Have you ever moved to a different country all by yourself, with one suitcase, and you don’t know the language? That is exactly what Ionut “Ion” Baldovin did when he was just 19 years old. Many factors went into immigrating to a new country at a young age, but the biggest reason was growing up in a communist country. Ion Baldovin grew up in Bucharest, Romania, during Ceausescu’s Rule and the fall of the Communist regime. Ionut lived in a concrete apartment with eight floors, and the apartment had one kitchen, one living room, and one bedroom. This was impractical for a family of four, but since Romania was a corrupt communist country, things not making sense weren’t abnormal. During Ceausescu’s Rule, he increased exports while decreasing imports, which meant the country thrived financially, but the people were hungry. Ion could only buy groceries if he had a food stamp, which Ceausescu gave out stingily. Ceausescu gave out few food stamps because he wanted Romanians to be “fit and healthy,” but most Romanians, including Ionut, were starving and underfed. Growing up during communism meant that certain things were normalized during Ion’s childhood, which would leave most people astounded. For example, teachers or nurses could cut their students’ hair any day of the week. They would run their fingers through the male student’s hair, and if any hair were over their fingers, they would buzz their hair right there. If a female student’s hair was past their shoulders, a teacher would use scissors and cut her hair during school. Ceausescu allowed this because he wanted to control everyone and let everyone know they were being watched and had no freedom. Romania also had random power outages every day to save money. This was exasperating for the people of Romania because they had no heat or electricity, even during the cold winter months when temperatures reached 5 degrees Fahrenheit.
Ion has a specific memory of being just eight years old and carrying groceries up eight flights of steps alone in the dark. He said, “Flashlights were like phones. You never left your house without it.” On December 16, 1989, when the Communist Regime started to crumble, the government sent out tanks, but no one knew what was going on because Ceausescu controlled all of the media. However, it didn’t take Ion long to realize what was going on as an 11-year-old boy. Ionut described that night, “Tanks were rolling down the streets in Center City, and I saw red bullets flying across the streets in the middle of the night. I was scared, of course because I was a kid, but then my family decided to flee the city and go to the countryside.” However, Ionut soon found out that leaving the city wasn’t possible because the outskirts of the city were blocked off. Ionut recalled, “The military started an open fire on us as we were driving up to it. We turned around right away, passing numerous tanks, fires, and buildings crumbling down from the rockets the tanks were shooting at them. It was an all-out war. There were people still inside the buildings as they were burning and falling, and dead people were lying all over the street.” This continued for nine more grim days and finally stopped when Ceausescu was captured and executed on Christmas Day. After the Communist Regime collapsed, nothing really changed for Ionut. He went to school, sat in hour-long lines to get groceries, and felt just as oppressed. Ionut grew his hair out because he felt the need to rebel after being suppressed for the first 14 years of his life. This angered his teachers because they wanted to control him still, so they failed Ionut in physics and chemistry and made him go to summer school. This was ironic because after he graduated high school, Ion got a full scholarship to be an aerospace engineer in college. Although Ceausescu was no longer the president of Romania, it was just as corrupt as before, which made Ionut decide to move to America. America preaches that everyone has freedom, which drew Ionut to the country. Ion was one of the 170,000 people who immigrated legally to different countries after the Communist Regime failed; this number doesn’t account for those who left illegally or those who fled before the termination of the Socialist Republic of Romania.
When Ionut first got to America, he was scared and excited about what would come. He was also shocked that one store has everything you could ever need. The first time he went to Walmart, he was astonished. Previously, Ion had to wait in a long line for just one product, but now he can buy everything he needs at a single store in less than an hour. Leaving a communist country was the first challenge Ionut faced, but it definitely wasn’t the last. He had to learn a foreign language while trying to get a job with no one he could turn to. That was until he met Diane Morton, whom he married, and now they celebrate 21 years of marriage. Diane said that what drew her to Ionut was “He was nice and funny, and he was good with Crista which is important to me too. He was also cute”. Crista is Diane’s sister who has a learning disability, but Ion always treated her with kindness and included her. Ion even took Diane and Crista to a Backstreet Boys concert even though he hated the Backstreet Boys.
Although Ionut had a rough childhood, he wanted to make it abundantly clear that he still had good childhood memories. Ionut spent lots of time in the Carpathian Mountains, where he skied. He and his friends would play a game where they skied down the mountain with a backpack full of food and let black bears chase them. Ionut loved the adrenaline rush it gave him and wasn’t ever scared because the worst the bear would do was steal the backpack. He also spent much of his time playing soccer and even played for Romania’s youth national team. He had a special love for soccer and continues to surround himself with it. His love stemmed from his father, who played for Steaua Bucharest, a professional soccer club. This love continued when Ion played at the U-20 World Cup in Austria, where he played on grass for the first time. Ion and his teammates never had cleats, so they were slipping on the grass because they had nothing to grip the ground with. The Adidas Company saw them playing and gave the kids on Ionut’s team free cleats. This was the first time Ionut put on expensive shoes. He loved them so much he never wanted to take them off, but also never wanted to get them dirty. This support from Adidas impacted Ionut’s life in multiple ways. It strengthened his love for soccer because he felt cared for by Adidas. It also made Adidas his favorite company, which he still wears daily. One of the things Ion said he loved most about soccer was, “It was the only place I could make my own decisions and not be afraid to keep my head up.” When he moved to the United States, he got an offer to play professionally by a German team but rejected the offer because he was in love with Diane and knew that he never wanted to be apart from her. However, once Ion and Diane had kids, they put them in soccer, which made Ionut very proud. He is currently coaching his youngest daughter, Bianca Baldovin, at Deep Run. He also coached his other two daughters, Izabela and Lavinia Baldovin. Ionut’s words of advice to everyone is, “In life, you can’t always control your circumstances, but you can determine how you respond. The way you respond determines the type of life you will create.”
Sources:
