50 Stories for 50 Years: Pia Bungarten ‘75

To celebrate our 50th anniversary year during 2018/19, we collected stories and profiles of people and institutions that have helped us build our organization, which first began as one person's dream in 1968. We will feature one story per week on our blog. Please enjoy these “50 for 50” profiles featuring ASSIST's dedicated board members, dynamic staff, welcoming host families and enthusiastic ASSIST Scholars.

Pia Bungarten ‘75
Germany, Suffield Academy

My life became connected with ASSIST in 1974. All my ASSIST-related experiences and memories now form a big and beautiful mosaic.

My year at Suffield as an ASSIST Scholar was my best school experience. It directly led to my college years at Amherst College and eventually to my graduate studies at Harvard. My entire professional life has been founded on my ASSIST year at Suffield.

That ASSIST year also became the rock upon which my personal life is now founded. The family that hosted me during my ASSIST year is still my "American family”—even though I am now married to an American, and thus have a wonderful American family by marriage as well. Neither my marriage, nor countless friendships here in America, would have ever come about if I had not come to Suffield through ASSIST.

It so happens that exactly 45 years ago to the day of this writing, I woke up for the first time in Suffield, CT. This was after arriving in America the day before. Paul Sanderson had driven all the way to Montreal to pick us up—I think there were 20 of us ASSIST students from Germany—and we flew to Montreal because the airfare was less expensive. We arrived in Suffield around midnight on August 18th, went to sleep in the dorms, and were invited to a very nice brunch by the Sanderson’s the next day. My host mother, Louise Walsh, came to Suffield to pick me up, and so my life with my host family began.

Following my host family's example, my husband and I took in two ASSIST students while we lived in Washington DC between 2009 and 2014. One of my nephews, inspired by his visits with us during our time in Washington, decided to apply to ASSIST and spent a decisive year in New Mexico.

There are many things I could write about, but what I most want to point to in this memory are the people who work for ASSIST, from the professionals to the volunteers. They include Paul Sanderson, the founder, who was also headmaster of Suffield when I studied there, Betsy and Ken Lindfors, whom I have known since being a student at Suffield, and my host mother Louise Walsh, who is now in her late 80s.

In the mid-1970s, Louise helped ASSIST match host families to incoming students. Louise, my late host father, Ray Walsh, and my beloved late 'American sister' Melinda and her family welcomed not just me, but every single member of my family. We miss her so very much. I am also thinking of Bob Stanley, Dick Hall and Cathy Tinsley. While we lived in Washington I had the great joy of getting to know them and cooperating with them in the Washington chapter of ASSIST.
None of the people I have named ask to be honored, but deserve so very much to be honored for what they have done for the ASSIST students in the past decades. Without their ideas and vision, their commitment, and quiet, hard work, ASSIST would not have developed as it has and would not even come close to what it now is. ASSIST is a force for good in the world - and its work is ever more important as our future depends on humane people who can "think across borders" and work together to find solutions for key problems like climate change.

I am sure ASSIST students today experience what I have experienced: that their lives as adults are influenced profoundly and often directly founded on their ASSIST years.

About Pia:
Following her ASSIST year at Suffield Academy, Pia studied at Amherst College, the University of Munich, and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. After first working for the Refugee Counselling Program of the German Red Cross, she joined the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Germany's oldest political foundation. She initially focused on international development policy making (among others as head of the New York Liaison Office to the United Nations and director of the Thailand Office in Bangkok), then headed the foundation's efforts to further international cooperation as director of the International Dialogue Division and its offices in Europe, North America, Russia and Central Asia. From 2009 to 2014, Pia was the Ebert Foundation representative to the US and Canada, working in Washington. She is now the director of the scholarship program which provides financial support to gifted German and international students and encourages them to take responsibility for sustaining democracy.