Our goal for this website is to share logs and pictures of our travels with family and friends that will acquaint them with the destinations that we have enjoyed. We will include tips and suggestions based upon our experiences that may assist anyone planning a trip to these locations. The information that we have utilized from the websites of other travelers has motivated us to establish this site. We probably will add blogs about sundry subjects if the inspiration strikes.
Almost daily we are reminded about how fortunate we have been to have become acquainted with so many incredibly significant historic places, beautiful landscapes and fascinating cultures in our world. When we see pictures on television of places that we have been, we excitedly exclaim, “We’ve been there. We have been right there!” and reiterate our gratitude once again.
Norman
I grew up in Pleasanton, a few miles south of San Antonio, Texas, moving there before I was old enough to remember any of it. The Great Depression of the 1930s engulfed the nation a few years after my birth, but I still deny that my entry into the world precipitated the stock market crash that was its precursor. My father pastored the First Baptist Church congregation in Pleasanton, thereby gifting me to the entire town as an easily tracked target for minute scrutiny and eager censure for any perceived deviation from whatever narrow standards of conduct they chose to embrace. My parents debated the hazards of having a child for ten years after they were married, and after I was born, forever regretted their choice to have a child and abandoned the concept for the future. They wanted a girl and probably thought the gamble too great to roll the dice again.
I went to Baylor University in Waco, Texas on a football scholarship. All the former players returned from active military duty that same fall after the end of World War II. I, along with almost all of the freshman class was quickly cut to make room for the veterans. The coaches wanted me to spend a year in Junior College then return the following year, but home town friends enrolled at Howard Payne College, and my father’s enthusiastic support of the school, made HPC seem a better choice to me. The Athletic Director did not hesitate to offer a scholarship. But my heart remained at Baylor, and I eagerly rejoined it there the following year as a walk-on at a time when walk-ons had little value.
Louisville and Lexington, Kentucky and Charlottesville, Virginia share a common gene that elevates them to a higher status of desirability as a place of residence. They are university cities, and these institutions contribute greatly to the cultural as well as intellectual level of their surroundings. I benefited from living in each of them for a few years. When I received a job offer in Mississippi, I accepted it even though it coincided with James Meredith’s enrollment at Ole Miss, Freedom Riders seeking to break color barriers in public places and the defiance of elected officials against integration. I planned to stay in the state three years or so, then retreat to where the word “Pleasant” more frequently appears on the weather maps. I am still in Mississippi a half-century later.
Enveloped in that period of time were the joyous high of accompanying two children as they grew and fledged and the sad low of marriage disintegration.
After being single for a year and with great trepidation, in 1979 I finally summoned the courage to stick my toe into the daunting waters of dating I asked Jan to go to dinner with me after a meeting to which our attendance was mandatory. I reasoned that under the circumstances she would have difficulty manufacturing an excuse quickly enough. She did not even attempt an excuse.
That night was the equivalent of a Boston 4th of July fireworks celebration for us. I was doomed from that moment on, my world suddenly in spin cycle and my emotions bouncing off the earth’s Ozone. More than thirty five years later it still has not changed, just rooted more deeply and coated with an impenetrable armor of gratitude, appreciation and love.
The other providential turning point in my life was less climactic. I assumed responsibility for my supervisor’s adjunct activity of conducting motor coach tours for seniors that was sentenced for abandonment upon his retirement. I quickly discovered that this was my real calling. My affinity for detail, enthusiasm for travel and other related aptitudes seemed to be a perfect fit. Eventually this evolved into the formation of Purple Mountain Tours. We took groups to visit all but four of the Unite
d States. We have been to thirty other countries, some with groups in tow, but since retirement, mostly just the two of us.
We still get phone calls of appreciation from former travelers, reiterating how much our trips enriched their lives. I cannot imagine a more lasting and rewarding result of vocational endeavor than the affirmation of knowing that our efforts facilitated exciting experiences of joy, adventure and discovery for those who accompanied us.
Jan
I greeted the world on September 5, a beautiful fall day in 1940. Mother and I were at the hospital in Morrilton, Arkansas, the town where daddy was pastor of the Baptist church. I was a wee bit of a lass, weighing in at a mere five pounds. The nurses took pity on me and declared that hence forth I shall be called “Jan,” a much more appropriate moniker for such a tiny thing than the cumbersome “Janetta Ann” that Clarence and Willa thought was so pretty. My last name of Cutrell was challenging enough, the nurses probably thought, without extending it any more than necessary. My little brother, Jimmy joined the family in 1943, smack in the middle of World War II.
Mrs. Eden, a magnificent teacher, introduced me to music almost before I could read. At seven years old, I learned basic fundamentals with piano lessons. She taught me the importance of practice and hard work, essential disciplines necessary to accomplish any of life’s goals. I had discovered my gift and embraced it eagerly.
In 1949 we moved to Calhoun City, Mississippi, which will forever remain my hometown. The friendships formed with my classmates there remain robust after more than a half-century, and we still gather frequently for reunions.
Piano continued to be my obsession in Calhoun City, and my skill quickly increased accordingly. When I was eleven, MS Pryor, the music director for our church asked me if I might be interested in learning to play the organ. I was more than excited. Ecstatic even falls far short of describing how I felt. I began lessons immediately and in no time at all, I was playing for Wednesday night and Sunday night services.
When my daddy’s secretary got married, I played for the wedding. I can still remember how she looked. I think I was as excited to be playing as she was to be getting married. I was not yet a teenager. That was just the beginning. How I wish I had a record of all the times I played for young couples to march down the aisles of churches to begin their life together. It numbers easily in the hundreds.
Church was not my only opportunity to participate in events incorporating music. I became the accompanist for operettas and plays at school. Later the superintendent made it possible for me to teach piano a block away at home, during the last period of school. Recently I learned that some of my pupils became accomplished musicians themselves and even taught others. I guess that makes me a grandteacher with grandstudents and maybe great-grandstudents.
My world was in order. Life was good. Then at the worst possible time, it shattered to pieces. Daddy announced that we were moving half way across the world to Biloxi on the Mississippi Gulf coast. We pretty much knew this was coming, since we had visited the church, but the consequences of that move had not fully sunk in. When I fully realized that this meant leaving all my friends forever, starting my senior year in a huge high school in what seemed to me a large city, plus having to walk three times as far just to catch the bus as I did from my old home to school, I was inconsolable.
Surrounded by friends on the morning we left Calhoun City, I refused to get in the car, running around it with daddy chasing me. Once corralled, I cried all the way to Hattiesburg. My life was over and my world in shambles.
Quickly I discovered that it wasn’t all that bad. The probing spotlight of scrutiny that had followed me incessantly all my life was turned off. I was no longer the small-town “preacher’s kid,” my every move the vulnerable target of community critics and gossips. I was now just another average adolescent like everybody else. Living a few blocks from the beach was another thrill. I began to have experiences that were previously unimaginable.
When I began accompanying the Biloxians choral group at school, I rapidly made many new friends and the emotional upheaval of leaving my safe placed and life-long friends began to fade.
There was really no choice about which college I would attend. My parents and I just took for granted that Mississippi College, the Baptist school in Clinton was my destiny. I waited impatiently for the unforgettable day when we packed the car and headed north. I was eager for the new adventure to begin. Exhilarating is the most accurate description of how I felt. So why was mother crying when they left me standing outside my new dorm?
My expectations were not unrealistic. College life suited me. I loved this new world filled with fun, new acquaintances who evolved into life-long best friends and on top of that, an exceptionally good education.
Halfway through college I began a career as church organist. With the exception of a brief interruption, I have continued that vocation until now; sixteen years at Ridgecrest Baptist Church located in Jackson at the time, followed by twenty-two years at Broadmoor Baptist and since then at First Baptist in Canton. That’s more than half a century. Wow!
Crisis erupted in 1979 in volcanic proportions. The great Easter Pearl River flood engulfed our home, swallowing it up to the ceiling. We lost almost everything. Then divorce sent our lives into a tailspin. Here I was a single mom with two young boys.
I needed two jobs to make it, but I couldn’t manage three. I had to give up teaching piano. In addition to my organist responsibilities, I had a secretarial job.
Contrary to Murphy’s law which says something like, “When you think things couldn’t get worse, they do,” my life counter marched directly into a beautiful world I never imagined. Norman asked me to go to dinner with him, and from that night until now our lives have been tightly welded together with ever increasing strength. He brings sunshine and happiness where there was little joy, comfort and peace where there was sadness and fear, and love beyond anything I had ever known. In 2016 we will celebrate our thirtieth wedding anniversary.
The business of travel dominated the last decades of our working lives both as travel facilitators, tour provider, tour directors and as unencumbered travelers on our own. The work was physically and emotionally exhausting, but the compensating result of grateful passengers brought abundant rewards. We’ve been retired for a long time now, Norman for more than twenty years and I for fewer years, but the excitement of exploring our wonderful world still keeps us in the air and on the road.
Our Progeny
Bryan and Erin Rodgers and their daughters Kathleen and Elizabeth; Dawn and Eric Wyse and their children John and Anna, the two families live near each other in Tennessee; Jay and Shannon King whose children are Avery, Nolan, Nate and Elly, reside in California and Paul and Wendy King, parents of Andrew, Joseph and Jason who have not as yet escaped Mississippi.
Please note that we have resisted the compelling and innate genetic force that tempts us to lead a parade through the gallery of their accomplishments. We will, however, surrender to a compromise and declare Jan’s oft-repeated phrase, “We are so proud of you.”
Norman and Jan Rodgers 