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Nevada High School exchange student returns for 30-year reunion
It was a long trip from war-torn Cyprus to Kansas City for a skinny 17-year-old boy to make with little more than the clothes on his back and a passport in his hand.
However, when Mehmet Turzioglu arrived in Kansas City on Sept. 20, 1975, Lou and Lois Crow were there to greet him with a smile and a sign with his photograph to get his year as a foreign exchange student at Nevada High School off to a bright, if somewhat late, start.
Because of the fighting in Cyprus he arrived about two months later than planned. The fighting in Cyprus is now a distant memory and it is still a long trip to Missouri, but when Mehmet's flight landed at Kansas City International Airport on July 17, Lou and Lois Crow were again awaiting his arrival, this time without the sign.
"I always had it in mind to come back," Mehmet said the day after his 30-year class reunion, which was held July 22-23.
Mehmet, who is no longer skinny and whose hair is starting to turn gray, said that when he got to the Crows' house he found the very sign that they greeted him with thirty years earlier.
Mehmet's attendance at the reunion was a closely guarded secret among the reunion organizers and the Crows, so it would be a surprise to most of those attending the reunion. Anyone privy to the information was sworn to secrecy. Deanna Conway, one of the reunion organizers, said that once they tracked Mehmet down she began talking to him regularly over the Internet and during their conversations she found that he remembered many things that happened that she had forgotten. She said that it had been a real challenge to encourage class members to come without telling them that Mehmet would be there.
It must have worked because she said that they had several people, including the class president Nick Crow who was Memhet's "brother" for his year in Nevada, there who had never been to a reunion before, she said.
"I know more of the classmates than Nick. I've got good connections with the class," Memhet said.
Nick, who now teaches school in Valejo, Calif., said that he thought he should come if Memhet was coming to keep the stories straight.
"It is nice to be back again," Mehmet said sitting in the Crows living room. Little seems to have changed in Nevada over the last 30 years, he said.
"I found the Crow's old house, the school and the bowling alley. The only things that have changed is Pizza Hut, which used to be on the Square; and Wal-Mart, which has moved," he said.
Memhet said that he remembers that during the first week he was in Nevada, Lois Crow, who he still calls Mom, told him that every Thursday he was to bring his laundry down to be washed. Thursday came and Mehmet took the sheets from the bed and put them on the floor. Then, not knowing just what he was supposed to bring downstairs, he went to the basement and asked her.
Now, Mehmet had some background in speaking English, having gone to middle school in England for a while, but his accent sometimes caused the correct words to sound wrong making for some humorous situations they still laugh about.
This first laundering of the sheets was one of those occasions.
"I have sheeet on the floor," he told her.
"What did you say?" she responded.
"I have sheeet on the floor," he said again.
"You've messed up your room," she said, not understanding what he said.
Realizing that she did not understand him, he asked her to come upstairs and see what he was talking about.
"I don't want to see that mess," she told him, still not understanding what he was saying.
Over the next couple of months as his English improved the misunderstandings became fewer, he said.
Because of the fighting in Cyprus in 1975 it was difficult for Mehmet to get off Cyprus. He had to apply to the government for permission and then each day he had to walk five miles from his home to the English airbase on the island to have someone there call the U.S. Consulate in the capitol city of Nicosea. The only problem was that the person he talked to each day thought he was a nuisance and ignored his request. Finally, to get rid of him, the call was made and the consulate said that they had been looking for him. They sent a car for him and after getting permission from the United Nations, which was in control of the island, he was off for the United States -- leaving his family and everything else behind.
Getting to Kansas City required taking a seaplane to Turkey and then a bus to Istanbul, Turkey. From there he traveled by plane to the Netherlands, New York City and Chicago, finally arriving in Kansas City.
When Memhet returned to Cyprus after his year in Nevada he completed his mandatory military service and went to college in Turkey becoming a mechanical engineer. He said that when he graduated he went to work for the Telecommunication Authority for Cyprus where he stayed for 20 years. During that time he continued his education in the telecommunication field.
In 1999, Memhet said that he retired from the government because of political reasons and opened his own telecommunications business, Decibel, which now has customers in several countries in Europe. He said that his company imports switches and other equipment and installs wiring systems for government services, hotels and businesses and he is now moving into providing Internet telephone service.
In addition to his having started a business, Memhet now has a wife, Hulya, a son who just graduated from the University of Turkey with a degree in civil engineering and a daughter who will be a senior in high school this fall.
"In 30 years I never forgot the people and time I spent in Nevada," he said. He kept in regular contact with the Crows until he retired and said that he lost contact with them for five or six years while he was starting his business and moving around.
"I'm thankful for the Crows. After all these years they opened their house to us. I'm really thankful for them, especially Nick," he said.