An international Family

Intertwined

A Family Story

And a Country’s Story

Merge in Kyiv, Ukraine

On New Year’s Eve

Maidan Nezalezhnosti - Sergey Dolzhenko

PREFACE

I have a habit of preparing trip reports. My first, published in 1954, was titled Hitching Thru Europe, an account of 106 days I spent hitch hiking around Europe in 1953 after my junior year at Stanford. “The Tomahawk of Alpha Sigma Phi Fraternity”, v. 51, n. 2, Spring 1954, pgs. 64-67. In recent years family and some friends have come to expect them. Here are the international ones:

“Moments”: September 3-16, 2002

London, Pavia, Berlin, Krakow and Dresden

“The Trip of a Lifetime”

Our Great African Adventure (with a little bit of London)

August 2 to September 9, 2006

“Cathy and Keith’s Adventure 2008 in Southeast Asia”

Days in seven countries

“In Lieu of Iran”

Cathy and Keith’s 2010

Middle East Adventure in Jordan, Syria and Turkey

“Report on a visit to Iran”

Km and 22 days

April 16 to May 7, 2012

“Paris Trip Report”

May 7-15, 2012

“Dueling Headlines”: Our Trip to Cuba

Jan 25-Feb 7, 2014

“Visit to Family Pavarino and the Ledro Valley of Northern Italy”

April 13-23, 2014

PART ONE

Catherine Ursula Howard

Keith Mulrooney

Monica Kaufmann Mulrooney

Catherine Hilmer Mitchell

AN INTERNATIONAL FAMILY

Born in the south of England in 1902, CATHERINE URSULA HOWARD (now Mulrooney), began her part of WWII in 1939 when Great Britain went to war with Nazi Germany as Hitler attacked Poland. Stalin and Hitler had agreed to carve up Poland which borders on Ukraine on the east. England had aligned itself with Poland. As a member of the Queen Anne’s chapter of the Daughters of the British Empire in Los Angeles she and her friends started knitting socks for soldiers under a program called “Bundles for Britain.”

Figure 1 Catherine Ursula Howard Mulrooney and Ernest James Mulrooney in retirement along the coast of California

KEITH MULROONEY was born in 1932 in Los Angeles, California. On December 7, 1941 my dad and I went shopping for a bicycle for Christmas. When we returned home we learned of the Pearl Harbor attack. My dad immediately dressed for work for Pacific Tel and Tel in the long distance department and didn’t return home until late that night. During WWII the Los Angeles Times published color maps of the status of the war. I collected them and still have them. From them I learned a lot about world geography. As shown in the preface, I spent the summer of 1953 hitch hiking around Europe. In 1954 I joined the United States Marine Corps via the OCC program at Quantico, Virginia. Upon commissioning I was sent to the US Army artillery school at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma. My first duty post is the Marine artillery base at Camp Fuji, Japan. But just days before I am scheduled to return to the States, the Brits, French and Israelis close the Suez Canal. President Eisenhower takes a dim view of this action and sends three shiploads of Marines to the Indian Ocean to “protect American interests.” I ask to go along but they are not taking artillery. I ask to go as an infantry platoon leader and my wish is granted. We never get as far as Suez but during our return make port calls at Karachi, Pakistan, Bombay, India (now Mumbai), Colombo and Trincomalee, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Singapore, an island off the coast of Sarawak and Hong Kong.

MONICA KAUFMANN of Zurich, Switzerland comes to Stanford for one year as a foreign exchange student. She is from a family that produces doctors, priests and lawyers. We meet in Los Angeles in 1959, marry in l960 and have three children. In 1962 I go on a six week local government exchange program in Fanna, Norway (near Bergan). Monica comes along with our one year old daughter, Michele. (During the climatic weekend of the Cuban missile crisis, I fly to the Soviet neighbor, Finland, for a quick visit in Helsinki). Shortly after our return to Pomona, California where I am the Assistant City Administrator, Haldor Hoyte, the Assistant City Manager of Fanna, Norway arranges his own exchange program to Pomona and comes to live with us during the exchange. At the same time a Col. Saboori, an Iranian Police Chief, comes to study police management in Pomona under a training program established by the University of Southern California. City Administrator Fred Sharp asks if we would like Col. Saboori to live with us during the two weeks of his police study. Always the good sport, Monica says yes. We have a guest bedroom but only one guest bed. But we do have a second mattress. With the greatest international understanding, Haldor sleeps in the bed one night and Col. Saboori on the floor. The next night they reverse and so on for two weeks.

Figure 2 Monica Kaufmann Mulrooney at Chichen Itza in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula

Saboori and I corresponded once a year or so until the 1979 revolution in Iran and then I never heard from him again. Haldor went on to plan and then head a merger of cities in the Bergen area. I learned this when I crashed a Siberian wedding in Irkutsk. When I asked the uncle of the bride if he would like a two week old copy of the Washington Post I had in my room, he said yes. In the elevator going to my room to fetch the paper, I met a
Scandanavian sounding couple who turned out to be from Bergen. As soon as I mentioned Haldor and our two-way exchange, he said, “Come to our room. I am a reporter from the Bergen Record and I will interview you and write a story when we get back home.” (They were headed the opposite direction with a destination in China so it took a while) The uncle got his paper and the reporter wrote his story.

As the Viet Nam war comes to an end, Congress sets up an aid program for Vietnamese refugees. Monica helped set up an English as a Second Language program (ESL)for refugee students in the Alexandria, Virginia public schools. Over the next 18 years the refugees came from many countries including Afghanistan when the Soviets were there. One time we were invited to an Afghan wedding at a shopping center. When Monica got up to dance, she was quickly told that women didn’t dance there.

THE LAST YEAR OF THE SOVIET UNION, 1990 AND MONICA AND KEITH’S ADVENTURES IN THE NEW WORLD

Monica and Keith take a trip across seven time zones of the Soviet Union. Starting in Moscow, we fly east as far as Khabarovsk (day two of the Trans-Siberian Railroad heading west) on the Amur River border with China. From there we take Trans Sib west to Lake Baikal, then on to Irkutsk. Then it is Uzbekistan including Tashkent, Samarkand and Khiva. We then fly back to Moscow, detach ourselves from the tour and take a night train to St. Petersburg.

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