BUCHAREST, Romania — Banging out his column on an aging typewriter, Romanian journalist Cornel Nistorescu had no idea how broad a chord his "Ode to America" would strike among Americans on the other side of the world.
"Your article made me proud. It made me cry," wrote Sharon Givens, a high school teacher in Pittsburgh, of the column, a salute to the American spirit in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Nistorescu, managing director of the daily newspaper Evenimentul Zilei — News of the Day — published his editorial Sept. 24, two days after watching a celebrity telethon in New York for victims of the attacks.
"There was Clint Eastwood, Robert de Niro, Julia Roberts, Cassius Clay, Jack Nicholson, Bruce Springsteen, Sylvester Stallone and many others whom no movie producers could ever bring together," he wrote. "The Americans' spirit of solidarity had transformed them into a choir.
"Actually, choir is not the word. What you could hear was the heavy artillery of the American soul. What can unite the Americans in such a way? Their land? Their tumultuous history? Their economic power? Money? I tried for hours to find an answer, but I reached only one conclusion.
"Only freedom can work such miracles."
Like his other columns, "Ode to America" was meant for domestic consumption. No one knows when — or how — the article first reached the other side of the Atlantic. But Nistorescu figures it began when someone pulled it off the English-language version of his daily's Web page and sent it to a friend.
Since then, thousands of Americans at home and expats around the world have e-mailed it to friends, saying it captured their nation's spirit. It has been read out to U.S. soldiers and on radio talk shows and posted on U.S. Web sites.
Nistorescu says he had no idea his "Ode to America" would resonate so far away.
Bernard Klainberg, from Manhasset, N.Y., said he sent it to hundreds of people and printed it in his Manhasset Press magazine. More than 50 people from his town of 7,700 died when the twin World Trade Center towers collapsed.
"I just read your amazing article. I can't tell you how touched and moved I was," read an e-mail sent to Nistorescu and signed "a friend in America."
Another e-mail, sent Thursday, came from a woman at a Houston law firm who said the column has been displayed next to the American flag at her office.
Ray Elsey, a craftsman from Portland, Ore., wrote that the column made him "think about what it means to be both free and American."
Nistorescu remains surprised and touched by the success of the piece, one of thousands he has penned in a more than 20-year career.
"It is all about the American spirit and how freedom cannot be crushed," he says.
WEB SITE: www.expres.ro/evz/editorial_en.html