European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - February 05, 1990, Darmstadt, Hesse Monday. February 5. 1990 the stars and stripes Page 9 Over Here Maurice Burkhead. A former air Force Mechanic sets up shop temporarily Grafen Ohr Camp Aachen to sell chunks of the Berlin Wall and original Allt shirts. Sex servicemen carve ouf off the Wall Enterprise b v1nc Ecra Ley Nurnberg Bureau Iru Enow or. West Germany Maurice Hur khad is one of those Guys who s Selling pieces of he in rom Wall. In just Over iwo months he s peddled $60.000 Worth of rubble and has 3 More tons of it stashed away. He save the fad might last Unhul May or june. We be had other hot things Alf Garfield but they were nothing compared to said Burkhead. A former air Force Mechanic who got out in 1985 but stayed in Cic Muny. He started out Selling Cotton Candy and balloons then moved into the to shirt business. He said in s doing More than just making a fast Buck. It s a slap in the face of communism. Nine out of 10 of my customers Art just ecstatic about these " for $1 5. Burkhead will Gucu a Clear plastic Haj containing his original the fall of the Wall t shirt a piece of supposedly historic Concrete and a Pink certificate of the certificate reads with m signature i give of m personal guarantee that the Stone or stones contained herein Are authentic pieces of the Berlin Wall gathered by my wife friends and i during the months of november and december l 89." to satisfy doubters he displays snapshots of himself standing proudly Hammer in hand in front of the Graffiti covered Wall taking a sledgehammer to communism became a popular Berlin pastime almost As soon As East Germany announced it was opening its Borders on nov. 9. By Midnight that Day. Burkhead and his partner. To shirt maker Mitch Volburg were already designing a souvenir Shin logo. Volburg. A former infantry sergeant who spent 18 months with the 25th div in Vietnam got out in 1970, sold insurance for a while and then started making to shirts nine years ago. Other entrepreneurs were just As Quick to Cash in. Debris was on Sale almost overnight. By christmastime Wall pieces had penetrated the american marketplace so deeply that they could be found near the Batman videos in Indianapolis grocery stores. Even the East germans finally got into the act. A communist conglomerate recently began charging hefty Price for monolithic Wall segments. So Burkhead and Volburg decided they needed something different an Economy priced package Deal with commemorative to shirts and chunks of the Wall. On the sunday after thanksgiving they conveyed vans to Berlin where they picked a suitable strip of Concrete in the wedding District North of the Brandenburg Gale. They weren t the Only Wall croppers. He Rhc and said he saw thousands and thousands of people. You could hear it constantly Clickett. Chc Kety. the East German polite slopped on blatant capitalists people who were taking More than their fair share of the Wall. When they saw we had Vanloa Slof lock they got a Little Burkhead said. The 6-Fooi-3-Inch native of Albuquerque. . Weighs 240 pounds All Beer muscle and did most of the sledgehammer work while his wife. Dorothy took snapshots with the family camera and helped bust big rocks into smaller rocks. They drove Back Home in the area with 800 pounds of broken Concrete. Driving the corridor Between Berlin and West Germany gave them plenty of time to Ponder their Cairn. My wife and i Felt kind of foolish on the Way Hack Burkhead said. We invested our last couple thousand dollars on this thing. I said to my Wile. I la be Happy to sell this we sold out in Lour hours had people fighting Over he and Volburg made three More trips to Berlin in Slock upon Wall relics. But Wall bashing is getting danger " these Days he said. People have knocked big cheese holes lit h they re worried t could Burkhead is impressed by the unexpected popularity of the package Deal and has been looking Lor other matched sets to sell. I considered going to Panama. 1 wanted to pet pieces of his Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega s Headquarters hut they lore it Don too soon i could t pet a commercial flight in so. Once the Wall hysteria Dies Down he said hell probably put together a package thai males i Sun Ned the autobahn a shirts will bus of Germany s expressway. He s also working on a Deal to buy one of East Germany s official sections of the Wall. An East German certificate of authenticity would carry More weight than his own Pink homemade one. And that would generate a new Boom in sales he said. Burkhead s company. Sunrise shirts i things usually operates in the Kaiserslautern area where he has an cafes contract. But he and Selburg were Sel up last week at Grafe Wohr Samp Aachen hawking their wares to re forger troops waiting to return stateside. "1 would buy one and take it a fort Hood. Texas sergeant said so optically in the Chow line but probably they re just pieces of Cement thai some Guy picked up
