After 15 years in Georgia, UNT professor leaves archaeological site amid bombing
By ANNA M. TINSLEY
Aug. 14, 2008
Despite the jets flying overhead and the sound of constant bombing, UNT professor Reid Ferring didn't want to leave Georgia.
But after a bomb blast knocked him out of bed near his archaeological site in southern Georgia on Monday, he knew that he needed to leave his research project on medieval ruins and temporarily stop his work on building a cooperative relationship between the Georgian National Museum and the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History.
"We knew things were hot, and we had been hearing Russian jets overhead. But the bomb that shook me out of my bed was a signal that there was some danger," said Ferring, a geology and archaeology professor at the University of North Texas and a board member of the Fort Worth museum. "They were bombing all over the country."
He contacted the U.S. Embassy and ultimately joined a caravan of four buses and 25 to 30 private vehicles on a five-hour drive south across the border to Armenia. There he caught a flight to Munich, Germany, and then to Dallas/Fort Worth Airport on Tuesday night, wrapping up about 50 hours of travel.
Ferring is among 170 Americans evacuated from Georgia as fighting between Russian and Georgian troops escalated after the outbreak last week in Georgia’s breakaway province of South Ossetia.
"We knew days before that things were steaming up," said Ferring, 60, who has worked on and off in Georgia on this project since the early 1990s. "They were lobbing shells across the border into Georgia."
But he continued his research on the oldest archaeological sites outside Africa — this one being Dmanisi in south Georgia, 1.75 million years old.
"After the ground invasion began, they said we needed to get out," he said Wednesday.
UNT officials called Ferring late last week after a computer system set up to track students and professors notified them that he was in Georgia.
They reached him on the phone by Friday afternoon and started working on backup plans in case he couldn’t reach the U.S. Embassy in the capital, Tbilisi, about 135 miles away, or needed emergency help.
"We got lucky," said Eric Canny, UNT’s director of international initiatives, who worked with Ferring. "We didn’t need the fallback plans. We were ecstatic knowing he was on his way back."
"I had mixed feelings about leaving," Ferring said from his home in Denton. "I wanted to get out, but part of me wanted to stay there with my Georgian friends, to show them that Americans do care.
"I’ve been working there for 15 years and have a lot of friends there. All of them were saying, 'Where’s America? Why aren’t you helping us?’ What could I say?"
Just that he would be back, but perhaps not until next summer.
"I’ll go back as soon as I can," he said. "At this point, I’m just terrified of what the final situation is going to be in Georgia.
"I’ve watched it from a newly free state to a country that is building new roads, schools, hospitals and truly becoming an emerging democracy and an ally of the U.S.," he said. "I hope that system is preserved."
ANNA M. TINSLEY,
http://www.star-telegram.com/news/story/831520.html