Rolf Kristian Stang, an Norwegian-American actor and singer based in New York, is one of the key-persons behind the founding of Trygve Lie Gallery and a continuous inspiration to the extensive cultural activity in the Norwegian-American community in New York.

The Trygve Lie Gallery Honors the First Secretary-General of the U.N.
by Rolf Kristian Stang

The Norwegian Seamen’s Church has been called Norway’s window-on-the-world in New York. As this city is so international in character, that seems to fit well. By naming the cultural exhibition space in the church to honor Trygve Lie (1896-1968), we have a permanent reminder of a Norwegian politician and diplomat participating in an historical milestone for the entire world, namely, the formation and implementation of a United Nations organization.

The more the venues of instant and comprehensive local and international communication develop, the more history seems to fly by, causing the world to shrink; time itself seems to condense. Considering everything we are informed of on a day-to-day basis, sometimes very repetitiously, small wonder that events of only twenty years ago can seem to grow dim. Increasingly, the oldest generation is shocked by what the following one seems not to know or remember or care about! News comes to us like blown confetti or like so much popcorn flying through the air. We could be numbed by it. Conversely, it leads us to realize we must endeavor to keep certain events alive in our shared consciousness! There are those events – the Civil War, a continent-spanning rail system, the Great Depression – that, having shaped our world and us as a nation, must be remembered. Their importance reconfirmed for each generation.

We are also, increasingly, a part of the world community; the post-U.N. political and economic period would inevitably be played out upon the world stage. The name, “Trygve Lie Gallery”, not only brings us back to the founding of the United Nations, it reminds us of continuing Norwegian participation in the world community on many fronts. How good it would be to have an accessible record of all Norwegians working for the good of mankind worldwide from Trygve Lie’s time on to the present!

When, after World War I, the call for a League of Nations was firmly rejected, the idea, fortunately, did not die.
In fact, May 17, 1990, in the New York Times [Vol. 37, #8], we find Trygve Lie’s daughter, Guri Lie Zeckendorf, writing about her father’s background preceding his years as Secretary-General. She points out that he, during World War II, was Foreign Minister in London. At that time… “On December 15, 1940, in a broadcast over the BBC, he proposed an alliance of free democratic nations, including the United States, to be formed after allied victory. The idea was followed by an editorial in the London Times on December 16, and was widely discussed by the allied Foreign Ministers during their bimonthly meeting, and was also discussed by historians like Arnold J. Toynbee and statesmen such as Philip Noel-Baker. The idea was a forerunner for NATO and the United Nations.”

On February 1, 1946, Mr. Lie was elected the first Secretary-General of the United Nations. He was formally installed by the General Assembly at its 22nd meeting on February 2, 1946. He retired from the post, while in his second term, in 1953.

Trygve Lie, in the company of other prominent, brave souls, made a commitment to the positive principles adopted by the United Nations. The agenda in his comprehensive “Memorandum of Points for Consideration in the Development of a 20-Year Program for Achieving Peace through the United Nations” remains equally applicable today, though now nearly 60 years have passed since he wrote it. In it, Lie outlines goals we know as current and primary ones for the U.N. This soberly realistic document (to be found in the Truman Presidential Library) is clear about how the work of the U.N. can only be a long-term undertaking, that energy, atomic and in other forms, will constantly cause friction, and that, even with an international cooperative body of nations, there will still be no easy solutions and that without such a body there will inevitably be chaos.

In honoring Trygve Lie, we praise this strong and ascendant philosophy.