Wanderlust: Seeing the world one cruise at a time

Lessons from Everyday Life By Thedore Lewis

Bridgman, MI—I grew up in Holly, Michigan, and by the time I reached my high school days at Adelphian Academy, the farthest away from home I had ever traveled by car was northern Michigan.

At the start of 1966, neither my parents nor I had ever been on an airplane. That all changed with our summer vacation in 1966, when we visited my sister Dianne and her husband, Gerald, who had just been transferred to Fort Lewis in Seattle, Washington, after joining the Army.

My parents purchased tickets for the three of us to travel to Seattle, WA, on United Airlines. In 1965, United introduced its famous ad campaign, "Fly the friendly skies of United."

My mother started singing the newly created slogan, "Come fly the friendly skies of United." That jingle became forever etched in my brain, and I loved this new exciting form of travel, which allowed me to be transported to a new place, thousands of miles away from home, in only a few short hours.

My next air travel experience occurred in 1977, when the Andrews University concert band was invited to tour and perform in Romania. This trip required a passport and our overseas flight on the Romanian TAROM Airlines would depart from New York's Kennedy Airport in late afternoon on a chilly day in May.

This was my first experience renting a car and driving in a big city like Manhattan. The rental was a stick shift. As I traversed the tunnels, bridges and harrowing traffic of NYC to Kennedy Airport, my fright eventually turned into a sense of accomplishment at all these "firsts" I conquered with these new travel experiences.

In the late 80s, I took my first trip to England. I was invited by good friends Robbie and Ronnie Clay, who had just moved to a U.S. military base outside of London, where Ronnie, a Marine, had been transferred.

Robbie arranged a three-day two-night bus tour from downtown London that would cross the English Channel by ferry (between Dover and Calais) and have overnights in Bruges, Belgium and Amsterdam.  

As our tour group got to know each other, I'll never forget seeing the White Cliffs of Dover for the first time and listening to a fellow traveler from London share stories of his experiences as a firefighter during the London Blitz in 1940-41.

A few months after this trip, I took my first Caribbean cruise. It was a seven-day cruise on a ship that was so unremarkable that I don't remember its name. What was remarkable, however, was my first entry into the cruise experience, visiting multiple places on multiple days, only unpacking your suitcase once, with meals and entertainment included.

I loved the experience so much that I began researching the rapidly growing cruise industry. In 1989, there were 3.5 million cruise passengers. Now in 2025, there are over 35 million cruise passengers expected. I decided to open my own cruise-only travel agency, Lewis Travel Service, and began to organize group cruises every year or two.

My cruising experiences primarily took place on Cunard ships, which had a distinctive British culture that I truly loved. Most of my organized group cruises were on Cunard ships, and the QE-2 was my favorite.

For many years, the QE-2 would offer two or three weekend getaway sailings out of New York annually. While living in the Maryland-D.C. area, I was able to take advantage of many of these weekend sailings. Amtrak always provides great service to Manhattan with its direct trains from the D.C. area, arriving at Penn Station. From there, it would only be a 10 to 15-minute taxi ride over to Pier 90 on the Hudson River, which was Cunard’s pier for decades.

When I met the love of my life, Sharon, on Dec. 12, 2003, she had absolutely no travel experience, having never been on an airplane or been more than 200 miles from home. As we fell in love instantly, it would remain to be seen how compatible my travel wanderlust would be with her lack of travel experience,

For our third date, I asked Sharon to fly with me to New York City on Christmas Day via the shuttle from Boston. She accepted and so early on Christmas morning of 2003, I picked Sharon up from her apartment in Westbrook, ME. We drove to the Amtrak train station in Portland, where we boarded the Amtrak Downeaster for downtown Boston. From there, we took a taxi to Boston's Logan Airport, where we boarded our shuttle flight to New York.  As the two of us were 50 percent of the passengers on that flight, we had our choice of seats on the airplane.

Although she was nervous, she did well for her first flight. After getting married on Oct. 30, 2004, we planned a honeymoon cruise on the QE-2 out of New York to the Caribbean. And thus, her journey on planes, trains and cruise ships became parallel with mine.

After several more cruises, Sharon became a regular, along with me, on the Cunard Line. We dreamed of taking the famous world cruise on the Queen Mary 2, which allows one to see the world by visiting all continents in approximately 90 days from January to March every year.

With Sharon's dementia and declining health now, that dream cruise will not be realized. Her U.S. passport has expired and will not be renewed.  However, we both believe in the Christian promise of a heaven given in Philippians 3:20, which says, "Our citizenship is in heaven," and Revelation 21:1, which promises "a new heaven and a new earth.”

 We look forward to taking a whole new world tour at a time when our travel Wanderlust will come full circle.

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