Media Coverage
STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER
(Springfield, IL)

As we visited homeschool subscribers, friends or relatives during our travels, our hosts frequently alerted the local media. In this case, reporter Chris Green of the STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER in Springfield, IL came out to interview us and take a picture. It was always fun to see how others saw us!

Peddlers of geography on the road -- again
By Chris Green

(photo caption)Malva Huson Brown, left, and her daughter Juanita Huson Sylvest are retracing a journey the family first made 42 years ago.

Sylvest and her mother, Malva Huson Brown, decided to embark on an 18-month trip through all 50 states. They hope to improve geography knowledge by writing letters to children all across the country.

When her daughter came home from school with a map showing she had placed Colorado next to Vermont, Juanita Huson Sylvest had had enough. It was time to take her geography crusade on the road -- again.

Sylvest says her daughter, a college sophomore and honor student, "was very shocked to find out that Colorado and Vermont were not next to each other, because she knew they were both places that you go to ski."

Aware of the growing number of children who are geographically illiterate of the United States, Sylvest and her mother, Malva Huson Brown, both from Baton Rouge, LA, decided to embark on an 18-month trip through a11 50 states. They hope to improve geography knowledge by writing letters about their trip to children all across the country.

It isn't the first time the Huson family has made such a trek. Forty-two years ago, the travelers were Brown, her first husband, Roland Huson, who died in 1969, and their two preschool children. That time too, the group mailed out "Travel Letters." The idea to take a second trip and publish the letters again came indirectly from her daughter, Sylvest said.

"Children can know a lot about a particular area, but not know how it relates to the rest of the country," she said. "What we're trying to do is help people get a feeling for the entire country.

"The whole project is based on the premise that kids don't necessarily like to study and read text books, but all children enjoy getting personal mail.

"So we write them, every two weeks, a personal chatty letter about where we've been and what we've done. It's in a very friendly tone, and it gets the kids excited.... It helps to stimulate their interest in knowing more about the country." A United States atlas also is sent to each letter recipient, Sylvest said, which allows the child and adults to trace the travels of the couple as they receive their letters.

After starting from Louisiana and traveling north along the Mississippi River, the Husons are four states and one month into their journey, which will end in December 1990.

Times have changed immensely since the first expedition, Brown said. Between 1948 and 1966, her husband was publisher and Brown, 73, was the editor of several weekly newspapers in Louisiana.

But before that the couple spent nearly two years discovering America, driving long stretches on gravel roads, in a modified Ford complete with a typewriter, ditto machine and camping equipment. Sylvest was 4 years old at the time.

"In those days, there were very few accommodations for travelers," the elder Huson said.

"The camping facilities are very different now. On the original trip, we were often on open land, the beach, or an open park. Now there's very little public access to public land. Things are much more organized, commercialized and regulated."

Today the Husons are traveling in a 28-foot recreational vehicle, and the ditto machine has been replaced by a computer and word processor.

"One of the new things that we added to our modern 'Huson Travel Letters' is ecology," said Sylvest, also a former journalist and ex-travel agent. "We're talking about what we're finding as we travel through the country."

The original letters, Sylvest said, consisted mostly of history, geography and economics.

During their journey, the Husons get their writing ideas by visiting every state capital and historic sites.

"It is kind of like having a grandmother and aunt on the road, who just write you friendly letters about what we are doing. We both have enough child in us that we like to do things that children would enjoy.

Sylvest and her mother have gone digging for diamonds in Arkansas and cave exploring in Missouri, and visited the zoo in St. Louis.

"We are doing and writing to the kids about things we think they would have done if they were traveling with us," Sylvest said. "We try to let them feel that they are a part of it."

The trip is mostly financed through Brown's retirement fund, Sylvest said. "We were hoping to get enough subscriptions to pay for the trip, but it would take 5,000. Mother and daddy did it with 300 subscriptions, but that was more than 40 years ago."

A subscription for the 18-month, 40-letter series of letters is $75, which Sylvest said averages 94 cents per week. A child will spend that on a pop and candy bar, she said.

While in Springfield, the Husons had their camper serviced and visited Robert Warmack, Brown's great-nephew. The Husons were heading to Chicago for the weekend and to Wisconsin on Monday.

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