A happy camper

Teaching Pre K-8, Nov/Dec 1997 by Winarski, Diana L

We all know this phrase - now meet Ginny Rorby, its incarnation

From behind the wheel of her camper, Ginny Rorby smiled and waved energetically as she pulled into the parking lot of Adams Diner, a chrome and neon beacon for travelers on Route 22 in Wingdale, New York. Beside her sat her best friend, Judy McCully.

Travelling from Vermont, where the two were visiting Ginny's family, to Florida, where Judy lives, they had just begun a classic road trip, the kind with few random objectives and maybe a semi-concrete goal. The kind that belongs to Jack Kerouac and the late Charles Kuralt.

"Ginny and I have been friends for 30 years," Judy told me, "and we've never exchanged harsh words, but everyone laughed at me when I said I was going on a trip with Ginny in her camper."

Throw away the map. Maybe they knew that when you're on the road with Ginny, twists and turns and out-of-the-way places lure you into situations you'd never imagine...but you're always glad.

Take, for example, Ginny's journey into children's book writing, a twist in the road she never plotted. Last year, her first book, Dolphin Sky, was published by Putnam - and she's in her mid-50's.

"I barely got out of high school," Ginny explained as we devoured our diner breakfast. "I have an amblyopic eye, so I had to turn it in to read - you can imagine what that was like for a kid at school. I avoided reading at all. I just didn't think I was smart."

Believing an academic career wasn't possible, Ginny became a flight attendant for National Airlines in 1966. But after 10 years, she decided she'd better "run through college and get a degree in something." Still based in Florida (where she grew up after being adopted when she was 18 months old), Ginny flew the Orlando to London, England, route for eight years while she earned an undergraduate degree. "I'd go to school all week, leave for London on Friday night and come back on Sunday," she explained.

Judy, also a flight attendant who met Ginny when the two began working together, chimed in, "She'd always work the galley position because you're down there by yourself. As soon as she finished her work, she'd start her homework; all her chemistry books would be lined up in front of the stoves."

Ginny wound up enjoying school more than she thought possible. "The first A's I got shocked me," Ginny said. "But I figured the first one was because they liked me; the second because they felt sorry for me because I was 36. By the time I got my third A, I began to wonder if I was actually smarter that I thought I was."

A driving passion. Midway through her undergraduate work, the road turned again. "I found a sick dog in the doorway of a church," Ginny explained. "I'd feed it during the week, and my friend would feed it on the weekends." But the severely malnourished dog needed medical attention so the two women sedated it in order to bring it to a veterinarian.

"I had never written a thing in my life, but I was so upset that I sat down and wrote this thing called, 'I Found Your Dog' to let whoever had abandoned it know no one took it in as the owners expected. I scribbled a story on a notepad and jammed it into my purse."

A year later, on her way to a Miami newspaper to sell some photos she had taken, Ginny found the story. ("That shows you how organized I am," she muttered.) She gave it to the newspaper photographer and said, "If you can use this, great." They published the story with the promise that if she could continue to write that same way, they'd publish anything she wrote.

"Of course I couldn't. I didn't know anything about writing. But I believe in taking opportunities."

Ginny received a dual degree in Biology and English nine years after she began school. She then retired from flying and continued her education at Florida International University. In 1991, she was the first woman there to earn her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing.

Due West. "When I finished school, I packed my camper and headed West." With a pet parrot, dove and albino red rat snake in tow, the happy campers landed seven weeks later with a hitchhiking kitten on board by this time - on the coast in northern California. "My house is surrounded by 6,000 acres of state redwood forest," Ginny smiled.

Her tiny home now houses Spare Cat and Extra Cat, too, who "moved in" shortly after Ginny arrived. When she mentioned her raven, Hobbs, though, I had to interrupt. "Animals just seem to find me," she explained. "He had fallen out of his nest so I raised him. When I let him go, he took his first flight and landed on a pile of horse manure in the road where a car hit him and broke his wing - now Hobbs is mine for good. As a kid, I kept anything that made it to the door. At one point, I had 22 turtles. But I really love birds."

Ginny is president of a local chapter of the Audubon Society, and she works one day a week at a bird shop in Mendocino, California, to get away from her computer, where she works full time on her third book.

Her second book, a "very, very autobiographical novel," has only been rejected six times, so "it's early yet," Ginny told me, as she launched into the story of Dolphin Sky's arduous journey into print.