EUREKA – Eureka College will observe the 23rd anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall at a ceremony at 4 p.m. Nov. 9 in Becker Auditorium in the Cerf Center. Admission is free and open to the public.

The ceremony will feature flags of the more than 20 countries that became democracies at the end of the Cold War. A reception will follow.

This is the fourth year the college has held a ceremony to celebrate freedom and recognize those who served in the Cold War. The ceremony is sponsored in part by Mangold Ford Inc., Eureka.
Returning for the second straight year as keynote speaker will be Brig. Gen. Roger Machut, Commanding General of the 4th Marine Logistics Group, Marine Forces Reserve, which includes Engineer Co. “C” in Peoria. Machut will represent Gen. James Amos, Commandant of the Marine Corps.
“Eureka College aspires to remind the world about the value of freedom and the importance of standing up for freedom in the world, as our alumnus Ronald Reagan once did so eloquently,” said John Morris, Director of the Ronald W. Reagan Society of Eureka College. “Eureka College President J. David Arnold, with support from members of the Reagan Society, will continue to lead the important remembrance of victory of freedom over Soviet Communism and all those who served the cause of freedom,” Morris said.
Eureka College is among only several colleges and universities in the United States to have a section of the Berlin Wall, which is located in the Ronald Reagan Peace Garden. The college received the 5-foot-by 4-foot section of the wall as a gift from the Federal Republic of Germany in 2000 when the college dedicated the peace garden. The garden was built with a gift from Peorians Anne and the late David Vaughan. It commemorates President Reagan’s speech at the college’s commencement in 1982 that proposed the elimination of a class of nuclear weapons. Some historians mark the speech as the beginning of the end of the Cold War. Reagan’s 1987 speech at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin included the now-famous statement to former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”
For more information, call the Development Office at (309) 467-6319.