Lawrence Reichard, an AFS alum who traveled from the U.S. on a year program to Denmark in 1976, shares his reflections on the recent 50-year anniversary he and his fellow AFS participants attended in Copenhagen. Despite the passage of time, Lawrence and his group still feel the impact of their exchange today, detailing how studying abroad has created unexpected connections and changed the course of their lives five decades later.
There were 15 of us, and we came from seven countries on four continents. Fifty years after our life-shaping 13 months as AFSers in Denmark, we were coming together, in Copenhagen, for our first-ever reunion. We spent four days together – and what a time it was!
Back in 1976-1977, there were 33 of us, from 11 countries, but in the months of planning for the reunion, we were able to locate only 30 of the original 33, and only 15 were able to make it to the reunion.
We were all unusually close for a group of AFSers. When we first landed in Denmark in 1977, we scarcely spoke a word of Danish between the lot of us, so we all attended four weeks of intense language training on the campus of one of Denmark’s many folk high schools. We stayed in on-campus dorms, two to a room, and we attended classes six and a half days a week.
Thanks to that language training, I, and I’m sure many others in our group, were fluent in Danish by Christmas, and I have often thought over the years that my year in Denmark would have been half what it was without those four weeks of language school.
We also got together, all 33 of us, for two or three weekends during the course of the year, at various places in the country, and we were together for the last – and memorable – week in Denmark.
All of that gave us a chance to get to know each other and grow close – and that was evident at the reunion.
We had some great activities planned for the reunion. We visited Copenhagen’s renowned Louisiana art museum; we took a boat tour of Copenhagen’s canals; we ate out together; and we visited the beach house of AFSer Joe Simon, originally of St. Louis. Like two others from our original group, one from Austria and another from the U.S., Joe has made Denmark his permanent home.
We also had some meals together at Joe’s Copenhagen home, which served as a gathering place, and a kind of ‘Reunion Central.’ And it was there that we had a few semi-formal discussions that were some of the more memorable times of the reunion. We talked about what our year in Denmark had meant to us so many years ago, and still today.
Jennifer Strauss Gurss of (pre-AFS) Scarsdale, New York talked about how interesting it was to go from New York to a farm in Denmark – and how much she loved it.
Careen Shannon of (pre-AFS) Glen Rock, New Jersey, was at the reunion with her Danish host brother Kim and said that her entire Danish and American families were like families to each other. “My mother is his mother, and his mother is my mother, and our grandchildren will get to know each other. Denmark was a life-changing experience. It opened up a new world for me. It’s so magical that we are all here together. I am so grateful, it was a life-changing for me, and I think for all of us in this room.”
John Young of South Africa also spoke about how the strong connections between AFSers and their host families, and about how many of us were visiting our host families before or after the reunion, and about how a son of AFSer Maurizio Zuccolo of Italy was, at the same time as the reunion, traveling in Mongolia with a son of his Danish host brother. John also talked about how so many of us had visited each other over the years.
AFSer Skye Blomfield of Australia summed it up well for all of us:
“My year in Denmark in 1976/77 as an AFSer enriched and expanded my young life and reverberated throughout my life. Some of the details are hard to extract because they became a part of me. Having such a full experience created a deep and lasting connection, and since then, people have kindly put up with me talking about all the time!
The absorption of a new language and culture over a whole year was particularly enjoyable and important to this strong sense of connection. It also led to other cross-cultural and language explorations in my life and in my work as a teacher.
My Danish friends, including two other AFSers at my school, were very important and influential. We shared so much and cared for each other deeply. I remain so glad for having them in my life.
My life has been bigger and broader because of all the experiences and connections my year in Denmark enabled. And then, to top it off, came the recent wonderful opportunity to reconnect, after 50 years, with my fellow AFSers and to wonder and reflect on Denmark and our subsequent lives. Wow. Thank you Dansk (Danish) AFS for your wonderful work. Forever grateful. Skye Blomfield, Australian by birth and by residence, but part Dansk indenfor (inside, within).”
As for me, I have settled in Belfast, Maine, where I spent part of the summer of 1977, our year of return from Denmark, and I have often thought over the years that I settled here in Belfast because my year in Denmark had put my head in a new, good space when I returned to the states and visited Belfast for the first time. My year in Denmark had generated in me a deeper, more profound relationship with my surroundings and the people in it, and it improved my experience throughout my wandering life.
After Denmark, I went on to become, among other things, a journalist – as did John Young. And my first paid piece was a story on my year in Denmark written upon my return for a neighborhood newspaper in my pre-AFS home of Charlotte, North Carolina. From there, it was off to the races.
Mange tak, AFS. Many thanks.
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