Seeking Community at Sea
When Betty Jemail boarded the MV World Odyssey as a Lifelong Learner on the Spring 2025 Voyage, she wasn’t too concerned with adding more passport stamps – she already had around 290 of them, after all, from her extensive prior global travels. What drew her to Semester at Sea wasn’t the promise of new destinations (she’d been to every country on the itinerary already, in fact); instead, it was the promise of connection, curiosity, and community at sea that drew her to this adventure. “It wasn’t the excitement of seeing anything new that drew me to join SAS,” Betty said. “It was the experience on the ship that I was really excited for.”
And, for Betty, the voyage truly delivered on this wish. “It was just a wonderful experience,” she said. “The camaraderie of everyone on the ship; everyone was so loving and accepting. We all got along so well. The staff was wonderful. The students and ship kids were great. And the professors were so interesting and talented.” For Betty, her SAS voyage was just one of the hundreds of international experiences she’d had in her 90 years of life – but perhaps one of the most meaningful.
A Lifetime of Adventure
Betty’s adventurous streak began long before she began circumnavigating the globe. Raised in the small town of Bangor, Michigan (population: 2,000!), she grew up determined to see the wider world. Her mother, Mildred, instilled in her and her sister a sense of independence and possibility at a very young age. “My mom was determined for her daughters to thrive,” Betty said. “She found us resort jobs around the country, and we’d work as waitresses and send our money home for college.” Those early experiences – living in places like the Catskills and Lake Tahoe – planted the seed for a lifetime of exploration for Betty.
That curiosity carried Betty to Northwestern University, where she earned a degree in journalism before being hired straight out of college by Pan Am Airways. As a flight attendant in the true golden age of aviation, Betty spent weeks at a time hopping across the globe to cities like Hong Kong, Bangkok, and Rome. “It was the best thing that could have happened to me,” she said. “I’d always known, even while I was taking classes in my little country high school, that I was going to get out and see the world.”
Between her Pan Am days and her Semester at Sea adventure, Betty built a rich and full life in the United States. After two years as a flight attendant, she married her first husband, Jon Joslyn, and the couple eventually settled in Santa Rosa, California, where they raised their family.
Betty eventually learned about Semester at Sea when her daughter, Gloria, sailed as a student from the University of Colorado in 1983. Once their children were grown and off to college, Jon encouraged Betty to rekindle her love of travel, even though he preferred to stay home himself. So, Betty began joining group trips around the world, gradually returning to the rhythm of exploration that had defined her early adulthood.
When Jon sadly passed away, Betty later married her second husband, Gene Jemail, a fellow world traveler who shared her passion for discovery. Together, they journeyed across continents, visiting Africa and countless other destinations that had long fascinated her. Though Gene passed in 2020, Betty recalls countless adventures with him; his obituary reads: “In a friend’s back yard, over a glass of iced tea, he met Betty Joslyn, a widow, who was wishing for ‘a traveling man’. It was a perfect match. For the next twenty years, they traveled to every part of the globe with a carry-on suitcase in one hand and a Lonely Planet Guide in the other. They reached 150 world destinations.”
Now, years after Gene’s passing, Betty continues to see the world: sometimes on her own, and sometimes alongside new travel companions she meets along the way. Across her many life eras and adventures, she now estimates she’s seen nearly 300 countries and/or territories, and the list just keeps growing.
“Be Like Betty”
Roughly halfway through the Spring 2025 Voyage, Betty celebrated her 90th birthday – an event that helped solidify what was already a growing consensus on the ship that Betty is, in fact, a legend. Inspired by Betty’s extensive travel history, energy, and zest for life, two students, Dennis McDaniel and Ryan MacDougall, introduced her to the wider ship community during the ship’s talent show. Soon after, “Be Like Betty” T-shirts started appearing across the ship, featuring a picture of Betty and the phrase “Be Like Betty.” A fellow Lifelong Learner and SAS faculty alum, Cheryl Klauss, had come up with the idea to make the shirts to help fundraise for a SAS Scholarship Fund. “I have no idea where that phrase came from,” Betty laughed. “I was just being myself on the voyage – I have never felt that I was special, but it just snowballed. But I think people just liked that I am lively and still living life to the fullest at my age.” The students auctioned off some of the shirts and gifted Betty two of them, which she now holds as a treasured item very close to her heart at her home in Santa Rosa. Her grandson, who has also now sailed with SAS from Colorado State University, has the other shirt. “He just thinks it’s so funny,” Betty said.
Lessons from a Life Well-Traveled
Having ventured through nearly every corner of the world – just weeks ago, Betty returned from a three-week trip to Afghanistan – Betty knows a thing or two about courage, curiosity, and community. Asked what advice she’d offer younger travelers, she said: “Always move out of your comfort zone,” she said. “It’s a huge step, but you’ll never be the same after. This kind of experience changes you forever.”
Even now, Betty is planning her next journey; soon, she is looking forward to a family trip to the Azores, the islands her grandparents once called home. At 90 years old, Betty shows no signs of stopping on her quest to see every inch of the world. To this day, she’s still charting new paths and collecting stories, and she remains living proof of the idea that we all might live very rich, very full, and very well-traveled lives if we just aim to “Be [A Little More] Like Betty.”
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