Jill
Brunswick’s philosophy is, “Stay open-minded, never stop learning
and smile all the way.” When you’re on a 3,000-mile trek,
those are words to live by—last year Brunswick (AH’96) and
her boyfriend, Matt Vrba, walked from Ocean Beach, Calif., to Virginia
Beach, Va.
With
just a temperamental 1976 RV named Good Sam as a support vehicle, the
pair walked alongside county roads, interstates and in open country.
(“Barbed-wire fences are not my friend,” Brunswick readily
admits.) The travelers kept journals as they hiked across the country:
As
I am sitting here typing my journal, the magical, mystical largest
thermometer in the world reads 108 degrees outside the window. We
are in Baker, California, and it is hotter outside than anything I
could ever imagine. The beginning of the week found us in one helluva
windstorm. This area is known for its wind turbines, which produce
enough energy for over 200,000 people. We could barely walk in a straight
line and coming from the Midwest, the first thing we thought of was
tornado. A gas station attendant said this is normal—starting
in October it is windy like this every day! We were amazed, and glad
to be heading out of town.
Cause
and Effect
Motivated
by more than that quintessential American desire to be on the road,
Brunswick and Vrba undertook their odyssey to raise money and awareness
for Teach for America, an organization that helps bring quality teachers
to underserved school districts.
Founded
in 1989 by Yale undergraduate Wendy Kopp, to date more than 6,000 people
have volunteered to help teach in some of the country’s most needy
schools.
While
many Teach for America teachers intend to pursue a career in education,
others who make the two-year commitment would otherwise have gone directly
from graduation into
corporate, industry or higher-education jobs. Teach for America alumni
have gone on to be consultants, attorneys
and university professors.
“Teach
for America is trying to bring good individuals, not necessarily just
teachers, into lower income school districts,” Brunswick says.
Teach for America volunteers have affected change by receiving grants
to bring computers to their classrooms and earning teacher-of-the year
honors rather than corporate salaries.
Kicks
on Route 66
Before
their journey, Brunswick was office manager for a recruitment firm in
the San Francisco area, while Vrba was already traveling, although not
on foot, setting up publicity events for Audi and Cadillac. When Vrba
suggested the journey, Brunswick at first thought he was crazy. “But
I started thinking about it more and more and realized I needed a change
in my life, personally, professionally and pretty much everything,”
she says. She got her wish:
Glen
Rio is an old deserted ghost town on the border of New Mexico and
Texas right on old 66. Matt and I happened upon the old post office
and an old home, both deserted for at least 20 years, although full
of odd surprises. The home, complete with collapsing walls and rotted
floors, was still furnished with a bed and a chest of drawers. The
post office was complete with a sorting rack and probably some old
mail from the heyday of Route 66.
The
trip yielded surprises, challenges and encounters with remarkable people.
They adopted two puppies someone had abandoned in a white plastic bucket
under a viaduct near the Petrified Forest, saw 108 head of livestock
rescued from an overturned cattle truck (“Happens all the time,”
a police officer told them), met a Paul Newman look-alike covered in
soot from battling a grass fire and admired the Cadillac Ranch—an
art work consisting of 10 half-buried and brightly-colored Caddies.
Souls
to the Road
Both
sets of voyagers’ parents were involved in education through teaching
or administration, but Brunswick and Vrba’s adventure in support
of Teach for America was a perfect match in other ways, as well. The
Voyage was a challenge, a hiatus from the expected (“If variety
is the spice of life, then this Voyage has got more zip than a bottle
of Tabasco,” Brunswick wrote), which the two undertook to make
a difference in the lives of others, which is exactly what people who
commit to Teach for America do.
In his
poem “Song of the Open Road,” Walt Whitman wrote “I can
repeat over to men and women You have done such good to me I would do
the same to you, I will recruit for myself and you as I go.” From
the television cameraman who invited the voyagers home for a dinner
of halibut and pasta, to friends and acquaintances who helped keep Good
Sam running, Brunswick and Vrba recruited liked-minded souls throughout
their trip.
“I
felt as if we had known them all for a long time and that they were
old friends,” Brunswick writes of a young couple near Oklahoma
City who took them in and made them, “the meanest eggs benedict
I have ever had.”
During
the trek the two signed-off their weekly updates with “Soles to
the Road!” They will be keeping their Web site www.thevoyage2001.com,
up for a few extra months to give people the opportunity to learn about
Teach for America and make contributions—a last chance to recruit
a few more good souls. 
