Encounter at Magic Kingdom : Russian and Yank Who Met at the Elbe Reunited

On an overcast day in April, 1945, on the banks of the Elbe River in Germany, Vladimir Kabaidze and Frank Parent first met.

Parent commanded an American infantry platoon, Kabaidze a Soviet unit. It was the closing days of World War II, as a war-weary Kabaidze watched Parent row toward him across the river.

“At first, we thought they might be Germans,” Kabaidze recalled. “But then we saw through our binoculars that they were Americans. We had never seen Americans before. When we saw Frank, we knew the war was over.”

That day, the two commanders drank vodka, sang and shared a meal. When they parted, they wrote their names and addresses on paper money--the only paper they had.

That was 43 years ago. On Saturday, in Anaheim, those bills were exchanged once again.

Kabaidze, now the boss of a major machine-tool factory in the Soviet Union and a friend of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, was in Orange County with a delegation of Soviet citizens for a series of talks. But first, the delegation went to Disneyland.

There, Kabaidze was approached by a man in a white yachting cap and sunglasses, a person he didn’t recognize. Then the man handed him a bill with an address written on it.

“Take off your sunglasses!” Kabaidze shrieked.

As Parent removed his glasses, Kabaidze, shaking with excitement, blurted: “This is a miracle! Now, I have something to tell my grandchildren about.”

As as he gave Parent a bear hug, he said, “I had wished for this day, but I never thought it would happen.”

Replied an equally effusive Parent: “If you were a woman, I’d kiss you.”

Instead, the Texan waved his wife, Margie, to his side for a group photograph. She stood between the two men on the steps of Disneyland City Hall, with Mickey Mouse prancing about behind them.

Today, Parent is a 78-year-old retired geologist from Galveston, Tex., and Kabaidze, 64, a leading ally of Gorbachev in his campaign to restructure his country’s economy.

Kabaidze is one of 20 high-ranking Russians meeting in Newport Beach this week with 25 Americans, including six from Orange County, for a conference and informal talks about how the two countries can improve relations.

Saturday’s reunion of wartime friends, organized by a Los Angeles businessman who had met Kabaidze and then tracked down Parent, will be the latest chapter in a story Kabaidze has told repeatedly to family and others in his hometown of Ivanovo, population 500,000, about 200 miles north of Moscow.

Kabaidze and Parent belonged to the Soviet and American armies that linked up at the Elbe River as the war was winding down.

Parent, then a 35-year-old first lieutenant with the 30th Infantry Division, and two others from his platoon had ignored orders and rowed across the rain-swollen Elbe to meet the Soviet troops on the opposite bank.

For the 21-year-old Kabaidze, who had suffered three major injuries in the four years of fighting, meeting Parent was a welcome relief.

As their day together ended, Kabaidze gave Parent a Russian ruble on which he had written his name and address of his grandparents. Parent handed Kabaidze a German deutsche mark with his name and the address of his parents in Huntington Park. “It was the only paper we had in those days,” explained Kabaidze. “We didn’t have business cards in those days.”

This address was used by Barney Oldfield, a Los Angeles businessman, to track down Parent. Two years ago, during a trip to the Soviet Union, Oldfield, a retired Air Force colonel and World War II veteran, met Kabaidze during a conference on technological cooperation and learned of his wartime meeting with Parent.

Today, Kabaidze still carries shrapnel in his chest and leg from the war. He also carries clout with Gorbachev, who honored him and 11 others as models of modern Soviet management.

“He is considered one of the most efficient managers in the Soviet Union,” said Sergei Rogov, a senior fellow with the Institute for U.S.A. and Canada Studies in Moscow, who was one of the three Soviet citizens who joined Kabaidze in his tour of Disneyland.

“He is an innovator who does not follow orders,” Rogov said. “He does things his own way.”

Kabaidze also looks very fit, Parent said.

At that, Kabaidze threw back his head, laughed and said: “We have a saying in Russia: ‘When the wolf pauses, he loses the race.’ So, I’ve learned that in this life, you’ve got to be in shape.”