Meeting the late Arthur Tauck Jr. was one of the best things that ever happened to me. He was a top businessman who had built up one of the world’s most respected travel companies. He was literally one of the people who created the modern travel industry. He was charismatic and colorful, a legend in the travel industry and beyond it. For me, crossing paths with him at all was highly improbable.
I grew up as the son of an immigrant single mother in Kansas. I blew into New York driven by one primary motivation, a raging urge to travel and explore the world. All my life growing up in the dead center of the United States, equally remote from east and west coasts, I had hungered to see other places.
That desire had been implanted in my heart when I was very young. My mother had grown up in England. Her parents followed her to The States, and after my parents’ divorce we became a very close-knit extended family. I grew up with my mother and grandparents as a family of foreigners in Kansas.
My grandparents came to America when they were in their 40s and were never very Americanized. They retained their Englishness, and they were a big part of my daily life. My grandmother talked a lot about England. She called it “home,” and I could see deep longing in her eyes when she talked about it.
She often reminisced about her father, my great grandfather. He was a British merchant seaman back in the day when “the sun never set on the British Empire.” Those sailors were among the first people to develop a global view. She would often repeat some of the sailor’s lore she had learned at her father’s knee. That was part of what put the traveling bug in me.
Because of my grandparents, I had a palpable sense early on of faraway places. I wanted to travel to see them. The urge to travel lit up in me at the dawn of childhood.
As a young person my travel was only through books and movies. As soon as I was old enough to actually travel, I did. It started with hitchhiking, then teaming up with friends for road trips.
My best travel opportunity came to me when I was working as a nightclub musician and got an offer to go on the road from a band traveling in Canada. It involved playing music six nights a week and traveling to a new city every week or two. I adored it. Whenever I was traveling I felt that I was doing something worthwhile with my time. It allayed all my anxieties. By staying in motion, I felt as if I could outrun all my problems, and nothing bad could ever catch up to me.
When I got tired of playing nightclubs, I landed work in New York City as a reporter on the travel industry. In that position I was able to feed my hunger for travel. For years I took at least one trip every month. I traveled to all the continents and many of the most popular destinations in the world. It was a phenomenal job. It was through that job that I met Arthur Tauck.
Arthur stood out from the travel industry, as he would have stood out from any background. Though he was a highly successful business man he had the temperament of an artist. He channeled his creative energy into the travel business.
Despite having the creative drive of an artist, Arthur was able to thrive in the travel business because selling travel is not like selling shoes. It’s not a physical thing. It has a physical component, but that’s only a small part of travel.
What is it anyway that the travel industry is selling? What are people buying when they take trips? Some people say the travel industry is selling dreams. That’s a fair description, though it seems even more than that.
Travel is aspirational. You have an image glowing in your heart from childhood of the Pyramids, or the lions and elephants of Africa, the monumental national parks of the western U.S., or the rich culture at every turn in Paris. And some day you may be able to go to that place where that image is real.
And travel is education, the best form of education, or certainly one of the best.
In any case, for a businessman who combines the temperament of an artist and an explorer, no business could be better than the travel business. Through Arthur’s constantly churning creative drive he introduced many innovations to the travel industry that are still with us today.
Although we came from very different circumstances, we found a common vein of interest in travel. As a travel reporter I interviewed him countless times over the years and learned a lot about the travel industry from him. I was able to appreciate those qualities that made him so successful, such as his voracious curiosity and constant inventiveness.
After we had known each other for decades, Arthur asked if I would be interested in helping him with a project. He wanted to create a column for Tauck that would promote the joys of travel with no commercial strings attached.
The mission was to share the love of travel with the audience based on our common passion. We would share that bond with them not from the roles of buyer and seller, but just as fellow travelers. The lack of any sense of selling something, a requirement that Arthur was very strict about, gave it a refreshing atmosphere.
As Tauck’s ambassador of travel, we created a character: A. Colin Treadwell, who shared Arthur’s initials: ACT.
With the skills of the amazing cartoonist Steve Haefele, Colin was given a physical form, so he took on a life as a character independent of Arthur and of me. The stories drew from my actual travel experiences with some changes of names and so forth.
That was the birth of Musings of Colin Treadwell. I wrote the stories, but we had discussions about the subjects. Many of the ideas originated with Arthur. He provided feedback and signed off on every one of them, so they did stick closely to his views and the things he cared about.
In later years, he became less active. But nothing went out without his approval. The stories reflected him and the areas where his and my interests and concerns converged. They were part of how he channeled his creative energy when he was no longer involved in the day-to-day operation of Tauck. In a sense the Colin Treadwell stories represented him at the stage of life when he had graduated from business concerns, but his passion for travel was as strong as ever.
As a retirement project, Colin’s Musings reflected an important corner of Arthur’s large legacy. They reflect his aspirations as a lover of travel, and a sincere believer in the value of travel. It was never just a business for him.
Now dear Arthur’s earthly time is passed, and it’s time for Colin Treadwell to pass on into his own next horizon. To those who have shared this ride with me, I feel deeply grateful. There are still about 200 stories in the file to catch up on, if you feel like taking another trip with Colin.
And with that, I bid you adieu. If you wish to pass on any messages to me, I can be reached at davidcogs@gmail.com.
Your humble reporter,
David Cogswell aka
A. Colin Treadwell
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