Lech Walesa Dallas 2025

So, I did a thing.

My oldest friend, a better friend than I deserve, invited me to see Lech Walesa speak at the Dallas Convention Center. I’m glad my friend reached out and I’m glad we went. This was a treat.

Lech is on a speaking tour of the US and Canada. It appears to be put together by a travel company and they are doing this to promote their tour of Poland. While I don’t think this impacted the presentation or the content, it was just odd.

A quick recap for people born after Y2K, Lech was the President of Poland and is a Noble Peace Prize winner. But most importantly, he said ‘no’ to the USSR and got them out of Poland. To use parlance you might understand, one does not simply walk into Modor and say ‘no’ to the USSR. He did. He is part of the reason they fell.

Lech was entertaining through his interpreter. He spoke for an hour and then took questions from the crowd. Once that was done, he sat and signed books and did photo ops.

My friend teased me about NOT knowing any Polish. Yes, my heritage is Polish. Grandmom must be rolling in her grave that I didn’t ‘greet’ or ‘thank’ him in Polish. I’m a bad Grandson. The only think I could remember was: jeśli nie masz schlitza, nie masz piwa.   meaning, if you ain’t got Schlitz, you ain’t got beer.

Maybe not the best thing to say to a President.

AH