From the Peace Corps to Christmas Tree Farming, Elaine Seymour Does it All

Rudolph the brown-nosed dog will greet you as you open the door to the office and gift shop at Seymour Christmas Tree Farm in Crainville, Ill., but the lady unimposing lady behind the counter is the person with the answers.

Elaine Seymour is the unsung hero of the tree farm; just ask her husband Frank. He'll be the first to tell you that she is the backbone of the farm and keeps it going. Just don't expect her to do it for much longer... less than a month, in fact.

This is the last season for the tree farm. When Christmas is done, Frank and Elaine will be returning to the lifestyle that first brought them to southern Illinois and that means no time for the 50-acre farm.

"We started ending it last year, by finding homes for the animals in the petting zoo," Elaine said. The zoo had featured everything from pygmy goats and pot-bellied pigs to a donkey and a camel, she said, but last year, they decided it was time to let it go.

"We knew when we moved here that development was coming, but it happened a lot faster than we imagined," she said. So when they decided to return to their plans and roots, they decided to impact the housing boom the best way they could.

"We decided that we could subdivide the farm or we could let someone else do it," she said. "If we do it, we get to add that money to our retirement fund and impact how it's done."

So the lots closest to Samuel Road are one-acre lots, large enough for a nice family home and some space. The lots farther back are five-acre lots, designed to allow people to keep the country feel of the neighborhood.

And, the Seymours? Well, they have spent their lives traveling and southern Illinois was always intended to be a stop along the way.

"This was supposed to be part of the triangle tour," Elaine said as she recounted the numerous countries she and Frank have visited over the years. The "triangle tour" was supposed to include their old home in Alaska, Elaine's native California and southern Illinois, where Frank is a Herrin native.

"The plan was that we would travel between the tree places and we had a big fifth wheel travel trailer, but that got old," she said.

"Once we got here, Frank needed something to do, so we started the tree farm," she said. And for awhile, it was a wonderful way to put down roots. "I loved that we were planting trees and helping to keep the air clean," she said.

But recently, the travel bug has bitten again and Elaine is ready to resume her tour of the world. Last year, she visited Trinidad and Tobago and she is planning her dream vacation for March, a two-week tour of India.

"I also just got back from California where I got to see four people I served with in the Peace Corps and one Peace Corps wife," she said. Elaine served in the Peace Corps in Brazil in the mid-1960s.

"I was part of the first and only Peace Corps group ever made up only of women," she said. "We had 40 people when we went to Albuquerque for our training and 20 when we finished. They sent us to Rio (de Janeiro) and at that time, the only women who went around the city without male escorts were women of loose morals," she said.

To protect their reputations, and to send someone to help with the heavy lifting, the Peace Corps quickly had to send another group of volunteers.

Elaine was born and raised in California between San Francisco and Los Angeles, but admits she was a little naive about the world before joining the Peace Corps. So, she took a year off first to be "hostess" with Trans World Airlines.

"I applied to TWA and the Peace Corps at the same time and got the telegram offering me positions with both on the same day," she said. "My first Peace Corps assignment would have been Africa and my mother really didn't like that idea. And, I had never been outside of California, so I decided to take the TWA offer and see more of my own country before volunteering to see the world," she said.

Eventually, she moved to Long Island, New York, and lived with other flight hostesses, but for the year she worked for TWA, she hated the job. "I loved the travel, but hated flying. TWA still flew Constellations at that point and when the flights got rough and the passengers got sick, I was right there with them."

The planes were still propeller jets at that point and not the most comfortable ride, she explained.

"So, after a year, I reapplied to the Peace Corps and got assigned to Brazil. And, I thought, 'Wonderful! I can use my Spanish!' Oops! I had no idea at that point that they speak Portuguese in Brazil."

Once she got to Brazil, Elaine embarked on a series of journeys that would in many ways shape her entire life. "We treated people with tuberculosis and did home visits with pregnant women and newborns. We traveled to all of the states of Brazil and then, in those days, you had a 60-day vacation, so I went to Colombia to visit another Peace Corps volunteer and then traveled down the Amazon [River]," she said.

Even then, these were dangerous journeys, but Elaine said she barely noticed. "Being a tall person, I always just acted like I knew what I was doing, pretended I was sure of myself," she said. And, no one ever bothered her.

Almost 40 years later, in 2000, Elaine returned to Brazil with the woman who had been her roommate in the Peace Corps.

After her time in Brazil, Elaine returned to California and finished her college degree, before moving to Alaska in 1967. "Then I spent the better part of 30 years there," she said.

In Alaska, Elaine met Frank and married him in 1970. Along the way, they decided to set aside Elaine's career so she could spend more time with Frank. "When we first married, he had a job that allowed him to travel a lot and I didn't want to be tied to a house and raising children while he was traveling, having fun," she said. "And, I could travel with him for free."

In their travels, they saw most of western Canada and the United States, Australia, Belgium, Korea, the South Pacific, Japan, Taiwan, China, and most of Europe. The one place Elaine wanted to go but hadn't been able to was India, "So I arranged to go as part of a tour group next spring. And Frank is thrilled because it's not somewhere he ever wanted to go and he gets to stay home," she said.

Between touring the world, Elaine also had her own businesses in Alaska including a secretarial service and freelance court transcription service and even served a little more than two terms of the Ketchikan City Council. "I was appointed to fill an unexpired term and then ran and was elected twice. I served almost six years," she said.

Then, suddenly, Frank and Elaine realized that they had not planned much for their future. "We were so busy having fun in the present that we hadn't been thinking about retirement," she said.

So, they both went to work for the state of Alaska and began making plans for retirement. Elaine worked with the Division of Nursing, helping organize the largest group of itinerant nurses in the world, and then moved on to the state's occupational licensing branch, eventually helping to establish the procedures for licensing midwives.

"We had to figure out how to license the native populations so that they could get paid for the work they were doing and still maintain the cultural and traditional teaching methods for midwives," she said. "I found that in private business, the harder you work, the more money you make. In public service, the harder you work, the more work they give you."

Eventually, they both retired from the state of Alaska and have pensions through the state, but their retirement funds were still shy of supporting the lifestyle they had gotten used to.

"Whenever we would take a big trip or buy a new car, we would joke, 'This is braces' or 'This is a college education'," she said. Because they had chosen not to have children, Elaine and Frank had been able to do the things they wanted as young and middle aged adults. Now, as they were looking at retirement, they wanted to be able to continue to travel as they once had.

Now, the selling of the farm will help fund their continued travels. The farm, especially before they gave away the petting zoo, was tying them down. Now, the sale is helping them return to the travel they have always enjoyed.

"There are things we really like about Southern Illinois--the people, the mild winters, the beauty, the food," she said. "But just like everyone else, there are things we hate--the bugs and the hot nasty summers." Soon, Elaine hopes, she will be able to avoid the things she dislikes about the region.

But don't expect the Seymours to disappear, even when the tree farm is gone. Elaine is part of the Unitarian Fellowship's recorder ensemble, playing soprano recorder, and she is a crafter with the region's fiber artists' organization.

She is also a part of the Williamson County Underwater Search and Rescue Team, to keep her body active, and the local Barnes & Noble Book Club to keep her mind active.

And, don't be terribly surprised to see her at the pool at John A. Logan College.

"All this wonderful Southern Illinois food, like fried catfish, has helped us gain a few extra pounds. So, like everyone else, we're going to start a new exercise program in January and the new pool at Logan is the best exercise around."