA. He retired in 2011.
Before joining VOA, he worked for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in both New York and Munich, rising from reporter to Assistant News Director. He has a BA from Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., and a MS in Journalism from Columbia University in New York. In 2006, he received the prestigious Alumni Achievement Award from Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. He also has an honorary doctorate in communications from the Somali National University.

The views expressed here are his own.

Regrets Only: An Africa Journal

Saturday, July 24, 2010

In Memoriam: My Dad