To say Richard Berry (BSBA ’56) has the travel bug is like saying The Beatles kind of liked music.
He says that as a Connecticut Yankee and recent high school graduate, he followed Horace Greeley’s advice to “Go West, young man.”
But he didn’t stop at west. Indeed, he’s been north, south and east — many times over. At 75, Berry is retired in Honolulu, but good luck finding him there. In fact, you’d have better luck finding him just about anywhere but there.
Case in point, in 2008, from mid-May to late June he was on an around-the-world jaunt via train and logged 10,013 miles.
As a young boy, he loved watching big steam trains.
“The wooden platform used to shudder every time one rolled in,” he says.
After high school he worked at Yellowstone National Park and chose to not return east to attend the University of Pennsylvania, opting for the University of Denver and its new airline and airport management program.
After DU, he served in the U.S. Air Force and held several leadership roles in the air cargo industry.
He retired in 1997, but that hasn’t slowed his speedometer. He’s planning a riverboat voyage down the Danube River from Germany to the Black Sea, an exploration of Bulgaria and Romania and a month-long rail and “self-drive” auto tour of South Africa.
Besides travel he loves to ski, but adds that his bride of 48 years, Bette, is at a stage of life where she “enjoys neither, but tolerates my enthusiasms.”
“Richard has to have a Gypsy somewhere in his lineage. He’s always planning his next trip,” Bette says. “I just say, ‘Go for it!’ because I know he will anyway.”
Berry says itchy feet don’t run in his family. In fact, he describes his parents as “stay-at-homes,” and his dad never flew until he had to — to attend Berry’s DU commencement.
“I did have a great grandfather who was a Scottish sea captain,” he explains.
Travel, he says, is a way to quench his thirst for knowledge.
“New places are always a learning experience.”