Media Coverage
COURIER
(Cedar Falls, Iowa)

Pair's trek puts country on the map

By ANNE PHILLIPS Courier Staff Writer

CEDAR FALLS -- They say that half of the time they're called courageous. The other half, they're called just plain crazy.

But the labels don't deter an ambitious mother-daughter team from wandering the United States, writing about their adventures and hoping to teach young readers about the geography and history of their country - and a myriad of subjects that fall in between.

The pair, Malva Huson Brown and her daughter, Juanita Huson Sylvest, dropped anchor in Cedar Falls late last week, where they stood still long enough to mail the 23rd issue of their Huson Travel Letters to "children of all ages" around the nation and in four foreign counties.

Brown, 75, is a retired newspaper editor and librarian from Baton Rouge, La. Sylvest, 48, is a former newspaper columnist who does free-lance public relations and marketing for the travel industry. Before the journey began in June 1989, Sylvest, a licensed sea captain, lived near the Chesapeake Bay.

The Huson Travel Letters that chronicle the pair's 18-month journey across the nation are sent to subscribers twice each month. The current trip recreates a journey the Huson family took in the 1940s when Sylvest and her brother were only toddlers and their parents mailed the first series of travel letters across the county.

"There was a part of me that always wanted to redo the trip at different age when I could have a whole different appreciation of what it was about," Sylvest said. "And about three years ago, National Geographic came out with a survey showing how geographically illiterate the population was. I thought 'Here's a window of opportunity. I could help do something about this:"

That "something" was to help teach children about the United States.

Tie Huson Travel Letters, typically five pages long, focus on geographic and historical information but, unlike textbooks, are personalized and "chatty," Sylvest said. "It's kind of like getting a letter from a grandmother and an aunt who are on the road and traveling and write to share their adventures with you."

But it doesn't take long to realize they are no ordinary "grandmother and aunt."

Sylvest, wearing dangling earrings in the shape of tiny globes, and her mother, attired in vibrant pink, talk with animation of their adventures and misadventures.. Brown said she serves as editor, chief cook and washer woman, while Sylvest is head writer, driver and mechanic.

The pair travels in a large recreational vehicle named "Flung Festoon," which is decorated with bumper stickers, one reading 'Peace begins with me." One goal of the journey includes taking photographs of the vehicle, nicknamed "Festy," in front of the capital building of every state, except Alaska and Hawaii.

Traveling in the 1990s sometimes seems far removed from the family's journey in the 1940s, they agreed.

After World War II, Malva and her first husband, Roland-Huson, packed Juanita, who was then four years old, and her younger brother also also named Roland, into a modified Ford automobile for a two-year journey and sent the first letters via typewriter and ditto machine. More than 40 years later, Brown and Sylvest's vehicle has been renovated to include a word-processing station.

The older Roland Huson died in 1969. The younger Roland now handles the pair's bills from his home in Baton Rouge, where he is a lawyer.

Brown recalls that in the 1940s the roads were narrower, the towns smaller, and the freedoms to travel where one pleased seemed greater. "In those days, there was more camaraderie," she said. "Everyone tented. Among motor home travelers, you get in your little house and you stay there. That (first trip) was more adventure than this is."

Retracing steps from the 1940s

But adventure can still be found, said the pair, who in recent months have dug for diamonds, toured coal mines and tried their hand at hang gliding.

In each state, Brown and Sylvest will visit the capital city and other sites. In Iowa, they have visited Des Moines, the Pella tulip festival, Elk Horn, Saylorville Lake, the University of Northern Iowa and canoed the Cedar River. During their stay in Cedar Falls, Brown and Sylvest parked their vehicle at the home of Dr. Thomas Switzer,dean of UNI's College of Education.

Subscriptions to the Huson Travel Letters cost $75 for the 18-month series. "The cost may seem high," Sylvest said, "but the price per week, about 94 cents, is comparable to what`children typically spend on hamburgers, pop or candy."

Still, the letter does not pay for the journey. "The letters pay for themselves in terms of production and contribute to the gas, but the day-to-day living expenses are coming out of mother's retirement funds," Sylvest said.

The trip is scheduled to end around Thanksgiving.

The pair is satisfied with the knowledge the journey is helping to broaden the horizons of their readers. They plan to conduct a follow-up survey to determine the impact of the letters.

"Kids have an innate curiosity to want to know," Sylvest said. "The letters are not meant to be an 'all-you-wanted-to-know' about every state. What they are meant to do is to pique a child's curiosity and make them want to know more."

For more information, write to Huson Travel Letters, in care of Color-Art Inc., 10300 Watson: Road, St. Louis, Mo. 63127.