New Page 1

World-walker Polly Letofsky back on U.S. soil

By Chuck Haga
Minneapolis (MN) Star Tribune

Polly Letofsky, the Minneapolis native who's walking around the world in a campaign against breast cancer, has made it back to the United States. She expects to reach Minnesota by fall.

"Having a grand ol' time rediscovering America," she said in a recent e-mail to the Star Tribune. "I'm currently walking through small-town central Pennsylvania, where flags are flying from everyone's front porch and there's a gazebo in every town square."

Letofsky, 41, started her walk Aug. 1, 1999, near her home in Vail, Colo., to raise awareness of breast cancer and money for research. After walking to the West Coast, she ambled through New Zealand, Australia, southern Asia and Europe.
Letofsky said she expects to reach Duluth in September, then walk to Detroit Lakes, Minn., to visit her grandmother and to the Twin Cities by mid-October.

"Still getting used to things here because there's a lot of national news I know nothing about," she wrote from Pennsylvania. "Who's Laci Peterson? Where's the other half of Al Roker? What happened to Martha Stewart?

"My heart skips a beat whenever I see one of those old-fashioned American diners with the booths and the orange stools. . . . I've missed ranch dressing, pink lemonade, free refills. . . . God bless America. It's great to be home."

Drained by the war Letofsky finished her trek through Europe in Ireland, but without the thrill she had anticipated.

"Where is the emotion? The tears? The sadness for having to leave Ireland and all its sunshine, tasty soup and doormen in top hats?" she wrote in her journal last month, while the Iraq war was still going on.

"I think the war is draining me," she wrote. "I realize I'm getting a unique perspective walking through Europe during this turn in world history. I appreciate the value of the education, but while some days I count those blessings, there are other days, with the war now fully upon us, when I just want to get back to U.S. shores."

In Ireland, she raised thousands of euros for a foundation that sponsors a breast-cancer education campaign. But Lions clubs, which have backed her global walk in several countries, made it difficult for her to feel that she was making any great sacrifice.

"The Lions clubs in Ireland have embarrassed me with four-star hotels, steam rooms, Jacuzzis and saunas and heated floors," she wrote. "Doormen at the likes of Cork's Imperial Hotel, dressed in top hats and tails, would swing open those grand doors to let me roll through like royalty."

Letofsky began the final leg of her walk in New York on April 6. She visited Ground Zero and, on April 11, explained her odyssey on CBS TV's "The Early Show."

The money she raised overseas has gone to local organizations. All that she raises in the United States will go to the Breast Cancer Fund, a nonprofit group based in San Francisco.

Letofsky first started thinking about walking around the world as a girl in Minneapolis. She read about another Minnesotan, David Kunst of Waseca, and his four-year, 15,000-mile walk around the world. And since about the same time, she said, she has known and cared about women with breast cancer.

A friend fighting breast cancer who planned to join her for part of her walk in New Zealand died shortly before Letofsky arrived there.

Now, as Letofsky walks through the eastern United States, she sorts through hard lessons and rich experiences: "I dreamt that surely after nearly four years on the road I'd . . . know everything about everything," she wrote.

"Now I look back and want to tell the Polly of 1999 to not get your hopes up, that nearly every day you'll stumble over a newly discovered cultural no-no; that every day you'll walk into a new culture with a unique history, political system, language, climate, and religions that have helped shape their national character; that there are fundamental rules of behavior that you'll trip through sometimes, inadvertently insulting someone, like when you realize the same hand gesture that means "perfect" in Italy means "be patient" in Greece. . . .

"But, 1999 Polly, you will learn how to get over whatever hurdle gets in your path. You might kick and scream and bitch and moan over that hurdle, and you won't receive any awards for grace, but you'll get over it."

And there have been so many delightful discoveries along the way.

"I love the colorful language, like when the Irish go to the pub 'for some good crack' but they're really saying 'craic,' which means good conversation," she said.
"And the village names in England like Wee Piddle and Upper Piddle and how I walked down Honey Bottom Lane to Studley."

Chuck Haga is at crhaga@startribune.com.