The Penn Stater Magazine

These Travelers had a Special Agenda

July 14, 2010 at 1:21 am Tina Hay 1 comment

In front of Strasbourg Cathedral, from left: Chris, Julia, Aline, Richard, Lillian

While most of the Penn State travelers were exploring Strasbourg, Kaysersberg, and Riquewihr (pronounced REEK-uh-veer) on Monday and Tuesday, three members of our group were absent. But they had a great excuse.

Two years ago, Aline Szymanski, who lives in the Philadelphia area, was battling a recurrence of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and needed a stem-cell transplant. Doctors tested her only sibling—Christine Zalewski—and as luck would have it, Chris was an exact match. So Chris made a stem-cell donation to save her sister’s life.

As Chris was killing time in the hospital while Aline (who goes by “Ala”) rested up after the procedure, she was reading her copy of The Penn Stater. (Chris isn’t a grad, but her daughter Julia ’06 is, and Chris has become pretty fond of the magazine.) Our travel ad caught her eye: In two years the Alumni Association would be offering a trip to Oberammergau, and it included two days in Strasbourg.

Strasbourg is special to the sisters because they were born there, and they moved with their family to the U.S. when the girls were small—about 3 and 4 years old. Wouldn’t it be cool, Chris thought, to go back there? She knew Ala probably wouldn’t be healthy enough to do it in, say, a year, but this trip was two years away.

As soon as Ala woke up, Chris told her about the trip, and Ala had the same reaction as Chris: “We have to go.”

As they started planning for this trip, Chris made contact with a friend from those toddler days in Strasbourg: a woman named Lillian, who was Chris’ godmother’s daughter and who is about three years older than the sisters. Lillian remembers thinking of Chris and Aline as her little sisters, and remembers the sense of loss she felt when they moved to America back in 1958. She was sure she’d never see them again.

Well, here we all are 52 years later, and Lillian, Ala, Chris, and Chris’ daughter Julia just finished spending two glorious days together here in the Alsace region. They visited the site of Chris and Ala’s childhood home, went to the cemetery where their grandmother is buried, and even hung out for a few hours with the Baron of Turckheim (but that’s a whole other story).

I heard all of their tales over dinner last night in Strasbourg, where I got to share a great Alsatian meal with Chris, Ala, Julia, Lillian, and Lillian’s husband, Richard. I can’t tell you how sweet it was to see them interact with each other, laugh, get tearful at times, and just be together again.

Tina Hay, editor

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NEXT: On the Autobahn with Ronnie and Sophie

Entry filed under: Alumni Association, The Penn Stater magazine. Tags: Aline Szymanski, Christine Zalewski, Julia Zalewski, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, Strasbourg.