Ed Roberts, Activist
Lee Roberts: Ed in Russia on One of His Last Trips
Lee Roberts: We actually were going in St. Petersburg, and we entered into this… there was about 6000 monks, and when he entered into the Center he had a 700-pound wheelchair. Thing made some noise. It was on chains. You knew he was coming from about three blocks down when he was arriving.
So in a very quiet, huge Center based on like bouncing sound off the walls, they had no idea what was going on. And he strolls in, and then we had the Russian Secret Service with us at the time, but they couldn't exactly disguise themselves as monks at that point, so it was pretty much known that they were there.
And I'm just… I'm looking at the monks like they're looking at my dad, because I've never seen anything like it. And then as we're going through, the weirdest event happens. A bird comes through and it drops… it drops its poop on the ground and it hits my dad's chair right there. They took it as a religious sign and at that moment, 6000 monks that were there all stopped and got down and started praying and humming, because they thought it was a religious sign he was there and that happened.
I had no idea how to take it, but it was just one of those amazing experiences. So the point was, internationally, he is a bigger star in a way than he was domestic.