During the spring of the 1965-66 school year, my
sister Beth was using her excellent typing and business skills helping in the Wolcott
(CT) High School business office with Mr. Pelegano. One of the tasks that he
was working on was the application of the high school to host our first ever
foreign exchange student. Having typed out an announcement to be sent to
parents asking if anyone would like to be a host family, Beth brought home a
copy and asked our parents if they would consider it. I was going off to
college that fall and so we would have an available bed. After considering it, my
parents agreed. They filled out a host family application and sent it to the
NYC office of AFS (then still called the American Field Service).
Little did I realize at the time that this would be
the first step in something that impacted me for the next half-century!
Being a Host Brother
The process was much different in those days. Chapters
were school-based, matching of students to families was done in the NY office
by the staff working with stacks of the family and student applications, and
students from Europe arrived by ship – using the time on the ship for their
orientation. Our family was matched with a girl from Norway. Like most people,
we incorrectly thought that Norwegian girls would be blond with blue eyes. But
when we received a copy of her application, we were surprised that she had
brown hair and brown eyes.
[Newspaper Article]
Ingrid
As noted in this newspaper article about a week before
her arrival, Ingrid was from a town called Hammerfest, Norway. Hammerfest is in
the far north of the country and boasts the northernmost ice-free port in Europe
even through they are above the Arctic Circle (they catch the tail end of the
Gulf Stream). They are also the northernmost incorporated city in Europe.
In preparation for Ingrid’s arrival, I was moved out
of my bedroom and relegated to the basement (stone walls, concrete floor, no heat,
etc.). It wasn’t too bad for the month of August, but when I came home for our
Christmas break, it was pretty cold down there!
As the newspaper article indicates, our family went to
the dock in New York City where we met the boat arriving from Europe. (As I
recall, my parents left my younger siblings back in CT with relatives, so it
was only my parents, myself, and my sister Beth who went along for the ride.)
Ingrid immediately became a valued member of our
family. My parents took a number of pictures that year with Ingrid featured in
them. I’ve included many of them below with short captions. I’ll let the
pictures tell the story of that momentous year.
[Pictures of Ingrid] These include her with her Norwegian
family, her graduation from high school in Norway and in the US, the MSU
sweatshirt I got her for Christmas, My taking her to the Christmas Cotillion, helping
my mother in Girl Scouts (Ingrid was a scout in Norway), her being “mayor for a
day” in Wolcott, and taking a swim in February (to show how she was used to
cold water! – brr!)
We were all sad to see Ingrid return to Norway at the
end of the year. But that did not mean that our relationship with her ended –
in fact, it is going on to this day. My parents visited her in Norway several
years later. My sister also did the same. And Ingrid also visited us – one of
the most memorable when we put on a surprise party for my parents’ 50th
anniversary where family members kept walking in on them – including Ingrid! The
pictures below are of my father and Ingrid’s father in Norway and a picture of
Ingrid and my sister Beth with our mom the year before my mom’s passing. We are
still all friends on social media and I am proud to call her my Norwegian
sister!
Rosita
Six years later, as my younger sister was also
approaching the end of her high school years, our family hosted yet again. By
then the AFS chapter in town was much more established and the high school
actually had two students that year – Rosita from Barbados (who stayed with
us), and Betty from Ecuador. By that time my sister Beth and I were both
married and my wife and I were living in the next town. So we didn’t have as
much interaction as we did with Ingrid. But as you can see from the pictures,
she had just as good a time. Being from a warm climate, that school year she
experienced her first snowfall (it happened at night, but she got all dressed
up and went outside to throw her first snowball), and she learned to ice skate
(albeit with a bit of trepidation). For the Christmas Cotillion, my brother
Chuck did the honors like I had done with Ingrid. My parents also later visited
Rosita in Barbados, although we never established quite the closeness as we had
with Ingrid.
Here are some pictures of Rosita from that year…
After two experiences of hosting, my mother became a
local AFS volunteer, so she continued to interact with the students being
hosted in our town for the next several years.
Being a Sending Family
When our daughter, Kim, was in high school she thought
that she might choose international business as a career. Having had this exchange student exposure in
my past, I suggested that she might want to study abroad for a year in high
school. We checked out the available
programs and found that the exchange program that Ingrid and Rosita were part
of, the American Field Service, now called AFS Intercultural Programs, was
still the premier program in the industry, so Kim applied through them. She preferred colder climates (and still
does), so she listed Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, as her three choices and was
selected to go to Norway for her senior year of high school.
While she was in the same country as Ingrid, Ingrid
was still in the far northern reaches of the country and Kim was living with a
host family on an island not too far from the capital, Oslo. To put that in
perspective, the distance from Hammerfest to Oslo (1200 miles or 2000
kilometers) is about the same as from New York City to Miami. And because the
roads are often narrow and winding and even include sections where you have to
take a ferry across a fiord, the time for the drive is 28+ hours compared to
the 22 hours on US interstates. So Kim and Ingrid never got to see each other
there.
Being a Host Family
That got us on AFS’ mailing list. A few years later we got a letter saying that
AFS was urgently looking for host families for students who were not yet placed
for the coming school year. They were
due to arrive in just a few weeks. We
contacted the person listed in the letter and were sent a list of a couple of
unplaced girls (from Hong Kong, Venezuela, and Mexico) with just a sentence or
two about each one. Kim was living at
home at the time, so we took a vote – my wife voted for the girl from Mexico
and Kim and I voted for the one from Hong Kong.
Just a week or so later, Wing Man Ma (known as Christy) entered our home
and our lives. (I was serving on the board of directors of Lehigh Valley
Christian High School at the time, so was able to work with the school to set
up their host school policies and practices.)
We were the only host family in the Lehigh Valley with
AFS that year, so when there were a few more families the following year I
organized a picnic for the host families and started an AFS chapter. A few years later we agreed to host Shirley
Mensah from Ghana. A month or so into
that year we were made aware of another girl who needed to change host
families, so we agreed to host two at the same time and added Jiraporn (Noon)
Tabtimdaeng from Thailand to the mix. By
this time I was also the sending coordinator for our team (which covered
Delaware, eastern shore Maryland, and eastern Pennsylvania) as well as the chair
for our local chapter.
We enjoyed that year and got quite close to both
Shirley and Noon. I was able to visit both of them during the years which
followed – the below pictures are from those visits. So now in addition to my
Norwegian sister, my wife and I have daughters from other countries.
[Pictures of Shirley and Noon]
Local Volunteer and Short-term Host
A few years later we also hosted Ben from
Switzerland. He was not able to adapt to
our relaxed, not always super clean style of living, so after a few months he
moved to the home of another family in Emmaus.
In the in-between years we were also host families for a number of
short-term students (ones whose host family was on vacation when they arrived,
for students in between host families, and other situations). So students from Italy, Australia, Canada,
Germany, Chile, China, Greenland, and Indonesia, among others, were also
passing through our doors. For some of these students, I was the local support coordinator
and met with them regularly. I am still in contact with some of them.
One incident that was significant was when we hosted
Adi, from Indonesia, for a short time at the end of the year when his host
family was taking a mission trip to Mexico. I took him to work with me for the
day and showed him the kind of work that I did. At the end of the week he
announced that he wanted to have the same kind of career that I had. And he
did! Upon his return home he went to university in the same field, is now
married with one child, and is using his talents in similar ways. One never
knows what kind of impact one will have.
Here are a few pictures of some of these students who
were with us for a short time. I am still in touch with some of them!
Being a National Volunteer
My volunteering was at first just locally – organizing
a picnic of the other host families the year after we first hosted and then
starting a local Lehigh Valley chapter.
Then the following year I was elected as the sending coordinator for the
team when the previous person in that position abruptly resigned. But my organizational skills enabled me to
take over that position and greatly improve it during the next several
years. I served in that role for about
10 years before turning it over to others, but still remained involved in the
sending process by interviewing students, etc. Since I was running the Lehigh
Valley chapter, I also got involved in hosting, i.e., finding host families,
interviewing them, and supporting them during their hosting experience.
A few years after my involvement began the
organization went through a reorganization process and changed the role and
election procedure for the National Council, the body that represents their
5000 volunteers to the management. I
thought that my management and organizational skills would be useful, so I
submitted my name as a candidate. I was
elected to that body for a three-year term, then in my second year was elected
as the chair of the National Council.
That same year they changed the makeup of the Board of Directors and
gave the NC chair an ex-officio seat on the Board, so I also served for three
years on the Board.
From host brother to sending parent to hosting parent
to local volunteer to area team volunteer to national volunteer to serving on
the Board of Directors – it is amazing the number of ways that I became
involved. But not only did I impact them, they impacted me as well!
Advisory Boards and Others
In addition, I was serving on a number of other
national committees and advisory groups – the Outreach to Educators Advisory
Group (because of my work with LVCHS), the IT Advisory Group (because of my IT
background), and then with the International Relations Committee of the Board
(because of all my international and cultural experience).
One of my more interesting involvements was helping to
write a series of handbooks for US families hosting students from “country
X”. First, I was on the committee to do
one for Germany (involved spending two weeks with corresponding volunteers from
Germany – one week in Germany, one week in the US). Then I adapted that handbook to Austria. After that I worked with another volunteer to
develop one for Ghana. Finally, I led a
team to Thailand to prepare a handbook for families hosting students from
Thailand. Thus, of the 11 country-specific host family handbooks, I had a
significant role in producing 4 of them (see https://dev.afsusa.org/host-family/resources/#afs-nav-host-family-handbook).
Future Impact
Recently, one of our grandchildren announced that he
thought he would like to become an exchange student. He is currently
considering a “gap year” program, possibly in the Netherlands. We have
encouraged him to do so. That would be the fourth generation of our family to
be involved! “And the beat goes on.”
Summary – the AFS Effect
The AFS Effect is real. Not only does this program for
exchange students touch the student – and change their life forever – but it
also touches the host family, their friends and neighbors, the school they
attend and the students in it, and others. Sometimes the immediate impact is
short-lived but there are still residual impacts for the rest of the person’s
life. In other cases, such as my own, there is significant impact that lasts
for a half-century or more.
I have no regrets about any of the above. I am a
better person because of all the aspects of this program that I have been able
to experience. My understanding of other cultures and my love for people who have
experiences far different than my own continues to impact me – even though I am
now retired for many years and no longer directly involved in the exchange
student field.
If you have the opportunity to do so, take it
seriously. You’ll be glad you did!
