Toy Bears Teach Geography Through Travel

The little red bear from Pennsylvania sat on a steel table aboard an Air Force C-17 cargo jet flying from Bosnia to Germany as a soldier and a reporter negotiated over its future.

Senior Master Sgt. Vince Minnillo had specific instructions: You have to take this bear with you as far as you are going. If you stop, pass it to somebody else taking a trip. By May 17, the five-inch bear with the beady eyes has to be back home at Uwchlan Hills Elementary School in Downingtown, about 35 miles west of Philadelphia.

“Geobear,” as the handwritten tag identifies it, was sent out to see the world by Michael Thompson, a kindergartener in “Mrs. Schumacher’s class.”

The laminated tag asks people to help the bear see the world, and help make Michael’s geography lessons more interesting.

Minnillo, 42, of Charleston, S.C., had done his part, taking the bear on trips to Tuzla and Sarajevo in Bosnia, Pisa in Italy, Ramstein in Germany and Taszar in Hungary.

Now, he was passing the bear to a reporter heading home to Brussels.

“I think it’s probably a great geography lesson,” beamed Minnillo, stuffing the bear, its logbook and a few souvenirs collected along the way into the nylon sack provided by Michael and his class.

Julie Schumacher, reached by phone at the school in a Philadelphia suburb, said each of the 52 kindergartners and first-graders in her geography classes sent out a bear.

“We’ve received hundreds of postcards,” she said. “We have a big map of the United States and the world, and we’re mapping out their trips.”

The trips began at the start of the school year. Michael’s bear started out accompanying a neighbor to South Carolina, then traveled with others through North Carolina, Virginia, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Delaware and Tennessee.

At some point it hooked up with the U.S. Air Force and things really got interesting.

The bear has traveled to Germany, Croatia, Bosnia, Italy and Hungary--and now is resting at the home of an Associated Press correspondent.

During his travels, the bear’s notebook shows, it logged more than 30 hours of flying time--including 10 hours of combat flight.