Ex-Anaheim Student Has Quick Brush With History

John Williams had a little bit of world history in the palm of his hands Thursday.

The UC Irvine political science graduate was on the other side of a handshake from Sovet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev on the curb of a Washington street.

And despite routine appearances of presidential motorcades rumbling through the nation’s capital, this gave him goose bumps.

He said he imagines by the time he tells his future grandchildren about this, the story will have evolved to him taking Gorbachev to a bar, where they discuss world peace over some brewskies.

“My knees were shaking,” he said Thursday night in his Washington home.

The 24-year-old executive assistant for the Council for Court Excellence, a nonprofit court-reform policy group, had actually turned down an invitation for a large Gorbachev greeting on the White House South Lawn.

“I had a prior commitment, a college fraternity alumni luncheon,” he said sheepishly. “I figured you see so many people in D.C.--from a distance anyway; you can always see the president and the vice president, but they look so little from far away.”

But “being as I saw the motorcade coming, I thought I would try and get my little bit of history for the day,” said Williams, who graduated from Anaheim’s Canyon High School.

Gorbachev’s limo stopped suddenly and the back door swung open.

The Soviet leader strode over to the curb and with a broad grin said hello three times in Russian, with a translator turning it into English. Then he made a little speech that moved the small crowd of curbside pedestrians, Williams said.

“The Soviet people have asked me to come and speak with you,” said Gorbachev, “and I’ve stopped here because I want to speak with the American people directly, to let you know that the Soviet people want to join the American people for our common goal of world peace.”