Pandemic puts travel plans on hold for local seniors
As cases of the novel 2019 coronavirus continue to swell in North America and many states are having to walk back “opening up” orders, local seniors seem to be taking a pass on doing any traveling for the foreseeable future.
“I’m not getting on any damn airplanes,” said 70year author Robert McSherry of Edgmont. “People could have the bubonic plague and they’re still going to get on an airplane … because they don’t want to lose the money and everybody else be damned. People are very selfish. No, I’m not getting on any damn airplanes.”
McSherry, a retired newspaperman and legal writer, says he’s working on a legal history book that is a “heavy mental exercise,” and that seems to be enough for him right now. He does miss going to the gym, he said, but after more than 200 people were asked to quarantine after visiting a Planet Fitness in West Virginia, McSherry said he won’t be going back any time soon – or to any indoor restaurants.
“I’ve eaten outside at a couple restaurants, but that’s not a lot of fun,” he said. “I think that the restaurant industry thinks that a governor of some state will open it up and everybody is going to run back to the restaurants and it will be happy days again, but I’m not interested in going inside a restaurant. I can live without it.”
The only thing McSherry was really looking forward this year travel wise was a 50th high school reunion in Maine, but that has been canceled, which seems to be the watch word these days.
“I was going to go on a cruise,” said Edie McFall, 80, of Ridley Park. “I was really looking forward to it, but circumstances intervened and it was canceled, and I don’t really have any other plans. Going to the Acme is my plan for the rest of the week.”
McFall, mother of former Delaware County Sheriff Mary Hopper, had planned a trip up the Rhine River earlier this year with Viking River Cruises. She was able to get a refund, she said, but sitting on her sofa was not how she envisioned her golden years.
“I totally, totally understand that this is a first-world problem and that if the worst thing that ever happens to me is that I can’t go on a Rhine river cruise, I’ll be pretty fortunate,” she added. “It’s just so surreal. I almost forget that I had planned on a trip, because it was yanked away from me. I know it sounds really ridiculous, but I don’t have any plans for the rest of the year. I’ll just sit here and wait for something to happen.”
Bernie Dever, coowner of Curran Travel Inc. in Blue Bell, knows all about waiting for something to happen. His company deals exclusively with seniors, a niche market that has pretty much dried up at the moment.
“We don’t see any kind of movement at all until these senior centers open up,” said Dever. “It is what it is. They’re the only people that we deal with, the seniors. They keep on saying the most effected people with the pandemic are 70 and above, and our market is 65 and above, so the writing is on the wall.”
Fellow travel agent Mary Moody, who has been in the industry for 33 years, much of that out of her Newtown Square office before moving the business to her home nine years ago, said the destination might not be so much the issue as the journey.
“It’s just not going to be the reason where people want to travel in those types of situations, whether it’s cruise ship, confined quarters, even train, confined quarters, or flying,” she said. “I think flying is probably the worst because it’s so self-contained. Most of your travel involves flying to somewhere, so I think that’s going to be very slow to return.”
Dever usually takes his own vacation in the winter, during the softest period for the business, but has no plans this year. He said he believes his company will be able to survive the pandemic with a little belt-tightening – he’s waiting on a loan to help get by – but in the meantime, he worries that the pandemic putting travel on pause right now is being overblown.
“I think the media is playing a great big part in this by sensationalizing everything,” he said. “I don’t think that the truth always comes out. Scaring people to death is not the way that America should be working.”
Dever, 76, said that he agrees with social distancing and face masks, but related COVID-19 to the flu – you have to get out there and build up antibodies, he said. Just staying inside and doing nothing isn’t a viable option.
“People want to control people and I don’t think that’s the way to do it,” he said. “I think there should be loosening up, because how do we fight anything when we run away from it? That doesn’t make any sense to me.”
Those areas that have loosened up now seem to be regretting it. Florida, Arizona, Texas and California all reported huge spikes in cases after opening things like bars and beaches, and have had to reverse course. Even Pennsylvania has seen its numbers rising after moving to a “green” phase across the state.
Pennsylvania has now joined states like New York, New Jersey and Connecticut in imposing 14-day quarantines for visitors coming from states with the highest concentrations of COVID-19 cases in an effort to keep the numbers from blossoming again.
But regardless of the cause or correct course of action, the impact on the industry remains the same, as Dever saw with one group planning an excursion out of Traditions at Ridley Creek, a 55-and-older condominium community in Brookhaven.
Daily Times correspondent Barbara Ormsby lives at Traditions and co-chairs a travel club with Betsy Willoughby, mother of Ridley Township Police Captain Scott Willoughby. The club employs Curran for annual five-day trips to places like Savannah, Maine, Canada and even the “Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania” in Wellsboro, Omsby said. This year, they planned to go to the Indian Head Resort in New Hampshire at the end of October.
Ormsby said planning these trips, which typically attract 30 to 45 people, take months of preparation. She and Willoughby started passing out brochures and doing sign-ups in early March. Only one couple had signed up and paid before the pandemic fully exerted itself on the country, she said.
“We always said, ‘We don’t have to worry, ours is in October, things will be back to normal by then,’” Ormsby said. “Well, it isn’t and it’s not going to be. …Whether we can go in the spring remains to be seen.”
She said coronavirus also appears to have put the kibosh on another annual day trip to the American Music Theater’s Christmas show in Lancaster County and – more importantly – lunch at the famous Shady Maple Smorgasbord.
“We can’t even begin to plan that now,” said Ormsby.
These trips are open to all, but those who live at Traditions like the convenience, she said. The tour bus picks them up at the complex and for a lot of people, this is their vacation, according to Ormsby. Without this trip, she said she has no plans to travel this year either.
“For my wife Becky and I, we’re pretty much going to stay home, or at least that’s what we’ve got planned so far,” said Wes Collins, another Traditions resident. “As far as a vacation goes, we’re just still wary about the coronavirus. Our personal feeling is that they’re just opening up too fast. I think they’re not using the best course for opening up the country right now. We’re starting to see that now with some of the closures that they’re starting just in the last couple of days.”
Collins and his wife, both 74, are members of the Hilton Club and usually travel to areas that have those resorts, like New York and Florida. This year, they might have to go to Ohio if his 96-year-old mother’s health fails, but that’s the only reason they would be leaving the area.
“I just don’t think there’s enough reason right now to start traveling or take a vacation without really knowing what’s ahead,” he said. “You just have to be careful. And I just hope that we don’t have another huge increase here in the COVID-19 itself. I think we’re in for another big round of it. They say we’re more prepared for it, but I don’t think there’s any question that we haven’t done what we really should, especially testing. We’re behind, and it just makes you too nervous to plan a vacation, at least at this time.”
“I just don’t think there’s enough reason right now to start traveling or take a vacation without really knowing what’s ahead,” he said. “You just have to be careful. And I just hope that we don’t have another huge increase here in the COVID-19 itself. I think we’re in for another big round of it. They say we’re more prepared for it, but I don’t think there’s any question that we haven’t done what we really should, especially testing. We’re behind, and it just makes you too nervous to plan a vacation, at least at this time.”
“It’s just not going to be the reason where people want to travel in those types of situations, whether it’s cruise ship, confined quarters, even train, confined quarters, or flying,” she said. “I think flying is probably the worst because it’s so selfcontained. Most of your travel involves flying to somewhere, so I think that’s going to be very slow to return.”