In America
In December 1955, Caradja received a visa to come to the United States; soon after landing, she appeared on the Dave Garroway show. She resided in the U.S. for more than 35 years, mainly in the town of Comfort (in the Hill Country of Texas), but also in Baltimore, Maryland and in Kansas City. While traveling across America, speaking at various venues, she found more than five hundred of the former prisoners of war she knew from Romania. She organized a reunion in Dallas, Texas on August 28, 1972, an event that continued to be held each year for many years, with the Princess as the guest of honor and main speaker. On August 27, 1976, during the U.S. bicentennial year, she helped present a Peace Monument for the Freedoms Foundation at the Valley Forge National Historical Park; in January 1977 she was awarded the George Washington Honor Medal by the Foundation.
In 1978 she befriended Ottomar Berbig, an antiques dealer in West Berlin. The princess was keen to adopt Berbig, as her family had no male heirs to carry the family name. Berbig took the name of Ottomar Rodolphe Vlad Dracula Prince Kretzulesco, and the adoption was formalized in 1990.
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Famous quotes containing the word america:
“How can I explain the difference to me between America and Russia?... the America I’ve known is a place where men on horseback escort union marchers, the Russia I’ve known is a place where men on horseback slaughter young Socialists and Jews.”
—Golda Meir (1898–1978)
“In America the taint of sectarianism lies broad upon the land. Not content with acknowledging the supremacy as the Diety, and with erecting temples in his honor, where all can bow down with reverence, the pride and vanity of human reason enter into and pollute our worship, and the houses that should be of God and for God, alone, where he is to be honored with submissive faith, are too often merely schools of metaphysical and useless distinctions. The nation is sectarian, rather than Christian.”
—James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851)