Not many would remember the name Norris Poulson.

I was 15 when first secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev made his historic visit to the United States in September 1959. There was little love lost then between the two rival superpowers, and the confrontational enmity only grew and grew. Three years later — for 13 long days — the USSR and the U.S. took the world to the brink of nuclear destruction in what came to be known as the Cuban missile crisis ... 40 years ago this month.

Though I was still a youngster, I had started to teach myself Russian at age 13 after following the path of the first artificial satellite, the Soviet Union's Sputnik, across the skies of the city I lived in: Los Angeles. It didn't take an adult insight to be aware of the tense atmosphere surrounding Khrushchev's visit.