Before Susan Smallwood Schilson ’78 was ever a student at Monmouth College, both of these statements were true. She had a connection to the school, as her parents, Bill ’52 and Erma Norris Smallwood ’49, and her sister, Mary Ann ’73, were Monmouth alumni.
Also true: Even at a young age, Schilson dreamed of traveling.
“Growing up, I answered a question about what I wanted to be by writing ‘stewardess,’ even though I had no idea at the time how to actually spell it,” she said.
And that’s exactly what Schilson did for 23 years with Delta Airlines, although that’s getting ahead in the story.
Coming back home
As a Monmouth High School student, Schilson took a course at the college with psychology professor Dean Wright, “which I loved,” and she also played the trumpet in the college’s jazz band under the direction of Steve Terrones. Despite those experiences and her family’s history with the hometown college, Schilson’s first choice was to leave Monmouth for a change of scenery. But after one semester at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, she learned that the grass isn’t necessarily greener 60 miles away.
“I found it was very impersonal at Bradley,” she said. “And I felt that the things I’d been into in Monmouth were things I couldn’t do until my junior year at Bradley.”
Her adviser, music professor Dick Griffiths, got her involved immediately “in all the choral groups and The Sound of Five. I’d like to give a lot of credit to him for my love of choral music. His conducting was amazing.”
Although she majored in voice, Schilson enjoyed other classes, as well.
“I loved the accessibility of the professors,” she said. “I particularly remember (classics professor) Bernice Fox. I loved to pop in and talk to her. And after I graduated, any time that I came back to town, I’d visit her.”
Planes, boats and walking
When Schilson graduated, she needed a job, and she found that “Delta Is Ready When You Are.” The airline hired her to be a flight attendant and, after a month of training, she was cleared for take-off. Delta later changed its slogan to “We Love to Fly and It Shows,” and that must’ve been true for Schilson, whose schedule could consist of flying from Chicago to St. Louis to Memphis to Jackson, Mississippi, and then back, all on the same day.
“You’d have six or seven take-offs in a day, and we served meals on nearly every flight,” she said. “That’s the time when you were in the trenches. Everybody had to do that when they were starting out.”
But after paying her dues, there was a pay-off – international flights, including her favorite destination, Paris.
“We’d arrive around 8 a.m. Paris time, and we’d depart the next day at 8 a.m.,” said Schilson.
That left 24-hour blocks of time to explore the City of Lights, and she did just that.
“I could be out all day and explore around Paris,” said Schilson, who flew with Delta from 1978 to 2001. “I’d received a deck of cards that had 100 walks to do in Paris, so I’d pull a different one out each time and see if I could get to all the places. I almost always visited Notre Dame, and I tried to get there when they were doing a rehearsal, although that didn’t always work out.”
A memorable story from her airline career was seeing a passenger with papers in Latin strewn about his seat.
“Offhand, I asked him if he knew Bernice Fox. His jaw just dropped. He said, ‘Well, yes. Everybody knows Bernice Fox.’ I’d see some passengers from Monmouth from time to time, but that’s my favorite Monmouth connection story.”
Upon retiring from Delta – the place where Schilson said she “took a gap year that lasted 23 years” – her travels were far from over. Schilson and her husband purchased a 39-foot trawler, the Kia Ora, which is a Maori-language greeting “kind of like ‘aloha,'” she said. “We made a five-year plan of living out on the water,” returning to their Florida home only around the holiday season.
Two main destinations were the Bahamas and Chesapeake Bay. The latter location, she said, was “due to hurricane season. Our insurance agreement was that we would be north of Georgia by July. It was a really interesting way of life. My husband knew navigation, but there was still a lot to learn. I took a course on diesel mechanics, and I had to understand how to provision the boat for 100 days at a time. The scariest thing we went through was having an engine quit while we were out of sight of land and the water was too deep for the depth sounder to record. It was so quiet on the water,” and not in a good way, as the absence of the engine’s ever-present hum was more eerie than peaceful.
But there were plenty of good times, too, including fascinating marine life.
“We’d see dolphins and pilot whales and sea turtles, and the water was so clear in places that you could look down 30 feet and see starfish,” she said. “We did a lot of snorkeling, and there was lots to see.”
After four-and-a-half years, the Schilsons sold Kia Ora and settled in North Carolina, where they still live today. In addition to volunteering, one of her activities since returning to shore was being certified by the Library of Congress to transcribe books into Braille, a process that can take up to a month per book.
Finding her voice, again
A frequent statement by alumni of the college is that they found their voice at Monmouth, and that’s certainly true of Schilson, who took it literally by majoring in it. But there wasn’t as much time for singing as she would’ve liked in all her travels with Delta and aboard Kia Ora. That changed, thanks in part to a hometown connection.
For the past 40 years, former Monmouth resident Julia Pedigo has taught in Boone, North Carolina, at Appalachian State University’s Hayes School of Music, where she’s served as coordinator of voice. After attending a church service where the St. Mary of the Hills Choir – the musical ensemble of St. Mary of the Hills Episcopal Church in nearby Blowing Rock – performed, Schilson thought, “This is where I want to be.”
The choir maintains the highest possible standards of liturgical leadership and performance. It has studied with choral directors of several of the famous college chapel choirs of Cambridge University. Knowing those standards, Pedigo put a temporary damper on Schilson’s hopes.
“She said, ‘I don’t think you’re good enough,'” said Schilson. “She kind of threw down the gauntlet. I spent the next six months re-training my voice.”
Schilson successfully auditioned for the choir, and that means more travel, including to Durham – not the North Carolina city east of Blowing Rock but, rather, Durham, England, where the St. Mary of the Hills ensemble has served as the choir-in-residency.
Lessons that last
“After all these years, the thing that really sticks with me is the liberal arts education I received at Monmouth,” said Schilson. “Between my classes and rehearsals, there was a lot packed in a day, but I loved the busy-ness. And I felt the professors really urged you to learn more. I love learning. When I was in an airplane, I’d look out the window, see an unusual land formation and wonder why it was shaped like that. So I’d try to find out. That would take me back to studying geology with (professor) Jim Wills. I’d also seek out music in all the different places I traveled.”
Occasionally, those travels even lead back to Monmouth. On her most recent visit, Schilson presented the college with a framed contact print of a Fighting Scot by the late local artist Royal Youngblood.
“It’s been hanging on my wall for decades,” she said. “I’ve had it a long while, but I thought it was finally time for it to come home.”
And the college was grateful that perhaps its most frequent flyer – and sea-going traveler – had come home, too, if only briefly.
***Courtesy of Barry McNamara, Monmouth College***
