Lollygagger@large: World traveler focuses on guiding RV tours

In a trivia contest, you want to be on Rod Coe’s team.

Once a resident of Somers and manager of a business in Enfield, Coe traveled “half the world” as a representative of World Book Encyclopedia for 26 years.

“I’ve been to Hawaii 59 times,” he said.

Today, Coe shares his enthusiasm for travel with RVers across the continent.

“I remember you,” Coe’s voice boomed over the din as he welcomed a repeat visitor to the Yankee RV Tours booth at an RV rally in February at Lakeland, Florida. And he wasn’t just saying that. He remembered the visitor and her parents, who had toured with his company several years earlier.

It seems that wherever you might go and whatever you might do, chances are good that Rod Coe has been there and done that. And he is able to recall details about the places he’s been and the things he’s learned along the way.

Coe was raised in Roseville, Michigan, a farm town outside Detroit, the city of his birth. He was a standout basketball player in high school and at Northern Michigan University in Marquette. Following graduation, he returned to metropolitan Detroit to teach government, history and physical education, and coach basketball, for four years.

“I graduated from teaching in 1961,” Coe said, “ and joined The World Book Encyclopedia.” Over the next 26 years, promotions forced Coe to move his family 18 times. He retired in 1987 as one of the company’s four executive vice presidents.

“Most of my work was centered in New England,” he said. World Book had an office in Wakefield, Massachusetts, and Coe “lived for a while in Lexington and Lynnfield.”

While in the Bay State, Coe worked closely with Bob Cousy, the Boston Celtics icon and member of Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Cousy was on the board of The Perkins Braille and Talking Book Library on the campus of Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown. Coe presented Cousy and the library the first Braille encyclopedia. Published by World Book in 1961, the tome’s 38,000 pages were contained in 145 volumes that occupied 43 feet of shelf space.

“When I was living in Somers,” Coe said, “I was World Book’s regional manager for New England, overseeing a staff of about a thousand people.” The staff sold World Book publications to “all the schools, libraries and book fairs throughout the Northeast region.”

He recalls being stranded for three days at the World Book office in Enfield during the February blizzard of 1978. He said he was able to feed and offer shelter to his staff and employees of the bank downstairs because he kept sleeping bags and food at the office, which was adjacent to Enfield Square Mall.

“Occasionally,” he said, “staffers from distant parts of New England would be unable to get home due to weather conditions. I kept sleeping bags and supplies at the office to accommodate anyone who had to spend a night or two.”

As a World Book executive, Coe accompanied Sir Edmund Hillary on a speaking tour after Hillary’s expedition had summited Mount Everest in 1953. World Book was a sponsor of that and other endeavors undertaken by the New Zealand mountaineer, explorer, author and philanthropist. “Hillary,” Coe said, “was one of the most inspiring people I have ever met.”

At the dawn of the 1960s, the publisher of World Book learned that no life-insurance company was willing to underwrite policies for America’s space pioneers. World Book arranged to have the “Mercury Seven” covered for “ten-million dollars each,” Coe said, “and threw a party for them in Houston. We had a dinner and a band; it was a wonderful time,” Coe recalls, “and I danced with the wives of every astronaut there.”

He also welcomed Rosalynn Carter to World Book headquarters in Chicago. “The First Lady,” Coe said, “ordered 17 sets of the encyclopedias, one for each grandchild” in the Carter family at that time.

Coe didn’t just sell World Book encyclopedias; he read what he sold. “Not the whole encyclopedia, of course. But the editors at World Book had to check information being published with readers in every state.” From those responses, Coe said, he read all he could and retains much of what he read. He’s something of a walking encyclopedia, himself.

Coe said he learned from motivational speaker and author Earl Nightingale that if you “ ‘make someone important, you will remember them.’ He taught me to forget what I wanted to say and really listen to what someone else said.” Nightingale advised Coe that in conversation, one should “dominate the listening.”

Rod Coe is 83; wife, Helen, is 68. Both widowed, the Coes met at church and married three years ago. Together, they have seven children who “keep having their own children; so many grandchildren that I’ve lost count,” Rod Coe said.

The Coes winter in Florida, where they undertake planning the next year’s tours, then spend summers guiding RV caravans and rallies throughout North America. They believe they are the only owners of a major American RV-tour company who own an RV.

Rod Coe first experienced RV touring on a trip through Mexico in 1983. “I had a great time and was impressed by how excited the other caravanners were about going on hosted adventures.”

Since forming his own company in 1995, Coe calculates Yankee RV Tours has accommodated more than 6,000 RVers on caravans and at rallies. Today, the company employs a score of veteran RVers who guide six to 10 tours a year to destinations throughout North America.

While several of this year’s RV trips had to be postponed or canceled due to the pandemic, the Coes hope to resume operations by mid-June with a 35-day caravan along the Oregon Trail. Reservations are being accepted for tours and events scheduled this year and into 2021.

Norm Roy, a retired copy editor for The Republican, lives and travels in a motorhome. He is eager to hear from readers about their own travel adventures. His e-mail address is: [email protected]

What: Yankee RV Tours

Address: 1132 Casterton Circle, Davenport, FL 33897

Phone: (407) 973-8288

On the Web: www.yankeervtours.com; Facebook: yankeervtours.com; Email: [email protected]

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