Professore Van Amburgh -

My name is Donald Couvillon, and we briefly chatted in the breakfast room of the Hotel Porta Maggiore the morning that I and your group departed for Dulles IA and Atlanta IA respectively. You may recall because, three days earlier I had been pickpocketed and, having learned from your students of your similar experience on an earlier school trip to Italy, I mentioned this matter to you as you were scurrying to herd your flock for departure.

After returning, with an injured leg from my failed attempt to catch one of the thieves, I wanted to contact you to express my appreciation for your students' kindness to me in a time of distress far from home, but a new serious knee injury to the same leg and a protracted absence from work interfered. Now back at work (I'm a trial attorney at Justice, and use my work computer), I found the dairy school on the internet and your faculty picture.

I arrived in Roma for a holiday early on January 12, and your group arrived that evening. The next day, the first full day of my short visit, near the train station, I lost my wallet to thieves and pulled a calf muscle. It was difficult to walk, and I had 11 euros in my pocket and no cash, travellers' cheques, or credit cards. Fortunately, the borsailos missed my passport and my return ticket was electronic.

That night was among the very worst moments in my by now long life which has had other genuinely distressing times. The next day I received a full travellers' cheque refund near the Colloseo and was able to resume my holiday, on a bad leg.

That Saturday evening, I met several of your group's students at the cellar restaurant around the corner from the hotel, after I introduced myself on hearing their American English. Their company at table picked me up beyond measure.

The next evening, on meeting some of those students from Saturday in the lobby, I was asked to go with them (and a few new faces) to the restaurant, where I enjoyed another dinner with some of the best young people in the USA.

Unfortunately, I didn't write down their given names, which by now I've mostly forgotten, but later I gave my e-mail address to a young man from the coastal area of Northern California and invited him and two of his buddies to look me up in DC for some very good beer at a birreria. He knew about the Tillamook cheese plant on the coast, which I once visited (and now buy Tillamook at Safeway here). Most of these students were from upstate [New York]. One woman was from Ohio, and one from Chestertown, MD, which I remember because I live in Bethesda, MD, or suburban [Washington, DC], and know nothing about what we call the Eastern Shore.

What I wanted to tell you is that not only did these kindly students cheer me up at the time, but by their intelligence and demeanor showed themselves to be the best in the land and a credit to Cornell. With such promising youth, we should fear not.

If you would like to post this message, in the hopes that some of these students might contact me, I would appreciate it. It would be very nice to hear from them. Perhaps others in Cornell's management would be interested in hearing this.

Thanks.
Donald Couvillon
Washington, DC

Editor's note: Michael Van Amburgh, Department of Animal Science, is the faculty advisor for the Cornell University Dairy Science Club