In May of 2018, Emily Fix ‘15, experienced symptoms that she believed were related to the flu, but, as her condition worsened, she was hospitalized with a life-threatening liver abscess.
“I spent 10 days in the hospital, and while I was sedated, my parents said that when I got better, we would go to Nashville," explained Fix. "They thought I couldn’t hear them, but soon it became a running joke that I, of course, remembered.”
Upon her return home, a Welcome Home Emily sign greeted her.
“The sign was hung up by my dad before he came to pick my mom and I up from the hospital. But it never fell, and we didn't have a good reason to take it down because we thought it wouldn't stay up very long.”
Stuck on a door, that sign became a reminder of a dream and promise to head west.
After two years of extensive planning, gathered around family dinners and spreadsheets, Emily, her father, John Fix ‘84, her mother, Laura Fix, and cousin, Katie Leverentz, were finally going to travel across America to celebrate Emily’s recovery and her graduation from Millersville University.
Like everything else this year, plans got slightly altered due to the coronavirus.
“Originally, we were supposed to go in May,” said Fix. “We would have been in Nashville exactly two years after I came home from the hospital.”
Only delayed by a few weeks, the Fix Family hit the highway on June 13th with a trip nicknamed GART or The Great American Road Trip. This epic road trip spanned 23 days and covered 7,418 miles across 28 states.
Emily’s family was not a stranger to cross country trips. Shirley and John Leverentz, Emily’s grandparents, embarked on a six-week, cross-country road trip in the '80s to commemorate their retirement from teaching.
“They went all the way to California through Oregon and Washington and even into Canada,” said Fix. “They drove until they wanted to go home, and they kept a journal of what they did. Some of the stuff we did and saw, was based on their trip. We went to places like the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar in Jackson, Wyoming because that is something that they wrote about.”
Like her grandparents, Emily is following in their footsteps by becoming a teacher. She will start her education career this fall at St. Leo the Great Catholic School in Lancaster as a kindergarten teacher.
“I’ve learned about all of these places in school,” said Fix. “To actually go and see them in person, when I teach, I can be like, I’ve been there. Before I’ve only traveled up and down the east coast and now I can relate to people and their experiences of seeing the United States.”
Besides observing the fluctuations in gas prices, prices of homes, and how news reports varied in each state, the shifts in geology and geography was something that surprised Emily.
“My dad is big into geology and mapping,” said Fix. “He was able to point out the differences in the dirt and when you drive you get to experience and see the changes. We noticed this especially in our drive to the Badlands, when we started the trip in South Dakota, it was very green, very rolling hills and snow fences everywhere and then all of a sudden you just appear into this land that is very different and doesn’t seem to belong in that part of the country.”
Upon their return home, and with the promise of going west fulfilled, Emily decided that it was finally time to take the welcome home sign down.
“It was a great closure to that chapter of my life,” said Fix.
Emily is already planning her next road trip up the coast of California along the Pacific Coast Highway.