dallasnews.com
The Dallas Morning News
_
Sunday, November 1, 2009
5D
CHERYL HALL
Dallas business owner taking part in Berlin Wall project
Continued from Page 1D
Wall project
for Berlitz. “My work was four hours a
day — $21 — and after taxes there was
like $15 left,” she says. “I was suffering
severe culture shock, and capitalism
was frightening me.”
That fateful night, Mark was
driving her home from work in a
borrowed car when they heard the
news on the radio.
She thought it was a hoax.
They rushed home, turned on a tiny
TV and watched autobahns jammed
with cars headed to Berlin and
jubilation atop the Brandenburg Gate.
“People climbed on the same wall
where they were shooting people only
a few months before,” she recalls. “I
was standing in my Oak Lawn
apartment, and I could not believe my
eyes.”
For more information about the
Wende Museum and Archive of the
Cold War’s Wall Project, go to
www.wallproject.org.
Back in Germany this fall to visit her parents, Gabriele Hayes found the
Berlin Wall largely gone and Checkpoint Charlie commercialized.
Business success
Also beyond her comprehension
was the success that would unfold for
her.
Today she owns OneWorld, which
teaches languages and offers
translation services to corporate
clients such as Nestlé, Ericsson Inc.,
Cisco Systems Inc., Hewlett-Packard
Co., eBay Inc., Mary Kay Inc., Shell Oil
Co. and Texas Instruments Inc.
This all came to be by a kiss of fate.
Gabriele Voigt grew up in the small
town of Jena, 250 miles outside of East
Berlin.
Her mother had part ownership of
a mostly state-owned grocery store.
Prices were set and profits were slim,
but sometimes the store got special
goods. The biggest deal was bananas at
Christmastime.
“That was so exotic for us,” Gabriele
says. “This is how I learned a little of
the business sense because I learned
how to bargain: ‘Look if you want
bananas, you’ve got to buy that old
cheese.’ ” Her mom bribed doctors
with fruit to get her family in ahead of
others.
Her parents were Catholics who
refused to join the Communist Party.
So when the government selected
students to go on to 11th and 12th
Baby Gabriele lived with parents Annemarie and Gerhard Voigt and
siblings Martina and Michael in 1967 in Jena, East Germany.
grades, Gabriele wasn’t one, even
though she was among the top of her
class.
Passionate about languages —
particularly Russian and English —
Gabriele went to evening school and
got into the local college the hard way.
Chance meeting
On July 31, 1985, Gabriele was
coming home on a bus when it broke
down. She and her friends decided to
hitchhike.
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That same night, Mark, a producer
and writer for a Dallas cable TV
company, and a buddy were in
Gabriele’s hometown by
happenstance. They had tried to get
into Poland, where martial law had
been declared, but had been turned
away and rerouted by the East German
government to Jena.
That was an unlikely detour since
Jena was hosting war games, and the
streets were clogged with Soviet
vehicles and tanks.
“My friend who was driving our van
said, ‘Let’s pick up some Commies.’ ”
Mark recalls. “I begged him not to stop,
since it was against the law to pick up
hitchhikers. He hit the brakes, and
about six or seven young East Germans
piled in. Gabi was among them.”
Mark, who didn’t realize she could
speak English, told his friend: “ ‘Check
out the girl in pink. She’s not bad, but
she has hairy legs.’ ”
When Gabriele called him on it, “he
turned red like a tomato.”
Mark and his friend asked her to
dinner. She accepted because it was the
first time she’d ever been able to talk in
English to native speakers.
“If the traffic light had changed or
the bus hadn’t broken down, I would
never have met Mark,” she says. “It was
meant to be.”
When he wanted to visit her again,
she told him it would have to wait until
after her mandatory three-week stint
picking potatoes. “Students had to see
how the farmers lived and contribute
to society,” she says.
He came back after the harvest.
They fell in love. It was the beginning
of a four-year, complicated,
long-distance relationship.
“He would call and the phone
would click,” she says. “So you knew
someone was listening in.”
They married at the town hall in
Jena on Aug. 24, 1989. But she was not
permitted to leave the country until
late October. And then she was
abruptly told: Get out now or never.
Mark, who had moved from Dallas
to Frankfurt to be closer to Gabriele,
figured it was time to head back to
Texas.
Within months, Gabriele was
teaching German at night at Collin
County Community College and
thinking about going into business.
About that time, she was also offered a
job at Plano Senior High.
“I was at a crossroads: Do I get a
full-time job as a teacher? Or do I take
a risk the American way and give up
my cradle-to-grave socialist thinking?
I decided to do the business.”
A sympathetic landlord leased a
two-classroom space on Cole Avenue
to her, even though she had no money
or credit history. She opened with four
students in July 1990.
Reunification film
Her big break came that same year.
She and Mark bought a camera and
went to Germany to make a
documentary about reunification.
They produced a half-hour film that
they showed at the Dallas World Trade
Center. Among those in the audience
were executives from Atlantic
Richfield Co. who asked her to teach
three employees in Plano.
Within a month, she had more than
100 Arco students. She opened her Los
Angeles office to handle its employees
there.
“We started out as a language
school, branched out into translations,
voiceovers, dubbing, subtitling and
media projects,” says Gabriele, who has
contract teachers throughout the
United States and abroad. Mark, who
owns the other 49 percent of the
company, handles the voiceover and
media projects.
OneWorld translates Texas
Instruments’ foreign marketing
materials. “They are an important tool
that we use to expand our reach,” says
Kateri Gemperle, TI’s manager of
worldwide media relations. “But it’s
more than just translation. They help
us act globally. It’s huge for us.”
In August, Gabriele and Mark went
back to Germany to visit her parents
and to see the Berlin Wall.
“Unfortunately there’s only a small
stretch left,” she says. “We went to
Checkpoint Charlie, and it’s very
commercialized.”
That’s why next weekend is so
important and poignant.
“You think about the casualties and
all the people who died trying to
escape,” she says. “But I’m really happy
that people in the United States are
celebrating this big event. I want to be a
part of it.”
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