David Kroenlein, Traveling Kids Send Home Surprises

David Kroenlein, Class of 1960 Reunion in 2010

Kids have a way of unsettling parents, especially when traveling abroad.  These two examples are light-hearted in result, compared with the traumatic calls many parents have received.

At 2:00 a.m. on an October Sunday in 2001, our telephone rings, not a welcoming sound when kids are in different locations around the country and the world, with 9/11 a bit over a month earlier.  Very loud background noise from a crowd and then a cheery, “Hello, Dad, How are you?”  Then, “Have you ever been to a German beer hall during Oktoberfest?”  Not what the parents want to hear for a variety of reasons, including our understanding that she was studying in Florence on a semester abroad.

An earlier, and more dramatic shock, to the parental system was a summer 1995 call that we received from a hotel in Nairobi. Another of our daughters was calling. She was on her way home from a summer research project with her brother at a nature research station in the middle of Kenya.  No introduction, just “Please ask Dr. R [family doctor] if he has the fourth in the vaccination series for rabies.”  She hung up. No way to call back. No knowledge of where they were staying in Nairobi.  Dr. R assured us that he had access to the fourth rabies vaccine, and he had the same questions we did. We had no answers. 

Two days later, we met the wayward children at International Arrivals at JFK Airport, where we heard the story.  While helping another researcher handle a mongoose, our daughter was bitten; the mongoose ran into the bush.  Fortunately, Dr. R had given them hypodermic needle packs before they left, just in case … of anything. 

The research station was 60 rough miles from a medical clinic where most all patients were AIDS patients.  The clinic had outdated rabies vaccine doses that might get her through shot 3, using her needles. She made weekly treks to the clinic through large herds of elephants, but the 4th shot would wait until her return to New York.  All good.  Not such a big deal for a young woman who was hospitalized with asthma several times in her youth and had heart repair surgery when she was 12.