Remembering My May Program to Paris

By Hilary Gardner Swain '72

In 1972, I participated in Oldfields' first May Program to Paris! I remember it like yesterday. There were about a dozen of us who went with Miss Hassett, the French teacher. We stayed on the Left Bank in a semi-hotel/dorm arrangement, with at least three or four students per room, but it was fun. And, we always had dinner at the same restaurant around the corner.

On our first full day in Paris, Miss Hassett took us to the French école (school) where we were supposed to have classes every day. I am pretty sure all with the exception of my best friend, Candy Brooks Widmer '72, snuck out the back door after Miss Hassett left, and then for much of the next three weeks we shopped, ate, and walked all over Paris having a blast. Even though we did cut a few classes, we all learned so much! We met many Parisians and literally walked miles every day getting to know Paris. To this day I feel at home in Paris because of the incredible opportunity we all had.

During one of our shopping excursions, Mary Glascock McCanless '74 and I were waiting to cross a street when a bus came barreling down the bus lane incredibly fast. Though I was on the sidewalk next to the curb, I was somehow was swept up and hit my head on the bus, and then fell back and hit my head again on the sidewalk. After being unconscious for a good five minutes, I woke up to the bus driver screaming at me as if it were my fault! Of course, I had no idea what he was saying given I had missed all the French classes we were meant to be attending. A crowd of French people were yelling back at him, and they gave me a paper listing their contact information and told me it had been the bus's fault. A large black ambulance, sirens blaring, came and whisked me and Mary to the hospital, where they checked us out and gave me a tetanus shot in the thigh. (I also remember the doctors were very cute!) While we were there, somehow Miss Hassett found out I had been hit by a bus...most likely Mary had called her. All she knew is that we were at the hospital and that I had been hurt. In those days, before cell phones, Mr. Nevens (Headmaster George Nevens) called my parents to tell them I had been hit by the bus. You can imagine how they received that call!

My parents then called my grandmother who happened to be in Paris at the time visiting the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (Wallis Warfield, Class of 1914). My grandmother got hold of someone who found me. In the meantime, Mary and I were released from the hospital, and we took a cab to where the rest of the group was having dinner. When we walked into the restaurant Marcia Belehas Downes '73 literally fainted, her head went into her soup...she figured I must be a ghost! The next day my grandmother called and said the Duchess would like to ask us all for tea at their house in the Bois de Boulogne. Of course we were thrilled to be invited to tea with a duchess! My grandmother sent cars for us, and we all had a wonderful time having tea with my grandmother and the Duchess. Quite amazing really...the memory is just as vivid today as it was 50 years ago. Forty-five years later in 2017, Candy Brooks Widmer '72 and I took a trip to Europe to reprise that May Program. We had an amazing time and luckily were in Paris when that year's May Program group was also there. One of the highlights of our trip was having dinner together at a lovely Parisian restaurant with that group of current Oldfields students and to know it was as much of a life-changing experience for them as it was for us!

Hilary Gardner Swain 1972 Rarebit Hilary Gardner Swain '72 (far end of table, left) and Candy Brooks Widmer '72 (far end of table, right) enjoy dinner in Paris with students during the 2017 May Program