Alumni Bulletin - Fall 2008 - (Page 39)

the sophomore and junior class cabinets, and hold the positions of significant profits again, World War II put two new barriers in the vice president, treasurer, and house manager of the Delta Upsilon way—gas and rubber rationing. As a result, the Interstate Comfraternity. Even as a student, however, the travel business was never merce Commission issued a cease and desist order to the tour comfar from his mind. pany, putting it out of business until more peaceful times. “I remember that I took a transportation course,” he Some families might not have survived a sudden and total says, “and I was supposed to write a paper on railroad loading loss of income, but not Tauck’s. His father, with charactertariffs. Instead, I went to the professor and told him that my famistic ingenuity, came up with an idea. Commercially proily was involved in a duced vegetables were transportation case needed to feed Ameribefore the Interstate can troops overseas, so Commerce Comthe government had mission. I asked if I been urging civilians tauck went on to create a series of innovations that could research and to grow their own food write on that case in “Victory Gardens.” transformed the face of the travel industry. instead. The point Because wood was rais, my head was with tioned, however, people the company all the time. During the summer months, I eshad no stakes for their tomato plants. corted tours to Boston, Cambridge, Lexington, and Concord.” Tauck Sr. seized the opportunity. His preoccupation with the family business, however, had its big“My dad got these lumbermen from way up north in New Jersey gest payoff when he enlisted in the Air Force after graduation and to cut lumber into sticks, and they’d deliver them into our driveway,” ended up stationed in Germany for two-and-a-half years. He noTauck recalls. “My sisters and I would quickly stack them, carve one end ticed that European road maps of the day offered an interesting feato a point, paint them green, and wrap them in packages of a dozen. I’m ture: Roads less traveled, with their undiscovered tourist sites, were always amazed that I still have five fingers on my left hand because we drawn in yellow. That piece of information, which he tucked away used to point the sticks with a circular saw with no guards on it. We’d in his memory, surfaced again many years later when he created the do maybe a thousand in an afternoon that way.” Yellow Roads of Europe Tour Packages. Those tours eventually came They would then transport them into the center of town on a to represent more than half of the company’s business. casket-hauling truck and sell them to passers-by. It wasn’t a formula for wealth, but it put vittles on the table until 1947, when the travel business began operating tours again, now SEEING THE WORLD, to New England, Florida, and Niagara-Ontario. By the following year, Tauck Tours was also taking people to New Orleans, Canada’s FROM BUSES TO BALLOONS Gaspé Peninsula, and Williamsburg, Va. After his fAther’s surprise retirement in 1958, OUT OF THE NEST After high school, young Tauck decided it was time to take a couple of tours of his own—to college and the military. He left home that September to study marketing at Lehigh University, where he also found time to play lacrosse, serve as a member of With his discharge from the service came the opportunity Tauck had always been waiting for: He went to work for the company as a tour operator. The rest, as they say, is history. After his father’s surprise retirement in 1958, Tauck went on to create a series of innovations that transformed the face of the travel industry. He first took aim at the Canadian Rockies, which held a special attraction for him.

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Alumni Bulletin - Fall 2008

Alumni Bulletin - Fall 2008 Contents From the President's Desk Mailbox On Campus Research Arts & Culture Sports Cover Story: The Dalai Lama at Lehigh Heart of a Champion Around the World in 80 Years Fighting for Children wth Autism Keepers of the Flame From the Publisher's Desk Alumni News The Last Word

Alumni Bulletin - Fall 2008

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