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July 20, 2007
By Jenny Welp
Nancy Podey 1972 said her family was a little nervous about taking a May Term trip to Ireland this spring with a music ensemble, literature class, college staff and other alumni.
She said she and her husband, Larry Podey 1972, hadn’t traveled with a group since their band tour with Morningside back in 1973. They were used to doing their own thing on trips and worried what it would be like traveling with a big group on a bus.
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Nicole Helgeson, a junior at Morningside College, stands near Kylemore Abbey in the Connemara region of western Ireland. |
“Those fears never materialized,” said the alumna from Greensburg, Penn. “People were willing to include us in the group. We never felt alone. If somebody saw you, they’d call you over. And that lasted the whole trip – right up to the last night.”
Even though this trip brought together people from so many different backgrounds, more than one traveler considered the cohesiveness of the group a highlight of the trip.
It all started because the Morningside Camerata faculty-student string ensemble was interested in going on tour in Europe around the same time that Dr. Stephen Coyne in the English department was planning to take students on a literary tour of Ireland.
Both Coyne and the musicians liked the idea of going to Europe in a bit larger group, so they decided to travel together and invite alumni and staff to come along on the May Term trip.
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| Sheep graze in the countryside around Newgrange, a passage tomb that is thousands of years old and one of Ireland’s most popular archeological sites. |
The musicians and the literature students started out with fairly separate plans. The musicians had performances at a number of churches, including the one where Christopher Columbus worshipped before coming to America, and the literature students had plans to see the birthplaces, burial places, and writing locales of major Irish writers.
But as it turned out, the group ended up doing quite a few things together.
The musicians accompanied the literature students on a trip to the Aran Islands to see where John Millington Synge went to write in the early 1900s. And the literature students ended up going to quite a few of the Morningside Camerata’s concerts, even though the ensemble played the same music every time.
“I found that very touching,” said Joseph Shufro, an associate professor of music who performs with the Morningside Camerata. “I was surprised. I thought some of them would come to maybe one concert, but the fact that they sort of followed us around was very exciting for us.”
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| Carolyn Cox 1947 stands near the Spanish Arch in Galway, Ireland. Cox said she and her husband, the late David Cox 1946, have 37 people in their family who attended Morningside College. Cox will be returning to Morningside this fall for her 60th class reunion. |
Carolyn Cox 1947 was primarily on the trip with the literature group, but even so, she went to four of the Morningside Camerata performances. She said she did that because she enjoyed the music and because she wanted to support her new friends.
Even with all those concerts, Cox still had plenty of time to study Irish literature. She said that as someone who once taught English, she really enjoyed visiting with Coyne, who helped introduce her to the work of Synge and Oscar Wilde.
“I am very impressed with the faculty,” said the alumna from Akron, Ohio. “I’d read about Dr. Coyne for years in The Morningsider and other publications but had never met him before. Now I consider him a good friend.”
As an alumna musician, Podey was able to see literary landmarks, such as the burial place of author William Butler Yeats, and still play in the violin section during Morningside Camerata performances.
“To think that I could come back 35 years later and play with a group like the Camerata, I just wouldn’t have thought that this would ever happen,” she said. “And then to be able to play in the cathedrals in Ireland, that was just amazing.”
Coyne was a leader of all these travelers, but he said the travelers actually led him places in terms of engagement and enthusiasm with another culture. He said they gave him experiences he never would have had in Ireland had he not been with them.
“I had a great time,” he said. “Best trip I’ve been on.”
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