As Mother’s Day approaches next week, I’ve been thinking about great Mother’s Day trips to recommend or unique travel gifts you can give Mom. I’ve come up with many – let’s face it, there’s no end to interesting places to visit, experiences to share and quirky gadgets or apps that make travel easier. While I always strive to share “tips and trends for living the art of travel,” my thoughts kept returning to my own Mom and how she’s influenced my attitudes about travel over the years and given me a legacy of travel. So if you’ll humor me, I’ll get a little personal today and tell you about my Mom.

Mary Lou Boal just has travel in her blood. In the late 50s, as a cute, Southern belle, she left college to become an Eastern Airlines stewardess. Yes, I said stewardess – the term was totally politically correct then. At that time, college degrees for women were mainly in teaching and nursing and she yearned for adventure and the romance of travel. The physical standards for stewardesses were quite rigorous. You had to meet minimum height requirements – at 5’2” she barely made it.

Flying out of New York, she met Bob, a handsome ticket agent for Eastern. They fell in love and eloped because at the time, stewardesses weren’t allowed to be married. Before long, I came along and Mama had to resign – if they didn’t allow married stewardesses, they certainly didn’t allow pregnant ones! But her two years as a stewardess didn’t cure her of her travel bug.

Fast forward to my childhood. I grew up in Kentucky and we were always going somewhere. Mama was always coming up with an excursion to Mammoth Cave or a weekend trip to the Smokey Mountains. She truly loves foreign culture, so we hosted several exchange students in our home for months at a time and she felt obligated to show them (and my brothers and me) as much of the U.S. as possible during their tenure. I think I visited about 40 of the 50 states before I graduated from High School. We traveled in a large Winnebago and I always got to invite friends along, so it was like a rolling pajama party. Travel was always fun and exciting, so I eagerly anticipated the next trip.

When I left home for college, Mama didn’t sit still. At 40-something, she got an International Tour Manager certificate and opened a travel agency. She ‘evangelized’ travel to the community and led group tours across the globe for all who would follow; 30 years and about 75 countries later she is responsible for many thousands of people discovering the joys of travel.

My own travels broadened, as well. Mama encouraged me to spend a semester in England and at its conclusion visit one of our previous exchange students in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She arranged our first family cruise over a spring break. Just after college graduation, Mama treated me to a European tour with one of the groups she led. By then, I knew she had infected me with the travel bug too. The ink was barely dry on my Mathematics diploma when put it in a drawer and took my first job in a travel agency.

When I was a young mother, Mama continued to enable the addiction she started in me. She and my Dad would travel 800 miles to my home in Virginia to babysit at least once a year so I could enjoy a much needed break from the rigors of parenthood – on a Caribbean beach, or at a mountain retreat. As my kids grew, we often traveled as a multi-generational family – a Disney cruise, the kids first international trip to England and our annual pilgrimage to North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Mama took my son to Florida’s beaches during spring break and surprised my daughters with a trip to Paris the day after Christmas. You guess it – Mama has infected my kids too.

Now her grand kids are toiling away in college, but Mama still hasn’t slowed down. I don’t think she’ll mind that I tell you she’s 73 years young and I fully expect her to keep traveling for many more years. She’s often given me travel-related birthday gifts, made more special when we traveled together – my first trip to Italy, a Mediterranean cruise aboard a clipper ship, a Norway fjords/northern lights cruise aboard a working cargo ship, and a Mexican Riviera cruise in a deluxe suite. For my 50th, she really went all out and gave me two business class tickets to Buenos Aries, which Todd (Mr. Travel Maestro) and I really enjoyed!

I’m not the only one who’s benefited from her travel philanthropy. Several times she’s used her travel agency as a donation center to aid hurricane victims and arranged for delivery of the relief gathered and sorted. She sent a tractor trailer full of bottled water to Texas, and personally drove a U-Haul full of new mattresses and bedding to Louisiana after Katrina. The cause closest to her heart, though, is the plight of the thousands of Cambodian amputees. Mama fell in love with the people of Cambodia on her first visit and upon return home, she raised funds for over 500 wheelchairs for Free Wheelchair Mission. She’s been back to Cambodia several times, but the trip during a wheelchair distribution was very possibly her favorite trip of all time.

She doesn’t lead many groups any longer, but when the mood strikes, she’ll still round up several friends to spend a week in a Tuscan villa or take a group of ladies on a shopping trip. She and my Dad follow championship ice skating all over the globe, and visit friends in other countries that they’ve cultivated during their years of travel.

Mama’s life-long love of travel and genuine interest in different cultures has touched so many lives. She’s bestowed this amazing legacy of travel on me and I’m so incredibly grateful for the opportunities and experiences that travel has given me. Thank you, Mama!