Bio: Callies, Jean – Exchange Student from France in Neillsville (1981)

Contact: Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon
E-mail: dolores@wiclarkcountyhistory.org 

Surnames: Callies, Sternitzky

----Source: Clark County Press (Neillsville, Clark Co., WI) 8/13/1981

French Youth Gets Glimpse of USA (Callies - 1981)

“It’s too difficult to judge the United States after having spent only one month here,” explained Jean Callies, a 17-yeaer-old French youth who spent the past month staying with the Duane Sternitzky family of Neillsville. Callies, an intelligent and inquisitive high school student from Neuilly (a suburb of Paris), decided to participate in a North Atlantic Cultural Exchange League (NACEL) program in order to get what he termed a “glimpse of the new world.”

He arrived in Minneapolis, July 13, along with many other French students. Each student was placed with an American family in Wisconsin or Minnesota for the one month stay. Callies returned to France, Tuesday, August 11.

Callies was not overly eager to return to France so soon. In fact, he stated that if the air traffic controllers strike forced the cancellation of all flights, to Europe, he would not mind staying in the United States for the next few years. However, like a typical Frenchman, Callies stated that while he would enjoy the experience of living in the United States for some time, he would not like to live here forever.

“I would like to get a job in the United States someday,” said Callies, who hopes to study economics in college. “I think it would give me the time to learn more about this country than what I would see in one month.”

Difference in Lifestyles

Callies’ favorite aspect of American life was the way “Americans come and go as they please.” He termed it a “very easy and undisciplined” lifestyle. He noted that French life was much more rigid and planned out.

Although he admitted to being from a financially comfortable family, Callies noted that “Americans are very rich when it comes to material possessions.” However, he believes that “American intellectual life is not as strong as that of France.”

“In France, one reads much more than the average American,” noted Callies. He added that perhaps a reason for this is that French culture is much older than that of the United States. Callies termed the United States “a place of a high technological level but of low cultural level.” (Callies used the above expression with some regret, fearing that readers would find it insulting. He did not mean to say that he finds Americans uncultured, but rather that Americans do not seem to have a strong sense of American tradition.)

A trip to Chicago provided Callies with “a sense of the immensity of the United States.” But he stated that it was from the people of the small towns that he learned “something vast about America.” Callies refused to elaborate here, stating that he had only “formed a fragmentary idea.”

(Aside from visiting Chicago, Callies also had the opportunity to go on several fishing trips in Wisconsin. He noted that Wisconsin was ‘A very pleasant place.’)

Politics

Callies, who termed himself “a believer,” stated that he could not support the newly elected socialist President of France, Francois Mitterrand because “the ideology of socialism is atheistic.” He noted, though, that Americans [are] wrong in assuming that the election of a socialist means that France will fall into the hands of Russia.

“I don’t think there is anything wrong with making as many people on earth happy,” Callies said. “But you cannot do it without God.”

Although he is too young to vote, Callies stated that he probably would have voted for Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the former President, against Mitterrand, simply to vote against the socialist. He termed the last election one of “no choice.”

Callies said he followed the last American Presidential election in the news, but stated that he was interested only in the election itself. “Once the election was over, I was no longer concerned with who was the American President,” he said.