The Yusens' Wild-blue Yonder

HAVE wife, do travel. That might well be the motto of Walter S. Yusen '58, whose one hat reads "President, Yusen Associates, Inc., Woburn, Mass." (electrical construction materials) and whose other reads "Travel Officer, Dartmouth Alumni Association of Greater Boston."

Walt shares that second hat with wife Jane, and the two of them run a one-couple agency, the principal aim of which is to get Dartmouth people out of their swivel chairs and on to chair lifts, off the living room rug and on to flying carpets.

In a word: TRAVEL.

Six to eight times a year a DC-10 or a 727 leaves Boston or New York carrying Yusen-recruited Dartmouth-types off to countries and customs (both meanings) both near and far. For anywhere from eight days to three weeks, Dartmouth men and women, in pairs or singles, slide down alps in, Colorado or Austria, wander through Inca ruins in Lima, sip from samovars in Leningrad, soak up antiquity and vino in Florence and Rome, marvel at gems and junks in Hong Kong, or warm in hospitality and sun in Hawaii.

These trips to far-away places are not all Big Green. The Yusens originally tried to fill a 200-seat plane with nothing but Hanoverites, but soon gave that up. "We simply couldn't work for a living," says Walt, "raise a couple of kids and answer 500 phone calls a day, all at the same time." So now they work with about a half dozen travel agencies, blocking out from 40 to 100 seats on any given flight.

"You never know what response we're going to get," says Jane. "We took 40 seats on the flight to Peru in January and we had more applications than we could handle."

More traffic than they can handle is what the venture is all about. "We're unabashed supporters of Dartmouth," Walt admits, "and we get a kick out of bringing alumni together. By attaching ourselves to low-cost charter flights, we can give people a chance to get away without going broke. And whatever is left over from any flight goes into the alumni association scholarship fund. We like that, too."

The Yusens get nothing for themselves out of their avocation other than this satisfaction of doing something for Dartmouth. They do go on one or two of the flights each year, but that can be as much work as it is play. It takes some doing to get an overseas Dartmouth club together with Yusen flight members for an evening out: a dinner with the Paris club at the Restaurant France-Amerique, a banquet with the London club at historic Middle Temple Hall, a meeting with Dartmouth foreign study students in Florence, a talk by Professor John Rassias in Rome or by Dean Ralph Manuel in Hawaii.

Wherever the Yusens go, they stress the personal touch. "We rent a suite and host a cocktail party for the Dartmouth contingent," says Walt. "Cocktail party in the generic sense; it's actually wine and cheese."

It's that personal touch which brings a number of repeaters back to Yusen trips, and it makes their day when an alumnus calls and the first question is: "Are you going on the plane with us?"

Is it all fun and games? "Almost," replies Jane, "but it is very hard work - scores of letters and phone calls and piles of paper work. I do most of the correspondence out of our house, and when we've got a flight coming up we eat meals with a fork in one hand and a phone in the other. There is also the occasional request for an unorthodox housing arrangement; we have to make it clear that we're in neither the morality nor the mating-game business. Once we had an irate letter challenging our taste in sending a tour to Africa when there is so much misery there; the fellow said we should be saving lives not spending money. We feel there's room in the world for both welfare work and vacations."

How did the Yusens get into the travel business in the first place? Getting Boston-based Dartmouth men and their wives off their duffs was the brainchild of Ira Berman '42. As president of the Alumni Association of Greater Boston in 1971-72, he fell upon the idea of charter flights as a way to raise money for the association's scholarship program. He soon had planes flying off to cosmopolitan Europe, with the modest profits sending needy students to rural Hanover.

Enter the skiing Yusens. Walt's father, Robert Yusen, founder of the family company in 1934, was a veritable tiger of the New England snows, and he had his kids skiing not long after they were out of diapers. At 15, Walt knew by heart every hill and hummock in Stowe, Vermont. Dartmouth, just down the road a piece, was his logical college choice. He says he majored in economics and minored in Stowe.

Jane's gelandesprung credentials were a little slower developing. There are not many blizzards in Durham, North Carolina, where she was born, or avalanches in Norfolk, Virginia, where she grew up. But there was snow at the Connecticut College for Women and, after graduating and starting a career and marrying Walt, could Stowe be far behind?

Those snow-oriented Yusens, then, suggested to Ira Berman that he run an all-ski charter. Snow-plow Ira responded: "You get me 80 skiers and I'll get you a plane." Walt did; and Ira did; and that led to an orderly transfer the following year when Ira's term as president of the association came to an end and Walt's and Jane's interest in taking over came to a start.

The Yusens have gone through innumerable passports, ski equipment, and pieces of luggage in their years of globe-trotting and they wouldn't have it any other way. When not at home in Wellesley or at 30,000 feet over the Atlantic or on the Valluga at St. Anton, you are most likely to find them at their second home in Stowe. They spend about 80 days a year there, skiing and playing tennis and relaxing.

"You've got some shoes to fill," the Yusens were told when they first took over from Berman and were working on their maiden charter. Four years and nearly two dozen flights and hundreds of Dartmouth alumni later, they're humble about it but feel that they're walking on pretty solid ground - or walking on air - whichever comes first.