No closing a mind eager to learn

Eight years ago a young Russian mother stepped off an airplane at the Birmingham airport and became part of our family.

Her two-months stay wasn’t meant to be an adoption but part of an experiment in exposing journalists from the former Soviet Union to the concept of a free press.

This young woman who once expected to be arrested for supporting greater press freedom got the message.

So did scores of her colleagues who came here under the auspices of the International Center for Journalists, then went home to ply their trade.

The budding freedom of the press has all but died under Vladimir Putin, but not the hopes and aspirations of Ella.

Now, within months of earning her doctorate degree in mass communications from The University of Alabama, she’s interviewing for jobs at major American universities.

She married Art Spears of Birmingham two weeks ago, and they are planning to bring her special needs son, now grown, to America.

With her savings and an assistantship from The University, she finished her master’s summa cum laude.

Since then, she has read her research papers in Canada and in major U.S. cities from the East to the West Coast. In October, she visits universities in Germany, England and Holland on a research grant from the University of Pennsylvania.

She’s come a long way since that summer day in 2000 when she sat in the rear seat of our automobile with her English-Russian dictionary open to communicate as we drove from the Birmingham airport to Decatur.

Ella may be one of the few Russians who speak English with a Southern drawl. We are proud of that, and you can bet we are proud of her when she introduces us as her American parents.

Putin may have slammed the door shut on a free press in Russia but the ICFJ opened the door for one young lady eager to grow, and she marched through it.

Tom Wright is executive editor.