The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
58 years of visits and counting
Chilean exchange student, host family continue tradition
When teenager Beatrice “Taty” deMoras of Chile applied through the American Field Service to stay with a host family in the United States in 1960, the process took longer than expected.
In fact, it was only about a week before coming to America when deMoras learned that her hosts would be the Kneen family of Mentor-on-the-Lake. DeMoras said that unlike other AFS students who were matched with families long before the start of the 1960-61 school year, she didn’t have a lot of time in advance to know Arline and Robert Kneen Sr. and their children.
Although her introduction to the family might have been a quick one, little did deMoras know that she would build a long-lasting relationship with the Kneens.
It is a bond of 58 years that has stood the tests of time and distance.
DeMoras’ latest opportunity to reconnect with Arline Kneen, her son Rob
Kneen and daughter Jill Kneen Stamm took place this week when the 74-yearold Chilean woman visited Northeast Ohio.
A native of Quilpue, Chile, deMoras said from the time she arrived at the Kneens’ home on Iroquois Trail, “They were to me like they were my own family.”
DeMoras started her senior
year at Mentor in 1960, and one of her classmates was Arline and Bob’s daughter, Judy Kneen. Jill was a freshman, while Rob was just 8 years old.
While Mentor was a far cry from Chile in many ways, deMoras was pleased to see one similarity between her birth mother and host mom Arline.
“I was very surprised because my mother in Chile had red hair and freckles, and my mom here was the same,” she said.
DeMoras also took a quick liking to American food.
“Everybody would say, ‘Do you miss the food, do you miss family?’ ” she said. “The only thing I really missed was the mountains. I ate everything. I liked everything. I gained weight.”
Jill said she recalled how deMoras enjoyed ice cream on a year-round basis.
“They had ice cream back then in the summer in Chile, but not in wintertime,” Jill said.
Although deMoras was closest in age to Jill and Judy Kneen (who has since passed away), she recalled spending a lot of time with younger host brother Rob, going skating and to amusement parks, to name a few activities.
One particular memory has stuck with Rob.
‘“We hung out a lot and I asked her to marry me,” he said. “I think I had turned 9 by that time.”
Although deMoras returned to Chile after graduating from Mentor High School in 1961, her ties to the Kneens remained strong. Perhaps it helped that host mom Arline also was the founder and owner of Traveline Travel Agencies Inc., and the Kneen family journeyed around the globe.
For example, after deMoras married Alberto Macaya in the early 1960s, her husband received an engineering scholarship that took him to Berlin, West Germany. One of their visitors was their favorite family from Northeast Ohio.
“We saw (the Kneens) all again in Germany in 1967,” deMoras said.
The Kneens also visited deMoras and her husband a few years later after they moved to Spain. In addition, the Kneens traveled to Chile for the weddings of all three daughters of deMoras and Macaya.
“They have really fun weddings in Chile,” said Rob, who today lives in Gates Mills and is president of Best Western Lawnfield Plus Inn & Suites in Mentor.
While Macaya built a successful career as an engineer, deMoras volunteered as a Red Cross nurse in Chile for 20 years. DeMoras and her husband also hosted an AFS student of their own — a girl with a Pakistani father and Finnish mother — in 1981.
Over the years, deMoras and Macaya have regularly traveled to Northeast Ohio to visit the Kneens. The couple gathered with Arline, Rob and Jill at Arline’s home in Concord Township on June 4 to reflect on their enduring relationship. Jill journeyed from her home in Phoenix, Arizona, to take part in the reunion this week.
“I think it is a testimony to how love combines people together for a lifetime,” Jill said. “The experience of having Taty as a member of our family continues as a natural extension of that very first year she stayed with us.”