Medicare and Travel Musings

In the last six months I have recounted my experiences living in Italy, Belgium and France as a young woman and mother.  Now I’m going to back track to my first trip to France when I was 14.  I spent a year with a wonderful French family.

Poetic French Countryside.

I’ve been thinking about my travel experiences. I googled TRAVEL QUOTES and read a selection of Brainy Quotes.   Many of the citations  express the idea that through travel one discovers oneself.  Perhaps the idea is that by leaving home and what is familiar, we are forced to change and grow…to accept another way of being.

“To travel is to take a journey into yourself.” Danny Kaye

Here's another quote I like:  

"Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people.  Let your memory be your travel bag."  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I was incredibly lucky to have parents who pushed my brother and myself out into the world to seek and discover new lands and new people.  In the process, I think I learned about myself and to be somewhat independent.

Here I am before the big departure.  I was so excited.

In 1957 I was living in the Washington D.C. area and had just finished 9th grade.  My father, Kenneth Williamson, was the Director of the Service Bureau of the American Hospital Association.  The bureau provided health care information to congress.  Of course at that time there was no internet to google quick facts and figures so lobbyists provided information.  During his tenure congress wrote the Medicare Bill. My father was considered an architect of Medicare for his input into the bill. He was present at the signing of the historic bill with President Johnson and former President Truman. 

President Johnson signing the Medicare Bill.  President Truman received the first Medicare card.

In June of 1957 I left Washington D.C. to spend the summer with a French family in Montmorency, France.  I was fortunate to have parents who felt that learning a foreign language and traveling abroad were important learning experiences.  My father worked with a French woman named Renée Tanière.  Renée grew up in Paris. As a child she played with the children next door on the adjoining balcony.  At my parents request she contacted her childhood playmate, Louis Orsoni, and arranged my summer trip.  As it turned out I stayed with the family for a year.

A TWA Lockheed 1649 Constellation

All in all the flight over took 20 hours.  From Washington I flew to New York.  From there we stopped in Boston and Shannon, Ireland for fuel.  Then on to Paris and Orly airport.

Note the hats and gloves.  That's how ladies traveled.

I recount my travels in a leather-bound journal. My flight companions were two “middle-aged women…one quiet and passive, the other chubby with a jolly face.”  (Who knows? At 14, 35 year old ladies could have seemed “middle-aged.”)  In my journal I consider the value of travel: “I think when you leave your country and home, you change your life and character completely, your manners improve and you momentarily forget the past, look to the future and use the present as guidance.”  (I like the part about the manners.)  Further down I write: "In only 19 hours I will be in France and be my new person and a more learned and appreciative one at that.  So I say au revoir old Debbie and welcome to the new Debbie."  Ah, the confidence and innocence of youth!