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Ann Boylston Violi Austin group

I remember getting to the Austin airport and

meeting Pam Ferrari who missed her horse—one of the people we came to love who didn’t go—too enthu-siastic, political, loving? Then we were in a darkened lounge, and I saw a fellow seated in the cor-ner whom I assumed to be a Turk since he looked so

much like Aybars, with a mustache, who was our high school exchange student, an old friend, and my first in-structor. Little world . . . . Then we were told we didn’t all need to be virgins, and the classes, and soccer in the hot sun—didn’t some-one sweat blood? And we were jealous of the group training for Afghanistan, I think it was, with their bikes.I had cool roommates, Sarah Jean Rehder and Linda Harris, and we made friends with roomies Joel Levine and Ron Schie, among many. I don’t remember the name of the married fellow who shared a narrow tree with me when the shooting began. Poor brain-damaged fellow...to say nothing of the others. Before he was identified, I met a woman who guessed who it was. World getting smaller, and many years later I had no trouble getting my students to do research when I told them that story. Our Turkish instructors were all so different, warm and wonderful. It was mostly learning—some chalk fights, I recall. I thought the fact that we learned Turk-ish by the same method as we would teach our language was most helpful. There was the ranch and the dear people in Mexico, the final dinner with all the great food the instructors prepared, and we were over Ankara with its brown rolling hills. I was one of the last assigned and arrived in Havran to find my supposed apartment occupied and my bags taken into a teacher’s home, where I lived with her and her husband, a judge, and their four children until she found me a place nearby. Ah, who was helping whom?; but she loved practicing her English and was very inter-ested in everything “modern” . . . charming people. The English-teaching principal arrived after me, so the next year I had too few hours in the school (evening

classes for those interested did not apply), so I ended up at Istanbul Maarif Koleji where the students, though still polite, were much more sophisticated than those in my town. They had me read the then-new novel by a western villager about outlaws who lived in caves . . . it had a profound effect on some. Our trainer, Rene Vidali, had introduced my room-mate, Karen DeCormier, to his most handsome friend and they now live in California near their children and grandchildren. One daughter took her doctorate in Turk-ish Studies. I’m not Catholic, but one of my great memories was Easter in Ephesus at sunrise overseen by a priest from Izmir who befriended some of us. Also great memories: my Istanbul students taking me to “To Sir, With Love”; having great meals with my adopted family even after I’d moved out; visiting their relatives; students surrounding

Grandsons John Joseph and Paul Anthony

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Amasya

my desk once the fresh garlic was available in spring—how sweet they were even if the atmosphere wasn’t. So, back in New York I worked for Pan Am (it wasn’t my fault), took courses and taught ESL, again, until I earned a master’s in learning disabilities—mostly, I worked with disturbed kids teaching English and high

school math—mainly, a great experience. I married a couple of years after getting back, my great poet, Paul, who passed away about a year ago. My daugh-ter, a botanist, has fraternal twins and my son is a fitness trainer. I’m retired now and trying to figure the next move.

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