In the previous installment of Travels with K, Katharine returned from a 1963 summer trip to Europe. This entry is the first in a new series that I’m very excited to work on. In 1967, K went to Iran to teach in an international school. This was the beginning of a series of amazing journeys; in addition to the stories from Tehran, she took trips to other places at every opportunity, and she took her camera with her. I have boxes and boxes of slides. Fortunately, she took the time to label many of them, and it’s truly astonishing to look through them and see Iran over 50 years ago. Before the Islamic Revolution, it was a much different environment for women—and a world I will never know or see. This makes her letters, travel journals, and images that much more precious. I hope you’ll enjoy the journey with me!
Katharine retired from teaching in Shaker Heights, OH in 1967. According to this story on the Cleveland Historical site, the March 1963 edition of Cosmopolitan magazine included a feature article titled The Good Life in Shaker Heights, which described the Cleveland suburb—which was statistically the wealthiest community in the country—as an idyllic society and the new demographic face of prosperity in the United States. The story goes on to say:
"The appeal of Shaker Heights, however, spoke to something larger. Life in the suburb reflected and embodied a pervasive conservatism that characterized 1950s culture. Shaker Heights was not an emerging city. The homes were not modern. There were few large estates with multimillion dollar mansions, and the city lacked a night life, celebrities, and cultural institutions. Displays of extreme excess were frowned upon, and a very suburban-esque semblance of uniformity permeated the affluent community. Churches, country clubs, and schools acted as the centers of the community. The streets were quiet. There were no slums. Consumerism flourished, and the troubles of unemployment and crime were virtually nonexistent. Even the problems associated with race relations that had become increasingly pronounced over the prior decade seemed to have passed the utopian city by. Within this context, the designation of Shaker Heights as the wealthiest community in the United States reaffirmed the ideals associated with both suburban living and the American dream."
In March 1967, Katherine began her vaccinations for international travel. Her vaccinations included smallpox, cholera, tetanus, typhoid, and polio; in late July, just before she left the country, she had a gamma globulin injection, which is recommended for preventing hepatitis A.
In April, she renewed her passport.
In May, she sold her house, a 2-bedroom, 1-bath duplex with detached 1-car garage at 3352 Colwyn Road (now an empty lot). She had purchased it in November 1958, on a 15 year mortgage—$6,500 at 5.5%, with payments of $53/month, and paid it off in March 1966.
I’m guessing she must have gone to stay with Ruth and Robert, her sister and brother-in-law, because she used their address on her passport and went to the Iranian consulate in NY to get a visa.
She went to Iran at the behest of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church. Based on my research, I gather that one applied for a service assignment and they determined where you would go. Her destination was the Community School in Tehran, a boarding school originally established for the children of Presbyterian missionaries, but expanding to serve children of other expatriates, ultimately becoming a secular international school that was permanently shut down in 1979 following the Iranian revolution.
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Looks like the start of a grand adventure 😎