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After 15 Years In Georgia, UNT Professor Leaves Archaeological Site

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  • After 15 Years In Georgia, UNT Professor Leaves Archaeological Site

    AFTER 15 YEARS IN GEORGIA, UNT PROFESSOR LEAVES ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE AMID BOMBING
    By Anna M. [email protected]

    Fort Worth Star Telegram
    Aug. 13, 2008
    TX

    You know it's summer when chupacabra shows up Seat belts could have
    saved many in bus crash, official says

    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."
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