The Belk family at Mr. Belk’s 100th birthday February 2025: Betty, Katie, Jenny, Blanton
Blanton Belk, founder of Up with People, celebrated his 100th birthday in the beginning of 2025. Coincidentally, this year also marks the 100th edition of the German Alumni Club magazine: eXtraplatt. What better occasion for a conversation between these two enduring institutions?
A talk on friendship, history, the Moon Rider, alumni all over the World, the 1972 Olympics, and the future of UWP.
There’s so much to speak about in a century of a life, and also in one hundred issues of a magazine filled with stories of German alumni.
To chat along, a group of five met virtually one Sunday in November 2024. Blanton Belk and his wife Betty (who had recently been named an honorary member of the German Alumni Association) were seated on the Belks’ sunny patio in Tucson. Their daughter Jenny (’85C) was taking care of the technology and contributing her memories. On the other side of the world, in an apartment in Munich two German alumni joined in: Bettina, as the former long-time editor in chief of the eXtraplatt and Jakob, emissary of the youngest UWP generation, member of Cast ’23A.
Bettina: It’s really great to be talking to all of you! I would like to say something personal before we begin—this young man sitting next to me—Jakob, probably wouldn’t exist without you. My husband and I met through UWP and of course the UWP alumni world is full of stories like that. From the bottom of my heart, “Thank you!”… “Tausend Dank!”
Blanton: Yeah, wonderful. We love that. Congratulations! By the way, Betty does speak German. She has a gift for languages.
Betty: Ich spreche ein bisschen. Ich habe deutsche Familie: meine Großeltern. Unfortunately, my grandmother had put German behind her after World War I.
Blanton: Betty has just celebrated her 95th birthday.
Betty: We received a very nice message from the German Alumni Club, we loved that. Appreciate that.
Jakob: You and Blanton are the roots of our UWP community. We build on that. Alumni from all places have kept in touch in this great network of friends till today.
Bettina: And speaking of networking. We heard you like to read our German Alumni Club magazine?
Betty: We are proud of that magazine. It is put so professionally, so interesting, and keeps you up to date with all your events.
Jenny: Literally every time it comes, it sits by my parents’ chairs for days, and we all admire it. You all should be so proud of that publication. Really, it’s incredible.
Jakob: Yes, and it keeps us connected. We share our stories and we know about each other. What does it mean to you that you have influenced so many of us? That there are so many families and friendships that go back to UWP?
Betty: It means a great deal. I feel so lucky that I have dear friends in other countries, and it’s a very important element of UWP. I feel proud, very proud.
Blanton: Yes, super. Very thrilled with that. That has made all the years worthwhile we worked so hard raising the money to keep it going. And you know, we had this wonderful board of directors, and that board itself gave 15 million dollars to the program. Now those were some of the biggest businessmen in the world, like Jim McDonald, the president of General Motors, Dr. Toyoda, the founder and president of the Toyota Motor Company. Also Pieter van Vollenhoven, the princess’s husband in the Netherlands, and Eugene Cernan, the last man to go to the moon.
Bettina: You two have a special connection to Eugene Cernan…
Last man on the moon Captain Eugene Cernan (left) with Betty and Blanton in Rome where they had an audience with Pope John Paul II.
Blanton: Yes, and Eugene loved our song Moon Rider. About a month before he died, Betty and I were down in Mexico City. Jenny called us and said, I’ve had word from Eugene’s family that he’s very ill, and he would love to see you while he’s here on Earth. And we changed our flight plan and flew to Houston, Texas. Jenny picked us up and we went right out to Cernan’s house. Jenny said, “I know it’s a private meeting with your friend, and I’m going to stay in the car.” The first thing Cernan asked is, “Who drove you here?” And I said, “Daughter Jenny.” “Where is she?” “She felt she should stay in the car.” “Nonsense.” He stomped out of his house, brought Jenny in on his arm, and said, “Jenny, you belong right here.” So we had this great conversation with Gene. When he died, his daughter, whom we knew very well called me and asked if we could have the song Moon Rider sung at his funeral. And we did that. The man that did it, you may know him, Reed Thompson, was one of our top singers. He said later it was the toughest thing he ever did, to sing across the funeral spot where Eugene’s body is being laid to rest, and the whole family and relatives and military sitting on the other side at this military funeral on the top of the mountain in Austin Texas. But he said, “I made it through”, and they appreciated it enormously.
1972 Olympics in Munich
Bettina: Listening to your stories, I wonder how you remember the 1972 Olympics in Munich and the moments Up with People had in that history. What are your memories about that time?
Blanton: The militants that came up had captured the Israeli wrestling team, and they had them locked up in their apartment. The next second day, they’d kill two of them and throw the bodies out into the hall because they were inside the apartment with their machine guns. And we were there in Munich with a cast to perform in the Olympics.
Bettina: And this tragedy happened while Germany aimed to present to the world openminded and peaceful games after the Olympics in 1936.
Alumni of Cast ’67B talking to athletes in the Olympic Village.
Blanton: Germany wanted to show the World a different Munich, different from what they saw under Hitler in 1936. That was when Jesse Owens won four gold medals under the eyes of Hitler, and Hitler walked out of the stands saying, nobody with a color can beat a white man. So when the terror happened, Jesse Owens called me early in the morning the next day in my hotel. He said, “I’ve been up all night thinking of the athletes locked up in the dormitory. They spent all their lifetime planning for this moment to run in the Olympics. And here they’ve been for three days, learning where the tracks are and everything, and then they’re shut up and locked and can’t come in or out. They are in those big dormitories, and my mind is on them. I think we should take Up with People into the dormitory and perform for the athletes. Come over here quickly.”
Jakob: Was that an easy decision for you to make?
Blanton: The trickiest thing of that whole time was that we had six Jewish young people in the cast and the situation was not clear. I said, “Jesse, you know what you’re doing. This is a dangerous period.” “Yes, you follow me.” Well, try to follow the fastest man in the World. Even when he walked, he was moving very fast. (Blanton laughs.) The whole city was just shut down. You didn’t see anybody else in the streets. We went and found Stefan Baranski, who was the head of any kind of entertainment that came for the athletes. His office looked like a war had gone on. They’d been up all night, papers on the floor and everything. Jesse knew Baranski very well and said, “I want to bring UWP and perform.” Stefan looked at Jesse for a long moment with awe, “What if some of them get captured by the militants? Will I be responsible for that?” Jesse said, “I will be responsible as a member of the Olympic Committee. And if you want that in writing, give me a pencil and a piece of paper.” So Baranski then got the point. He said, “No, we don’t need that. Get all their passports quickly and come tonight, have a rehearsal and then come back tomorrow night and do the show.”
Bettina: So you performed in the Olympic Village not far from the apartment with the Israeli team. It’s hard to imagine the atmosphere in that theater…
Blanton: I went there with Jesse and Stefan, and the three of us sat together in the back and Jesse refused to be introduced or recognized. Then all the athletes came in: The big Russians with their red jackets and their big signatures on the back. The Kenyans were there for the first time, these long distance runners. They kind of loped in. And then, as Jesse said, came the Scandinavians on skis. He was enjoying this moment because all these athletes have been talking to each other, and there was a bond. There was great feeling, but at the same time the atmosphere was so thick with fear. The show started, and we didn’t really get going. There was very little reaction from the athletes – and it was a packed audience. Finally, we did Annemarieke, the Belgian song, from the show. It was the drinking song and all the Flemish and Dutch and Germans knew it. Our students had made a line around the auditorium trying to get people to dance along, but nobody would move. Yet the beat of the music got the coach of the Cubans and he said to his team, “Get on that line”. When he had made this move with his people, every coach said, “Get in the line”. And they all ended up on the stage. It looked like the United Nations, but the wonderful, colorful thing. Everyone wore the costumes of their country, so it was an absolute kaleidoscope of color. That broke the ice. From then on, the athletes were on their feet cheering and at the end of the show, they just couldn’t stop applauding.
Alumni of Cast ’67B talking to athletes in the Olympic Village.
Jesse Owens and Blanton Belk at a gala event in 1978 with Nelson “Dick” Freeman (CEO of Tenneco and Chairman UWP Finance)
So Jesse said to Baranski, “I want to go up and be introduced.” Baranski appears on the stage and got everybody to quiet down. He said, “I’ve got a special guest here. Jesse Owens.” Jesse came out and the whole crowd erupted. They didn’t know that he was there, they didn’t know he was in Munich. Then he spoke, “I’ve noticed the hallway, and there’s a hundred yards worth of students out there, athletes trying to get in, and we’re going to do a show again tomorrow night.” Thunderous applause. Most of them from the first show came again the next night.
The next week, Stefan Baranski took Jesse Owens to have a visit with chancellor Willy Brandt. And Brandt was very impressed with what he’d heard. He gave Jesse what could be considered the sixth gold medal for the five he’d already won. Brandt’s ambassador in Washington flew out to Los Angeles later, and gave Jesse the Bundesverdienstkreuz 1. Klasse from the German government for his service to your country. That’s the story.
Jakob: That’s a great story.
Jenny: When he came back from the Olympics he brought me the toy they sold there, a little stuffed dachshund with blue and green colors. I took it with me when we went to live in Brussels as a seven-year-old. The next year, all my little friends in Brussels autographed my dog. I still have it.
Bettina: When you heard about the attack in Munich were you not afraid of your dad or your husband being there?
Jenny: You know, I was too little at the age of six or seven. My sister was four or five. It’s so funny to think about that. He probably called my mom. We were in Tucson. Do you remember calling mom to tell her what was happening?
Blanton: Yeah, sure did, oh, yeah, so.
Jenny: Were you worried? Do you remember being worried?
Betty: No, I wasn’t worried about his safety. We were sure he was good. I was sorry about the Israeli team and such a horrible story.
Jenny Belk (’85C) with her 1972 Olympics dachshund.
A portrait of the Belk girls right before they moved to Brussels in 1971/1972.
Meeting Royals and Politicians
Jenny: Our parents were gone a lot, traveling with casts and raising money, but my sister and I also have many happy memories of traveling with our parents and meeting interesting and fancy people. One of those occasions is a perfect example. When we lived in Belgium, there was a show for the king of Belgium and his daughter, Princess Paula. Some other little girl was going to give her flowers, and I was going to give her the show program. My head was going to explode, I was desperate to go do this. But then, two weeks before, I got the measles and was really sick. By the time of the show my spots were gone, but I had a fever, yet I absolutely wanted to go. So I think they loaded me up with aspirin. Since my parents and Hans Magnus (Director of UWP Europe) were at the show, his wife Tova Magnus, who was like an aunt, brought me in with my fever. I didn’t even get to go on the stage. I came up a back stairway at the theater, the princess came out, I curtsied and gave her the program, and then Tova took me back to bed. The princess was probably like, “I don’t really want this program. I’m going to get disease.” But those are our happy memories, great days, and we went all over Europe at that time. My sister and I also got to meet Chancellor Kohl and his wife. That was our German claim to fame, but we didn’t appreciate it then. We were teenagers.
Jenny and Katie waiting for the bus in Tucson probably around 1971.
Men in top hats: Blanton Belk and Ernst Reinecke with friends at chancellor Adenauer’s funeral.
Bettina: You have met these celebrities, people who themselves, inspired many people. That must have enriched your lives as well?
Jenny: Absolutely, yes. I was so glad that we as a family could meet so many people of note, so many celebrities and astronauts and heads of state. And I think our favorite, well, we have a lot of favorites, but Eugene Cernan, whom Dad talked about earlier, was a really great person to have around. And Jesse Owens! Lots of wonderful, wonderful people. Bob Hope! The actor and entertainer.
Acquaintance with Adenauer
Blanton: And we owe so much to Germany over the years. As a young American, I had been in the Navy, so I was a military man. When I first got to Germany, I was out of the service, retired. When Peter Howard died, the head of Moral Re-Armament (MRA), I was kind of left in charge. I called up Ernst Reinecke in Bonn, who had been a friend of mine for the years. I told him I would like to meet Adenauer. He said, “You would like to meet him?” “Yeah, I’ve got something I want to talk to him about.” I had the thought to go to Adenauer and ask his advice, because he knew what we had tried to do in Germany with all our young people in the MRA. And Ernst Reinecke arranged a date and he took me in to see the old man. I was so impressed with this man. He was like a hunk of concrete. I mean, he looked like he’d been chiseled out of a piece of metal. We had this wonderful meeting with him. When we told him we were starting to organize young people, he said very strongly, “Mr. Belk, that’s your future. And if you got that going, be sure you’re incorporated as a nonprofit organization so you can get people to fund you and get a tax receipt.” It was his urging.
Then, when he died in 1967, I was invited to the funeral and I flew across the ocean and went to Bonn. Four of us represented Up with People. One was Prince Richard of Hessen, who was a friend of ours. Then Ernst Reinecke plus a colonel in your German army. We met the morning of the funeral and got word that everybody used to wear one of those high black top hats. We didn’t have them, so we had to go out and rent them real quick. Mine pulled over my eyes, when I put it on, I could just see black. I had to take a Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper and put it inside around the hat otherwise it came to my nose. Anyhow, we were at the service and had a very moving time. We owe a lot to Germany.
Advice for the Younger Generation
Jakob: I am thinking about my generation and our future. Blanton and Betty, with the world going a certain way right now, which might not be great for everyone, is there any advice or any statement you want to give to people my age? To people that are going to change the world in the future?
Blanton: The big problem in the world is that people don’t get along with people who are not like them. That’s an enormous issue. And whatever you can do in your creative minds: Bring people together. You have experiences now around the world with Up with People, and therefore you know how to communicate with people not like you. That was part of our plan, by having casts that represented lots of nationalities and lots of different religions and points of views. You all had to work together so you learned that secret. If today you can find a way to pioneer that kind of thought, do that.
Jakob: Right, that is what we used to do in Up with People on a daily basis.
Blanton: Maybe it will help Up with People for the next things they should do, too. I went to see Manuel Arango the other day, who wrote the foreword to my book in Mexico, wonderful man. He said, “I think you’re at a point where you’re not going to be able to take casts on the road. It doesn’t fit anymore, and you don’t have the funding to do that. What I think you could do is find out how you can encourage like-minded nonprofits that are working with young people. You could share your experiences with them and work out something together.” So if you could bring that together and include the show as well, I think you’d have something that everybody would thank you for.
Jenny: And don’t you think, Dad, even in a city or town, it’s important to make an effort to branch out? To meet people from the other side of town or the other church or the other school? Even here, in competing sports teams, football or anything, they all hate each other. It’s funny, but then it’s starting to become not funny, right?
Blanton: Absolutely. You’ve got issues on every city that you could think about. How do we bring that together? By getting people together who are not normally communicating. We’ve got a bigger issue to help our community than just expressing our feelings about each other.
Betty: I think that’s the key to all of us who’ve learned how to communicate and to get along with people not like you. We need to pass that on.
The four Belk-grandchildren: Teo and Tommy Belk-Arenas and Surina and Chameli Belk-Gupta. Chameli traveled in ’16B and ’17A.
Jenny: I will say about my parents, and you probably both know this, they have always in their lives, forgiven and thought the best of people. They have given everyone a chance even when maybe they were slighted or something ugly happened. They would always be willing to give people another chance. To think about why and acknowledge that they, too, have got their own things to carry. As we say now, everybody’s got their own stuff. My parents have accepted and forgiven people. That’s always been a lesson for my sister and I, and maybe for my kids and the four grandchildren. To give people a chance. In our family we always say, “What would Grammy do? How would Grammy handle this?”
Blanton: I think in every city, there’s the big divisions all over the world and nobody spends much time trying to knit it together. The challenge for young people is: If you could take the lead on that, you would help older people to start to do the same. Because this division doesn’t just start with the young and end with the young. It’s an international problem everywhere. Think about it and let me know what you come up with, and we’ll work. You can call me anytime, and we’ll rap together. Get a few people!
Jakob: There is something I’ve thought about since Up with People has not been continued. Lately I’ve travelled a lot by myself through different areas of the US, Latin America, Canada staying with host families that I found via the UWP network. I would really like to build some online travel platform which makes it more convenient for me and other people to connect and find host families and locals. I talked about this to friends. Being UWP alumni we felt we wanted to also involve music somehow, because music always brings joy and can lighten someone’s mood. There is this idea in the head, but the hardest part is to actually find a way to do it.
Jenny: That is the tricky part. Dad and Mom, I’m sure you can relate to that. It takes a lot of guts. To start the UWP program took a lot of guts. Jakob, you know how old my Dad was when he started Up with People? He was 40 years old. So you’ve got time. Better now than ever, though.
Up with People
Bettina: Betty, what are some highlights of your UWP life? Is there anything that sticks out most?
Betty: I definitely loved the contact we had with people at all our reunions, and that I could see these bridges being built. It was hard being left behind sometimes as one is, if there’s a wife with children. But whenever I got a chance, I would go with Blanton and make these same friendships, just friendships everywhere.
Blanton: Yes, peace is not just an idea. Peace in the world is people becoming friends. That’s the basic thing we fought for in UWP. If you can bring people together and they become friends, there’s chance for countries and cities and businesses to work, and that’s what you’re on the verge of losing right now.
Betty: In every city and town there is somebody who you can be in touch with and who you can start the ball rolling. That’s what we found in every single place. And all of us can.
Jenny: I think for our whole family, the highlights are the friendships. We talk about it a lot: the staff, the casts, the board, the host families. My cast year was one of the best years of my life. I mean, we alumni can all find places for our kids to stay when they go travel, if you just get a little creative. I’ve been a host family since I’ve been married, and I love being a host family, too. Although I live in Houston, which is not anything very sexy, but if you guys ever want to come to Houston, you are more than welcome.
Bettina: Nothing is more UWP than invitations like this, I feel. We are of course giving that back. We live in Munich, so we’ll do a swap.
Jenny: Dad, it’s funny, they live in Munich, and we’re just inviting each other to each other’s homes, and there you go. I’ve never been to Munich, I would love to go.
Blanton: I have a thought whether the German alumni would lead the way in getting the alumni of the world to have an UWP day to celebrate the 60th birthday of UWP. With their UWP caps on, which have to be printed. Everybody has an UWP hat on, because then we’re announcing to the World that UWP hadn’t gone anywhere. Here it is! And we’re linked up globally. That includes thousands, that includes the 400,000 host families and it involves the big corporations, like in this country, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, the big oil companies. My God, we were sponsored by everybody. The NFL sponsored us for four times, for half times of the Super Bowl. Each one reached a billion people. If Germany could unleash this idea, that’s a good one for the 60th anniversary. It would be a statement to the world. I finished my speech. (laughs)
Bettina: We will pass that forward to our German Alumni Club. Thank you so much all three of you for taking the time to chat with us. Thank you for organizing Jenny, and thank you all for your time. That was wonderful!
The Belk clan gathered at Blanton’s 100th birthday with Blanton in the center and Betty next to him. The family has members from the US, India, Peru, Japan, and Nepal. Jenny: “We really did bring the world together!”
Mr. J Blanton Belk.
My Name is David Andrew Fyfe.
I was in Up with People for 3 Years during the seventies.
I was in the cast playing during the attack in the Olympic Village.
We brought Peace and Calm back to the Village by request after the attack!
I went home after 3 years. Heavens came in Requesting I Help stop the Madness!!!
I said Yes! Translated 130 Musical Pieces at 7:00am before Teaching at 9:00 am.
Mr. J Blanton Belk.
My Name is David Andrew Fyfe.
I was in Up with People for 3 Years during the seventies.
I was in the cast playing during the attack in the Olympic Village.
We brought Peace and Calm back to the Village by request after the attack!
I went home after 3 years. Heavens came in Requesting I Help stop the Madness!!!
I said Yes! Translated 130 Musical Pieces at 7:00am before Teaching at 9:00 am.