Interview with Ms. Linda Champagne

On behalf of Volunteering for Seniors (VFS) Easton, Massachusetts, I (Neil Dutta) got the opportunity to interview Ms. Linda Champagne who lives in Antigua, Guatemala after her retirement on June19th 2024. She grew up in Eastern Providence, Rhode Island and later move to Chicago, Illinois. Ms. Champagne started her career as a teacher, then she pivoted to sales and later she started her own business. She won several accolades in sales and was very successful in her business. She loves cooking and in fact her first sales job was to sell gourmet products from France She acquired her passion for travel from her son Mr. Carter & she visited places including Italy, Spain, Brazil, Nepal, Thailand, India, Hongkong, England and many other countries.

She spent significant portion of her life volunteering with babies and young children. She had volunteered at Children’s hospital in Chicago. She wanted to take international volunteering mission and came across a non-profit organization, based in Chicago called ‘Hearts and Motion’ and she joined one of their mission in Antigua, Guatemala in 1998. She was really impressed during her visit and decided later to settle at Antigua. She sold her business and after retirement she move to Guatemala in 2009. Since then, she is really enjoying her post retirement life in this tropical country, she made many friends, loves music, culture, art and helped local Guatemala families and whom she treated as her own family.

She also learnt Spanish after moving there. For the past 15 years in Guatemala, she is involved with different non-profit and volunteering organizations and served malnourished babies and children. Currently, at age 76, her life is very busy. She even started a small business to support local families. She works with a local NGO and with their medical team in treating cleft lip condition and perform palette surgery on Children. She shared with me an interesting story of her 75th birthday, also provided me and children of my age valuable life lessons on how to navigate through life by following our heart & passion. She also stressed on the importance of volunteerism (mentioned in the interview)

Could you tell us how was your childhood and where you grew up?

Ms. Linda Champagne: “I grew up in Barrington, east of Providence in Rhode Island. I am a Purebred Northeasterner, Rhode Islander. I would say I had a typical childhood, growing up in Rhode Island. It was in the 50s, so my father got back from the war. All these young men were buying homes for the first time. And, it was kind of your typical childhood. You know, we weren’t wealthy, we weren’t poor, we were very middle-class family. Life was good. We relaxed around the block all the time and it was a time when everyone played games, played things outside, and played jacks, and played monopoly. It was a great neighborhood scene. The parents were all young families, and it was a lot of cookouts, barbecues, and clambakes. You know, that kind of thing.”

Do you have any special memory you want to share with us?

Ms. Linda Champagne: “Oh wow, I have a lot. We grew up in Rhode Island, and the first house we lived in was on a river. So, I was swimming when I was like 2 and a half. I loved the docks and swimming at an early age. You know, Rhode Island has its fabulous beaches and we would go to the beach all the time. And the two most memorable fun things about my life are summer vacations at Block Island, RI, at the island coast of Rhode Island. and we were at the beach everyday and did beach stuff. And my mother’s family were from Connecticut and they had a farm. A typical big dairy farm. So, recollections of going to the farm in Avon, Connecticut, that was just the best it could be. Helping my grandfather take out the hay, ride in the tractor with him, feeding the cows, shoveling the manure, taking the eggs out from under the chicken, and every Christmas we had at the farm. It was quite a quintessential New England we had. It was lovely.”

Can you tell us about your family & friends who played significant role in your life?

Ms. Linda Champagne: “You know, I thought about this question, and there really isn’t any one person that when I was child, when I was younger. But I would say when I probably became the most impressionable was in my teens, and when I went of to college. And my first husband, Adam’s father, really introduced me to a different way of life, and that, he loved culture and things having to do with culture. As a family, growing up, we never went to museums; we never went to theater. So, when I married Allan, I was introduced to all of this and I realized how much I loved the arts, going to theater, going to ballet, going to museums, you know, all those things I wasn’t really familiar with. So, I would say that was a great big change in my life which I really enjoyed.”

If you are comfortable, could you please tell us about your career or professional life.

Ms. Linda Champagne: “Sure, sure. Well, when I grew up in the 50s, I graduated from high school in 1966. And, as a woman, we had three choices. Did you want to be a nurse? Did you want to be a doctor? Or do you want to be a secretary? And I didn’t like to type. So, I became a teacher. And I mean; it was always something I wanted to do. And I thought that was what I was going to do. But after I taught for a year, I taught 6th grade language arts. I had secondary certification teaching English. So, I taught 6th grade language arts, which was a nightmare. And I just didn’t like it. I wasn’t comfortable with the class. If I could have had one-on-one, I would have been much happier. Anyway, I taught for a year, did not like it. And I think like any job, you kind of weave your way, you know, to find where you belong. So, I had numerous jobs, but I basically ended up in a sales career. My first job was selling gourmet products from France. So, and that was a great career for me because I love to cook and I love buying things in my kitchen. So, it was really great for me. And then from there I kind of wove my way a little more and I ended up selling specialty foods. So, specialty foods being all gourmet products, it’s not found in your local grocery store, but you would find in specialty stores. So that was even better because they were all great food stuffs. And again, I love to cook, so it’s easy for me to sell something that I liked. So, I was in, I was in sales most of my life, which I really enjoyed. I, didn’t really, if someone had told me I was going to be a salesperson all my life, I never would have believed it, but I happened to love it. And you know, I’m a people person and I am aggressive, but not in a bad sense. I was just very conscientious about my sales, and about my customers. I didn’t like to lose, I liked to come in second. So, I always did well. But it was a lot of pressure, and I did not like it. It was a lot of pressure in sales because you never sell enough. You know if you have a great month, and the next month, you have to do greater. It was my own business and I had people working for me, and that all was always a headache. You know with personalities, issues, and crying. It wasn’t easy, well it was fun in some sense, but it was good in the sense that having my son, I had my own schedule. I could make my own schedule, go to his school meetings, and things like that. So, I was lucky. I would say that what gave me the most enjoyment, something that I am proud of, is the fact that I had my own business. You know, that was a big deal. I never imagined I would have my own business. I actually sold it when I retired. So, I was proud of that. It wasn’t easy.”

Any particular incidents or accomplishments in your life that you are especially proud of and have profound impact in your life?

Ms. Linda Champagne: “I always won a lot of sales contests. You know, that was good. I was a good salesperson, I was voted, salesman of the year a couple of times. I won a bunch of contests to go to different countries with one of my companies. So that was that was wonderful. There isn’t anything really in particular.”

Have you travelled to different places?

Ms. Linda Champagne: “Yes, I had traveled. My son, as you know, Adam is an avid traveler and he’s our, what we call, he’s our global citizen. He’s lived all over the world. So, everyone has said, oh, you know, Adam must get his travel experience, you know, from you. And I said no, no, no, no. It’s just the opposite. I said I got my travel experience from Adam because he was always going somewhere. When he was at university, he spent a semester in Italy. So of course I went to Italy. And then after he graduated from college, he and a buddy really went all over the world. And Adam continued to live all over the world. So, through Adam, I visited a lot of countries.

You know, I went to Nepal, I went to Thailand, I went to India, I went to Brazil, I went to Spain. I was in Hong Kong, went to England. So yeah, I had done some traveling, so, you know now I’ve got the passion. Now all I want to do is travel.”

Why did you decide to spend your life after retirement at Guatemala?

Ms. Linda Champagne: “Well, I didn’t really decide it. I mean, it’s not like I knew all my life that was what I was going to do. I really had no plans to retire other than, you know, we all look forward to retiring one day. But one day in 1998, I read an article in the Chicago Tribune, about an NGO and nonprofit organization, a nongovernmental organization. And this woman, her organization was in Merrillville, IN. It was right outside Chicago. So, it was called ‘Hearts in Motion’. And they did all their work in Guatemala. So, it just looked really interesting. She did all kinds of things. She brought doctors in for surgery. She brought firemen down here to help them improve their fire departments. She had all kinds of different projects. She had dentists. So, I said, gee, that sounds interesting. And I’ve been looking. Well, I was a volunteer in Chicago at a Children’s Hospital, so I volunteered for 10 years with children. But I was looking to do something internationally so that sounds interesting. So, I called her up one day and said, let’s have lunch. So, I heard about Hearts and Motion and what they do. And I said, when’s your next trip? She said, well, it’s in March. I said, fine, sign me up. Yeah, so it was a great trip because I ended up going with a group of dentists and I had been a dental assistant during high school and college. My mother was a hygienist. So it was really the best job because every day we just pile into the back of a pickup truck and go to a different Pueblo (means city in Spanish). And, you know, these are very, very rural areas, dirt roads, very poor areas. And we would just go into there’s, there’d always be some little center of the town. And we brought our own plastic chairs and just set up chairs and the dentist just pulled teeth all day long. You know, there were no clinics and that was really all you could do. Their teeth are very bad and they don’t have access to dentists. So, it was great in that we got to really meet the people and we got to visit different pueblos every day, little different towns every day. So, it was wonderful. I absolutely loved it; I loved the people. The work we did was in a town called Zacapa. It was about four hours outside of Antigua, the old colonial capital. So, it was hotter than hell. Oh my God, it was so hot. But our last two days, we’d come into Antigua, which is the old colonial capital, and we’d spend 2 days in Antigua. And Antigua is, oh my God, it’s just the most beautiful colonial town you could ever want. And so, I fell in love with Antigua. So, you know, then I began saying, well, this is kind of nice. Maybe, you know, maybe I’ll retire here. So, I came two more times with this same group. And I actually came to Antigua for, by myself for a week just to make sure I still felt this way. And this was like 10 years before I retired. And I did. It just felt right. So yeah, I never, I really never questioned it. I really never questioned it.”

Was this move challenging for you as you lived greater part of your life in the United States?

Ms. Linda Champagne: “You know, it really wasn’t. I guess, well, I didn’t sell my house right away. So, I left that possibility open just in case, you know, I wanted to come back or I made a mistake or, but it wasn’t. The hardest thing is, you know, well, cleaning out my son’s bedroom, that was probably the hardest thing, you know, all of his memorabilia. I actually gave my house over to a like an Airbnb and they rented it out for like 3 years. So that was hard giving up all mine, his room wasn’t his room anymore. You know, his presence wasn’t there anymore. So that was hard. It really wasn’t difficult because, I wanted to do it. No one was forced to me to do it. My family was like, you’re going where? So no, it wasn’t. It was, it just kind of felt like the natural thing to.”

Please share with us your life after retirement in Guatemala and tell us about your organization.

Ms. Linda Champagne: “Well, sure. I’ve been here for 15 years by next month, so I can’t believe where the time has gone. Yeah, you know, I’m very busy here. I’m very busy all the time, it seems. And sometimes I feel like I’m not retired because I’m so busy. So that’s the downside probably. I’m too busy, I’m too active. I got too much going on. But my life is really varied. There’s a lot to do here. There’s a great expat community. I would say what’s occupied my most time. And one of my reasons for coming here was to do volunteer work. I’d love to volunteer. And I especially love babies. So, in, Chicago, I volunteered with babies. My first job here, actually I did it for probably 10 years before COVID, was to volunteer with babies at a public welfare hospital right in Antigua. And that was wonderful. I did it like four or five days a week, probably 2-3 hours over lunchtime, you know, fed the babies, you know, played with the babies. And they weren’t just babies. We would have 12/13/14 year olds who were very malnourished because of M.S. or multiple sclerosis for the most part. And you know, they couldn’t feed, they couldn’t, they had difficulty swallowing. So, there were a lot of health issues with even some of the children that were, wasn’t just babies, it was toddlers and all ages. Many were malnourished.

Many were, you know, just had a lot of it related to malnutrition, I would say, and M.S. but there are many other congenital, you know, issues that happened also. So, so OK, so I volunteer. So now I don’t do that, but I volunteer at another, (many of my friends have their own NGOs), so my other friend now has her own clinic and she brings in medical teams, especially to do cleft lip and palette surgery. So, I volunteer there whenever she hasmedical team coming to town, which is at least a week a month. It’s a very active town. There’s a lot of expats. They’re not all Americans. They’re from all over the world. So, you know, I’ve got friends that I help with their NGOs. We have a gourmet club. So, I ran that for two years, you know, going to a different restaurant every month. And I’m in a choir. I was in two choirs for a while, but now, I’m in one. And this choir is wonderful because we do Hospice singing and there’s really no Hospice in this country, but we sing it, you know, old folks home and nursing homes. So, it’s really pretty music. There’s only 12 of us, so that keeps me busy. There’s just a lot going on, you know, entertain a lot. I wish there was more culture, but it’s getting better. We’ve just had a music festival this weekend. We have some wonderful chorus from Guatemala City coming here. We have some theater from Guatemala City coming here. So, there’s getting to be more culture, which is great, but it’s a great lifestyle. I love it. Weather is beautiful. Well, the weather’s beautiful all year round. Although we are in the rainy season, but they call Antigua the ‘land of eternal spring’ because we’re about a 4000-foot elevation. So, we don’t get the heat as in the rest of the country. It could be hotter than hell in most of Guatemala, but being a little higher up in the mountains, sometimes I think my thermometer’s broken because it’s in the mid-70s forever, you know, it goes up to 85, 90, but not on a regular basis. So, the weather’s beautiful.”

What are your hobbies or what activities motivating you the most and have you picked any new interests after your retirement?

Ms. Linda Champagne: “Well, I think I kind of mentioned them. I have, well, I didn’t study Spanish till I got here. So that’s been a major project. It’s like work studying. If you haven’t, especially at my age, I don’t memorize as well as I used to. I don’t retain things as well as I used to. So really for 10 years I had a teacher, I studied, you know, five days in a row for a year and then went down to three days a week, two days a week. And then for at least five years, I did one day a week of just conversation with my teacher. So that took up a lot of my time. But I do love to study Spanish. I wish I had; I’m retired. I wish I had more time to study my Spanish. But after a week working with Tessa, where I speak it all week long, that really helps my Spanish. I can understand almost everything and I can certainly make myself understood. I’m not fluent, but I can certainly make myself understood. I guess the biggest passion of my life here is music. I love music. Not that there’s a lot of music here, but I spend a lot of my time listening to music, classical music. I love the opera. I got really hooked on the opera more when I started doing the Live at the Met performances and they had a place in Guatemala City. We could go see the Met live, you know, and probably 8 operas a year. So that I loved and I entertain a lot. I cook a lot. The other thing I’ve done is I started a little business. I did a business with my girlfriend called “What’s Cooking?”. And we kind of prepared food every week, put out a menu. And I did that for about two years, but it came too much like work and I really wasn’t making enough money, so I stopped doing that. So, I did start my own little dessert business called “Tasty Treats” for a good cause. I’m helping a local Guatemalan family and I need to raise money to help the families. So every week I try and send out a list, maybe one or two items to see if people want to order. that keeps me busy. You know, those kinds of things.”

What message you have for me and our generation (Gen Z) in general and what can we learn from your experiences in life?

Ms. Linda Champagne: “Oh, wow. But I have I have a funny, a cute story to tell you. When I turned 75, which was last year, I had my quinceanera times 5. So in Mexico and Latin countries, for your quinceanera, which is your 15th birthday, you have a big party cause that’s your coming into adulthood age. So, and the girls here, the teenagers get all dressed up, beautiful gowns, floral length gowns and it’s really a spectacle. So, I just seeing as how I never had my quinceanera when I was 15, I decided to have my quinceanera times 5, which was 75. So, we actually had a dress from a quinceanera in Mexico from a friend. So, I wore that for my quinceanera and looked just like a real quinceanera. And so, we had, we took pictures in the park, but that’s what, that’s what all the quinceanera’s do. So, I’m in Central Park getting my picture taken and there’s a quinceanera there. So, I’ve got my blow-up numbers that say 75. She’s got her blow-up numbers that say 15.

They have a great picture of us together and we’re both looking at one another. And every time I look at that picture, I say, wow, I’m 75, she’s 15. That’s my advice to her. So, I guess I would say, you know, follow your heart. I think people have to have a passion. They have to do something they love. They have to do something they have a passion about. So that’s really important. You have to have that connection to something. So have a passion, follow your heart. You know, it’s not a straight course. You have to weave your way. And you don’t just get to the perfect job. You don’t just get to the perfect relationship. You know what, You. It takes time and it takes work. That doesn’t mean that it’s not worth doing. It is. And don’t get discouraged. I find that times in life that you learn the most are the times in life that are the hardest. You know everything’s going along peachy keen. You know, you don’t have trauma, you don’t have issues, you don’t have anxiety. So, all these things I think are part of helping you grow. But follow your passion. Don’t settle. Don’t settle for something you don’t like, something you’re not happy at. Don’t settle for a job that you hate, you know, make it work. Make it into something else. Leave. I mean, there are just don’t settle and be kind. That’s a great rescue. I find volunteering and giving back is a huge is a huge thing in my life. I get more. I mean, it makes me feel. It makes me feel good to volunteer, but also does something to my heart. You know, I’m the one that benefits. It’s great to make these contacts. So that’s all my thing. The other thing that I’m saying, the other thing that’s been good for me here is I have made a lot of friends with Guatemalan families, OK? You know, I don’t just hang out with expats. I go out on my way to learn Spanish. So, I’ve got some wonderful Guatemalan families that I’m very close to. So that’s been very important to me, to have all these, you know, families that I’m at home. I’m with family when I’m with them. So, the other reason I love Guatemala, I love Antigua.”

I really enjoyed my interview with Ms. Champagne. Her life journey is truly an inspiration for everyone. Even at age 76, she is vey active within her community in Guatemala and supporting numerous families by running local business and serving young children. I want to meet with her in person and hopefully when I visit Guatemala possibly next year, I may get the opportunity to visit her.

Thank you, Ms. Champagne, for honoring my request to interview you!

Recorded video of our interview can be viewed through this Link