Returning 'home' once again

By NOREEN HYSLOP

Managing Editor

Monicka Gustafsson was a girl of 17 when she first came to America on a Girl Scout visit from her home in Sweden. It was 1968.

"I was involved in Girl Scouts back home," she explains. "I came over with 11 other scouts to spend two months in the country learning about the American culture and about the state of Missouri."

The 12 Girl Scouts were part of a program in which Missouri families, who had Girl Scouts of their own, volunteered to house the young women during their U.S. stay.

"I was fortunate enough to have been appointed to the Dexter home of Howard and Catherine Taylor," Monicka explains.

The Taylors had a daughter, Toni, and a son, Phil. For 10-year old Toni, it was a dream come true.

"She was the sister I never had," Toni (Taylor) Pyle says today.

Monicka spent the summer months that year not only touring the state with visits to St. Louis, Jefferson City, and the Ozarks but also coming to know and love the Taylor family. The close-knit clan, which included dozens of aunts, uncles and cousins, welcomed the young Swedish beauty into their homes and into their hearts. So much did Monicka and the Taylors enjoy their time together that summer that the Taylor family asked her to come back to Dexter to attend school the next fall. When Monicka returned to her homeland, she asked her parents if she might return for her senior year.

"They agreed, and I spent the following year attending high school in Sweden while earning money for a return trip to Dexter," she recalls.

And so Monicka returned to Stoddard County a year after her initial visit. She completed her senior year at DHS, graduating with the class of 1970 and making many new friends along the way.

She recalls attending a special event during her Dexter stay. It was the year the local hospital was dedicated and Vice President Hubert Humphrey came to Dexter to help mark the occasion. On hand with the proud townspeople, city officials, and a host of security was a young Swedish woman who is pictured in an aged photograph depicting the significance of the event.

SUBMITTED photo Monica Petterson, then Monica Gustafsson, is shown with her host family in 1968. She stands in the center with Phil Taylor and his sister, Toni at left and their parents, Catherine and Howard Taylor, at right.

"It was a very special time," she says of the day, "and I remember it well."

Toni Pyle kept in touch with her special friend over the years, and Monicka and her husband, Per, made a return trip to Dexter in 1982. Time got away from them all, though, and communication eventually dwindled. But then Toni received a surprise phone call a few years ago, and the two began to correspond once again, keeping each other abreast of their families -- of college graduations, children's weddings, milestones and deaths. Eventually, the Swedish couple planned another trip to the States to take place this summer.

Monicka, now 62, and her husband, Per Pettersson, arrived last week to again embrace the "second family" that always held a special place in her heart. It had been 30 years since the families had seen each other. Howard and Catherine Taylor, who Monicka came to address as "mom and daddy" when she lived with them, are now gone. The Pyle children are grown. Faces have changed, but the fondness that was nurtured through her year-long stay in the 1960s hadn't diminished. The Taylor cousins she knew as young children now have children and grandchildren of their own. All have been revisited in recent days, as were the gravesites of Howard and Catherine, the couple who so warmly welcomed Monicka into their home all those years ago.

The Petterssons say they witnessed some remarkable changes to the Dexter area upon their arrival -- the Bearcat Event Center on the high school campus, many more business operations and a new four-lane highway. The couple has enjoyed touring the family farming operation in Essex and experienced a "first" by attending a Cardinals ballgame in St. Louis on Monday and seeing a Cardinals' 9 -- 3 victory.

"I think they knew how far we'd come to watch them play!" Monicka laughs. "It was great fun."

The Pettersons hail from Stockholm, a city of one and one-half million people. Per is now retired but spent his career there as an economist. Monica works for the Swedish parliament, organizing affairs for the Deputy Speakers in the Speaker's office.

Communication does not pose a problem for the Swedish couple. Both are fluent in the English language, having been taught since the elementary school level. The command of the language serves Monicka well in her post for the Swedish government.

In varying degrees, depending largely on frequency of interaction with English, a majority of Swedes, especially those born after World War II, understand and speak English owing to trade links, the popularity of overseas travel, a strong Anglo-American influence and the tradition of subtitling rather than dubbing foreign television shows and films.

Although Swedish is their primary language, the Petterssons typically read books printed in English and watch English-speaking movies to help keep the language familiar.

The two have spent the past several days catching up with the family members who so warmly opened their arms to Monicka nearly half a century ago. In addition to attending their first-ever Major League baseball game, they've experienced other "firsts" on their journey. Never before have they been part of a Fourth of July celebration, and never have they experienced the extreme heat and drought conditions that have gripped Southeast Missouri in recent weeks.

Both agree the memories made over the past several days have far outweighed the extreme heat.

"It's been wonderful," Monicka says with reflections of the same smile that lit up a room and captured the hearts of all she met when she was the young Swedish Girl Scout who visited 44 years ago. "It's been just wonderful."

The Pyles, who vow someday to visit their friends in Stockholm, say the pleasure has been all theirs.