Two Graduations—a World Apart!

When I graduated from high school, I didn’t want to go to the ceremony. I was so glad to be through that I just wanted it over with. Although I went, it was a chore and not a joy.

When I graduated from college, 20+ years later, I was so excited that I was determined to go my college graduation despite all the obstacles that made it difficult.

I graduated from the University of Maryland, European Division, we were living in Vicenza,

Vicenza, Italy where we lived

Italy, where my husband, Ed, was assigned as head of security at an army base there. I had four children and was expecting my fifth child in my mid-forties. My husband had been critically ill and was at the hospital at Landstuhl Air Force Base, Germany where he’d been recovering from Osteomyelitis. If I went to my graduation, I’d have to drive myself 521 miles (838 km) through Italy, Austria and Germany to Heidelberg, Germany where the graduation ceremony was to be held. My oldest son was in college at Utah State, and my two younger teens could not by law drive in Europe. My 8-year-old would have to be left with someone while I was gone. But I was determined to go!

 

I had loved all my classes in Vicenza, Spain, Paris while I worked on my degree in English. Although I had taken college classes at Utah State University, University of Utah, University of Texas, Troy State College and University of Nebraska, and had my associate degree, it hadn’t been until we arrived in Italy, that I’d been able to complete my degree. It had been so fun to take classes in the evenings there. I took several Italian history classes where we’d studied different cities in Italy during the week and then drove to the cities on Saturday to see their art, culture and history. It was one of my favorite classes.

 

I also loved my Italian classes where I learned to speak Italian and practiced in my daily life. It seemed ironic that I’d waited until my children were all in school before I finished my degree, then I ended up taking night classes!

 

We lived 45 minutes by train from Venice so I took several Venetian history classes as well as “expatriate writers in Venice and Paris” where we actually visited the sites where their books were written.

I loved getting my education in Europe far more than if I’d gotten my school in four years back in the states. One of the really neat things was that my mentor, advisor and friend was Donna Leon, a professor who was living in Venice and writing books on the side. She later became famous for her Commissario Guido Brunetti mysteries which take place in Venice. She has written 25 books (as of 2016), and had 20 of them made into a German TV series. She won the Crime Writers' Association Silver Dagger in 2000, and her novels have been translated into many languages, but not Italian at her request.

Landstuhl AFB hospital

During my last year of school, my husband had become ill and spent months in Germany where they tried to heal him, but he returned to Vicenza in between hospitalizations. For spring break we took the family to Paris, but afterwards he relapsed and was sent back to Germany hospitals. (Eventually he would spend more time at Walter Reed Hospital, in Maryland before they determined how to fix him.

We were very optimistic about his recovery when my 

graduation ceremony arrived, so I decided to drive up to Landstuhl, Germany, pick him up and we’d go to my graduation in Heidelberg, then drive home. The only problem was that I hated to drive and was afraid to drive across Europe by myself. Finally, my 15-year-old son decided he would go with me, we would pick up Ed in Kaiserslautern, the city where Landstuhl Air Force Base was, Ed would drop Marc off at the train station in Mannheim so he could get back home to Vicenza for his High School prom.

After we dropped Marc off in Mannheim (the 8^th largest metropolitan area in Germany), Ed and I would drive to Heidelberg, where I would graduate. It was the 600^th anniversary of the founding of Heidelberg University (the oldest university in Europe, established in 1386), and the faculty of the University of Maryland had planned wonderful entertainment for the graduates, including a cruise along the Rhine River.

I will never forget the road trip to Landstuhl AFB. It seemed to rain continually, and I worried getting lost while driving on the Autobahn, Germany’s federal highway, which has no federally mandated speed limits for 52% of its roads. It was supposed to take around eight and a half hours (I wondered how fast you had to drive to get there in that length of time). It, of course took me longer. In other words, it was a nightmare.

I was so grateful to have my son, Marc, along as navigator as I didn’t remember my 23-years ago German classes I’d taken in college.

But we arrived, picked up my husband and dropped Marc off at the train station. (Is it child

Where I graduated

neglect now to let a 15-year-old travel alone through three European countries by himself? But he was far more streetwise than I was.)

Later we heard that the prom Marc and my older daughter Athena attended in Vicenza was wonderful, and they loved it. I also loved my graduation, with my husband by my side as we took our cruise, attended all the festivities, and I finally graduated magna cum laud to get my B. A. in English.  It was worth all the effort.

Athena & Marc at their prom

Me at Graduation

Looking Back at “Back to the Future”

October 21, 2015 was the date Marty McFly went to in his journey to the future from 1985 in the iconic “Back to the Future” film of 1989. As the world celebrates this “Back to the Future Day,” and compares all the things that were and were not foretold, I’d like to go back to 1985 and compare how my life was in October 1985.

In October 1985, we were living in Vicenza, Italy, with our three children. Marlowe was at Utah State (in Logan, Utah), Athena and Marc were teenagers attending the DODS (Department of Defense School) in Vicenza. Diana was an eight-year-old. In the movie, Marty McFly goes back to the future to save his son from being arrested, and it is ironic that that year I was always worrying about Marc, my 14-year-old teenager, who it seemed was always getting in trouble.

Marc, 1985

This was our second year of our three-year tour in Italy; Marlowe had graduated from Vicenza High School, received a four-year scholarship to Utah State University, so we only had three children in Italy with us. Athena was a popular junior in the high school, school officer and performing in gymnastics. Marc was a ninth grader, class president, and wrestled on the high school team. Diana was in elementary school, and doing well.

I was in my second year in University of Maryland, attending night classes on base. It was very ironic that I, who had waited over 20 years to complete the college education I had interrupted when I married Ed in 1963 so I could be home with my children, now attended night classes, when the children were home and I wasn’t.

Athena, my prize-winning gymnast

My classes started about 5:00 p.m., so I can remember the “hand-off” when I arrived on base to attend school and met Athena and Marc, who would tend Diana that evening for me. I felt like I was handing-off Diana for their care, but of course, we were comparing plans as we traded places—me to school and them to home (or activities). Ed usually took care of Diana while I was in school, except for when he was TDY (away on temporary duty) and out of town.

I wasn’t gone every night, but usually took classes Monday through Thursday; however I also took a Saturday Cultural History Class where we went to visit the places we had studied about that week. It was a wonderful way to study history and I took at least four of these classes, visiting all the areas in Northern Italy. We studied Rome, but never visited there as a class. We would study the history, art, music, culture of the city (for example, Ravenna); then on Saturday, took a chartered bus to Ravenna to look at and discuss all the things we had studied!!!

Angela Buvoli, Conversational Italian teacher

I took Italian language classes through the University, (two full years), as well as attended a “conversational Italian” class on base to further enhance my use of the language. The conversational Italian teacher, Signora Angela Buvoli, told us about every-day life in Vicenza, its history, and how to understand things in a foreign country—how to take a bus, where to find things we needed, but didn’t know where to obtain; I recall I broke my sewing machine foot and she told me which marketplace I could most likely purchase a new foot for my machine; she was right. She taught us “how to get along” Italian, not the rigid grammar I learned from my university professor. I was always trying to practice my Italian, though I spoke it with a German accent (because I had studied German in college—or that was why they said I sounded more German than American).

I always spoke Italian with an accent, unlike my older children, who picked up Italian and spoke it without any accent (especially Marlowe). But Marlowe, who took Italian language classes in college in Utah and who always sounded like a native Italian, did not know his grammar as well as I did. Because of my English major, I studied English grammar and could compare it to the complex Latin grammar of the Italian language. But what I learned about Italian and practiced, although I was never very proficient), got me around. In fact when Ed and I traveled to Spain for a creative writing class taught on the “Costa Blanca,” I was able to speak enough Italian to help us though France (and of course, they thought I was German because of my accent), and never were quite as prejudiced as they would have been if I had spoken English and been a terrible American.

Ed in Germany 1985

I wasn’t as bad as my husband, Ed, who had studied Italian for six months in the Army’s Monterrey, California language school, and couldn’t seem to understand it. Once he stopped at a fruit market and asked for a “kilometer” of grapes. Of course kilometer is a measurement like miles and he meant to ask for a “kilo” or a thousand grams or approximately 2.2 pounds of grapes. He gave everyone in the market a good laugh at the ignorant American who couldn’t compute measurements.

Hitler's Eagle's Nest

That fall we went to Germany with Ed for meetings and were able to visit Hitler’s “Eagle Nest” at Berchesgaden, in Bavaria. The 20-minute “adventurous” bus ride along the steep rock walls and gorges to an altitude of 5,000 feet gave us a breathtaking view of one of Hitler’s favorite places. I recall buying a drink of “hot chocolate” there and I got a demitasse cup of thick, bitter, dark chocolate syrup without milk or sugar and couldn’t drink it. America’s idea of “hot chocolate” is definitely not the same as Germany or Italy’s.

The other thing I remember about that trip was that we were trying to help Marc be more responsible about his grades. Marc failed to turn in his assignments, or whatever, so he could not miss school to go on the trip, so Ed, Athena and Diana drove to Germany during the end of the week. Then Marc and I had to take the train after school on Friday afternoon to Germany to meet them.

I recall being confused in Milan when we had to change trains to go to Munich, Germany, and the signs referred to Munich as “Monaco” (Monaco di Baviera); it took me a while to determine that “Monaco” was the Italian name for München (German for Munich) and where I wanted to go—and that I was not headed toward the Monaco principality on the French Riviera. It was late that night when Ed met Marc and I at the train station and drove us to the hotel.

Athena and Marc were also very active in the base community theater program that fall, and I remember Athena was rehearsing for a musical that would be performed in December.

Diana

When I look back at October 1985, I think of it as the calm before the storm, because in December 1985 Ed was got a bone infection in his left arm, was medevacked (medically evacuated) to German and would spend nine months of the next year and a half in hospitals in Germany and Walter Reed Hospital (Washington, D. C.) before he was finally well again.  Ed spent that Christmas in the hospital at Landstuhl Airforce Base. I had flown with him to Germany as he was so sick, and arrived home on Christmas Eve. Diana had been staying with friends while I was in Germany, and I picked her up and Athena, Diana and I had Christmas together. Marc was skiing with friends in Austria that Christmas holiday and Marlowe stayed in Utah with Grandma Chambers in Burley. It was a lonely Christmas. 

Ed in the hospital at Landstuhl, Germany Christmas 1985