WAR BRIDE ON WAY HOME

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25389, 12 January 1948, Page 2

WAR BRIDE ON WAY HOME

DISAPPOINTED WITH VERMONT PEOPLE N.Z. GIRL’S OPINION (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) BOSTON, January 9. A blonde, attractive New Zealand war bride, Mrs Aileen Lewis, is on her way home to-day by Pan-American World Airways, leaving her G.I. husband behind in Vermont where, she said, the residents “are as cold as the snow they live ip.” Mrs Lewis said: "New Zealand is a beautiful place. The people there are as warm as the New Zealand weather, and I hope to be there early next week.” Mrs Lewis, who is the wife of Mr Benjamin Lewis, of Woodstock, Vermont, had no criticism of her husband, but she had a poor opinion of other Vermont people. She said: “I went to Vermont in July, 1946, determined to like it. At first the people were friendly to me, but after they got over the novelty of the way I talked they passed me by.” She likes the scenery in Vermont, and she also found the native maple syrup “delicious” if poured on the snow, but she considered the prices of some foods fantastic. Butter cost 87 cents per lb compared with Is 6d in New Zealand. “Of course,” she added, “a lot of my trouble might have been fne. I want to make that clear. I was homesick. My husband knows what homesickness is. He fought for a long time in the Pacific.” A Vermont official, commenting on the case, said: “The average Vermonter tries to be friendly to strangers, but if that friendliness is not returned, a Vermonter Can be cold.” He diagnosed the girl’s unhappiness as “pure, simple homesickness,”