Soviets Name Peak After U.S. Schoolgirl
A 12,000-foot peak has been named in honor of Samantha Smith, the American schoolgirl who visited the Soviet Union in a personal campaign for better U.S.-Soviet relations two years before her death in a plane crash.
The Tass news agency said the peak, previously unnamed, was in the central Caucasus region between the Black and Caspian seas in the southwestern portion of the Soviet Union.
Tass said the peak was climbed by a hundred young workers and students who plan to send an autographed picture of the mountain to Samantha’s mother, Jane Smith.
The 11-year-old Maine girl gained worldwide attention in 1983 when she visited the Soviet Union for two weeks at the invitation of the late Soviet leader Yuri V. Andropov after writing him a letter. She was killed in a plane crash in 1985 along with her father while returning home from the filming of a television series.
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