Have mother, will travel

05-14-2006

 

In addition to being Mother's Day, today begins National Tourism Week, which promotes awareness of the economic, social and cultural impact of travel. Travel has certainly had an impact on all three areas of my life.

Where does this interest come from? The urge for exploring new places, strolling unfamiliar streets, sampling exotic cuisines, hearing different languages, filling in blank spaces on one's personal map of the world?

In the case of this travel editor, the answer is easy: I always credit my mother.

Pauline Kaiser was a travel agent for over 25 years, at first with a small travel agency in Squirrel Hill and then with Mon Valley Travel, Downtown. She planned trips for hundreds of travelers, helping them get where they wanted to go, places she often recommended from personal experience, earning a reputation as one of the area's premier travel agents.

Many of her clients wouldn't leave home without her advice and brought her thank-you gifts upon their return. Some became her lifelong friends. One even later became my mother-in-law.

But for Polly, as everyone calls her, the occupation was more than a salary. It was a way for her to explore the world. She used the opportunities of familiarization trips, inaugural flights and cruises and travel agent discounts to go places she never would have been able to visit otherwise. There were getaways to cities in the United States, Canada and Mexico as well as many more extensive expeditions to Europe, the Middle East, Africa, South America, the Far East and the South Pacific.

Most of these trips happened after I had left home for college. But after each journey, she'd call or write and regale me with details of places she'd been, things she'd done, people she'd met. It all sparked my imagination.

Her connections got me a summer job writing airline tickets back in the pre-computer days when they were still filled out by hand. That led to a college job in a small travel agency, where my primary compensation came in airline tickets. And after graduation, I headed off to see Europe and stayed almost two years. I've been involved professionally with travel ever since.

Although most of her world jaunting took place after she turned 40, she claims she always had the urge to roam. "My mother told me I had gypsy blood, always looking for a reason to go someplace new."

Born and raised in Pittsburgh, she joined the Navy at 19 and in Norfolk met Bill Bear, a pilot from Kansas who romanced her with jump seat flights around the East: New Orleans, Florida, Cuba, New York. A year later, they were married, and he was sent to Japan. She met him in San Francisco on his return, and they went to help his parents on the Kansas farm and finish college. Two years later I was born. Eighteen months after that, shortly before graduation, he died of a ruptured appendix.

Widowed at 27, Polly returned to Pittsburgh, where she eventually remarried. She had three more children with Sidney Kaiser, but tending her flock kept her close to home except for short family vacations. It wasn't until 1965 that she decided it was time to return to work, when a friend directed her to a travel agency that needed help.

She cites Australia as the one place she always wanted to visit but didn't. She and my stepfather had reservations to go, but their plans were canceled when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Shortly afterward, she retired to take care of him. After his death, she resumed her career part time. During that time, her travels were mostly to visit her children in Arizona and friends in Florida, but she also took several Elderhostel trips.

Now at 82, she's slowed physically and is content to stay at home. She doesn't miss being a travel agent; the business has changed a great deal in recent years. But she still relishes getting together with a group of industry veterans who call themselves "The Old Timers" to reminisce. To paraphrase Dr. Seuss, "Oh, the places they've been."

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