MEYR IS ALTENBURG'S AMBASSADOR TO THE WORLD

Now retired, Vernon Meyr is a graduate student at Southeast Missouri State University and enjoys taking part in package tours with other university students.

Though he's a lifelong resident of Altenburg, Vernon Meyr has let his presence be known in 47 countries throughout the world.

The retired banker is truly a citizen of the world, having traveled throughout the United States, Europe and Central and South America.

Meyr, a longtime executive with the Bank of Altenburg, first began traveling during his bank vacations. As those vacations got longer, the distances Meyr would travel grew as well. He's visited wine festivals in Switzerland, explored Mayan and Incan Indian ruins in Guatemala and the Yucatan Peninsula and celebrated New Year's Eve in Ecuador, among other adventures.

"I like to travel because it allows you to always have a new experience," the retired banker said.

Meyr's first taste of travel came as a child. After the death of his father, he moved from Detroit, Mich., to Altenburg, where he was raised by his grandparents. After graduating from Altenburg High School, Meyr was awarded a Regent's Scholarship to attend what was then Southeast Missouri State Teacher's College. After a semester at the college, a job opened at the Bank of Altenburg. Meyr returned to his home town, worked his way through the ranks of the bank and retired in 1987 as president and chief executive officer.

Throughout his professional career, Meyr would take every opportunity to travel first the nation, then the world.

"In the bank, I'd get my vacations and I'd usually try to make the most of that time," Meyr explained. "I'd try to travel and see other parts of the country.

"After 15 years at the bank, I got two week's vacation and that's when I started traveling abroad."

That first trip outside the United States was to an American neighbor, the nation of Mexico, for the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City.

Of the opening ceremony, Meyr said, "I don't believe I've ever had an experience like that."

Two years later, he traveled to Oberammergau, Germany to see that city's famed Passion Plays.

"For awhile there, I would only go every other year on a trip abroad because it was too draining on the pocketbook," said Meyr.

During the 1980s, Meyr became involved in the Walther League, a Lutheran youth organization, and eventually became president of the Missouri Walther League. He traveled extensively as part of the organization, attending international conventions both in America and in Canada.

Meyr eventually began receiving three weeks of vacation time each year, allowing his yearly travels to become more and more extensive, including trips to the Middle East and Alaska.

Probably his favorite trip is one he took to Europe in 1987. He left to attend the famed music festival at Salzburg, Austria. During this trip he experienced three occurrences so lucky he calls them miracles.

The first destination on that 1987 trip was Vevey, Switzerland, where Meyr experienced the good fortune to arrive in time for the town's wine festival, only held every 25 years. Being able to attend the rare event was such a stroke of good fortune, Meyr says it was the trip's first miracle. "It was a miracle that I was able to attend," said Meyr. "Rains had come and driven a lot of people away so that I was able to attend."

Following the wine festival, Meyr traveled to Salzburg in the hope of getting a ticket for the Grand Opera portion of Salzburg's music festival. To his great dismay, however, he found that no tickets were available.

Meyr elected to go to a ski resort for a few days and returned to Salzburg where he again tried, without success, to get a ticket for the music festival.

Standing outside the closed ticket office feeling sorry for himself, Meyr was approached by a man who asked, "Are you trying to get a ticket.

"Yes I am," Meyr said to the man, who graciously agreed to sell the traveler a ticket for its face value.

After a leisurely dinner in a Salzburg restaurant, Meyr was able to attend the event which had drawn him to Europe -- the Grand Opera. As he waited for the presentation to begin, he began talking to the man seated next to him, mentioning that he was from Altenburg, Mo., and that the town had been settled by Lutheran immigrants from the Saxony region of what in the 1980s was East Germany. The man seemed intrigued with Altenburg's rich German and Lutheran history.

"When I told him about Altenburg, he seemed to perk up and it turned out that he was an escapee from East Germany," said Meyr, obviously enjoying the recollection. "He was from Dresden [in Saxony] and this young man's father had been a Lutheran pastor in Dresden and his three sisters were married to Lutheran ministers."

The third "miracle" of Meyr's European adventure came shortly after the Salzburg music festival when he made a stop for the night in Bayreuth, Germany.

"When I got there, I couldn't find a room anywhere," explained Meyr. "I asked what was going on and found the town was hosting a Wagner Festival."

The festival, held yearly, commemorates the life and music of great German composer Richard Wagner. Like the Salzburg festival, the Wagner celebration was sold out. Again, however, luck was with Wagner and he experienced his third miracle.

"I really wanted a ticket for the festival but couldn't get one," he said. "So I was just standing on a street corner in Bayreuth and this car pulls up and I asked if anyone in the car had an extra ticket. They did and I was able to buy one for a 10 percent premium.

"That was fantastic," said Meyr. "That was one of my most interesting trips."

Such experiences are what keep Meyr on the road traveling throughout the world.

Since retiring, Meyr has started graduate work toward a masters degree in history. He earned bachelors degrees in general studies and history after many years of attending night classes at Southeast.

As a graduate student, he has made several package trips with groups of travelers from Southeast Missouri State University . Meyr and other students have visited the British Isles, Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Communist China.

"Since I am a student pursuing a degree, I focus on the history of these places," he said. "I always enjoy seeing the antiquities because I'm interested in history."

Other recent destinations have been in Central America. Shortly after retiring he traveled to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico to study Mayan ruins and has visited the ruins of Incan civilizations in South America.

During this South American visit, he was able to be a part of another new experience -- New Year's Eve in Cuenca, Ecuador.

"That was really a new experience," he said. "They have all these effigies and at midnight, they burn them. The effigies are meant to represent all of the old habits and once they are burned, the people can start the new year with a clean slate."