Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 20, 1993 TAG: 9306170113
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Long
They were in My Weekly Reader.
They were the most photographed family in America after the Kennedys, said Susie Pontone, nee Gillis - who nows lives in Christiansburg.
Just because they built a covered wagon, bought a couple of draft horses and headed west.
In the old days, of course, that sort of thing was no big news.
Some 65,000 people went west on the famed Oregon Trail in 1850 alone, historians say. Covered wagons were sometimes backed up across the prairie like rush hour traffic.
The quintessential pioneer trail celebrates its 150th anniversary this summer.
What better time to remember "The Last Wagon West"?
The world has forgotten them, of course.
After all, it was more than 30 years ago that the Gillis family set out on their quixotic (some might just say crazy) wagon ride across America and Europe.
But at the time, the Gillises - Leon, his wife (now ex-wife) Iyone, and their six children - pinged a harmonic in a culture humming with TV and movie westerns. They struck a nerve. They catapulted themselves to a spectacular 15 minutes of fame.
Which doesn't quite explain why they went.
"We've always been different," offered Pontone.
"We just thought it would be something really cool to do," said her sister, Janet Voss.
Voss - who was 9 when they set out - said they got the idea from watching "Gunsmoke" on TV.
Voss also lives in Christiansburg. So does a brother, Alan Gillis, and mother Iyone Gillis.
Leon Gillis - father and wagonmaster - lives in Parrott in Pulaski County.
At the time of the trip, they all lived in Williamsburg, where Gillis ran a profitable restaurant and sporting goods shop.
It was from Williamsburg that they set out on Sept. 27, 1961.
The wagon, equipped with rubber tires for the asphalt age, was built by an 80-year-old retired blacksmith and wagon builder. It was pulled by horses named George and Gracie.
The youngest Gillis, George, was 6 years old. Lee Ann - the oldest of the children - was 17.
For 294 days, the Gillises meandered across the country, following not the Oregon Trail but two-lane blacktop across the American South and West. They spent three months crossing Texas.
They stayed only a few months in California, then packed for Europe. "It was my idea," said Leon Gillis of the second trip. "Just a spontaneous thought."
There, they did it all over again - rolling across The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Russia.
In Eastern Europe, they began attracting crowds, said Leon Gillis in a booklet about the family's travels, "The Last Wagon West."
In Czechoslovakia, "every village and city we came to," alerted by news stories, "welcomed us with crowds of well-wishers," he wrote.
At the border of Poland and Russia, soldiers lay down their machine guns to bedeck the wagon's path with flowers.
Everywhere they were showered with gifts - not to mention food. In 21 weeks in Czechoslovakia, Poland and Russia, Gillis wrote, the family spent $20.
Expenses throughout their travels were slight. "We were very frugal," Iyone Gillis said.
When they had to have cash, they sold pictures of themselves, or were paid to appear on talk shows, or by magazines, Leon Gillis has said.
Meanwhile, as their fame grew, sponsors tripped over each other to help out. Levi Strauss and Wrangler donated clothing. General Motors loaned a car. Freddy Heineken, of Heineken beer fame, donated a pair of draft horses to pull the wagon to Moscow.
They drew the line at direct advertising. When another beer company offered $100,000 to stamp a modest sized logo on the wagon's side, Leon Gillis refused.
"We agreed when we started we wouldn't commercialize this," he said.
They were celebrities in any case. When the Gillises entered Moscow in their wagon in October 1964, Life magazine did a photo spread.
A front-page story and photograph in the New York Times recorded their return.
A different world then
"In the beginning we had a purpose - or, I did," recalled Leon Gillis recently, on the porch of his unfinished house beside the New River.
Gillis is 72 now, with flowing white hair, and makes his living selling topsoil.
He said he wanted his children to "live, learn and see."
What about school?
"For many years," Gillis said, "I have felt the main purpose of public education is first to baby-sit kids and second to keep them from learning."
In any case, there were encyclopedias and books in the wagon. Rolling across the Russian steppe, the Gillis children took turns reading "War and Peace" and "Dr. Zhivago."
They also visited some 2,000 churches and cathedrals and 125 museums on their travels, by Gillis' estimate. They toured factories, military bases, towns and farms, and visited more than 3,000 families - in a kind of endless field trip.
They slept inside the wagon. They were not harassed.
It was, of course, a different world then.
"I wouldn't do it today," said Pontone. "You're talking about 20, 30 years ago."
It wasn't all fun, even then.
Life in the unheated wagon could be miserable in cold weather, said Voss. "The hardest thing was keeping clean," added Iyone Gillis - who is writing a book about the trip.
But for the most part, the Gillises recalled the trip with enthusiasm.
And why not? For a couple of dizzying years, the world was their oyster.
In America, as their classmates struggled with quadratic equations and dangling participles, the Gillis kids rode beside the wagon on horseback, shooting jackrabbits.
They ate, as guests, such exotic fare as rattlesnake meat and chitlins - and so much filet mignon that Janet Voss remembers hoping she'd never see another.
When they went to Europe, they traveled free on the Queen Mary. They were greeted in Europe by French reporters. In Holland, Heineken took the Gillis girls riding in his Lincoln Continental, playing Beatles tapes.
They met the king and queen of Holland.
They played Chopin's piano. They met cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's parents. "We had adventures," said Pontone. "We really did."
Everywhere too, they posed for photographs - hundreds and hundreds of photographs.
Most show to head-turning effect the three teen-age Gillis girls, with their dark hair, long lashes and dazzling teeth. They youngest girls had quickly learned the secrets of makeup from Lee Ann, the oldest, they said.
Were there love affairs?
Pontone howled with laughter. "Let me get my diary!" she said.
Throughout Europe, in fact, suitors trailed the wagon on bicycle and on foot. "I remember having a boyfriend in every country," Pontone said.
Lee Ann finally left the wagon in Europe to marry an American pilot she had met along the way.
The trip to Europe ended, but the wagon rolled on - and on.
In the years to come there were trips to Canada, to Mexico and most of the 50 states they hadn't hit the first time. "We couldn't stop," Pontone said.
That is, until the day their mom said "No."
Midway through Canada, Iyone Gillis decided she had had enough. Her husband would not quit, she said.
She collected the children. "I put them on a bus and we went back to Richmond," she recalled.
And life moved on. Alan Gillis - who did ride the wagon through Europe - is now a lawyer in Christiansburg. Iyone Gillis and daughter Susie Pontone are in property management. Janet Voss is a local paint contractor.
George Gillis works for an engineering firm in Roanoke. The other two Gillis sisters - Lee Ann Olmos and Barbara Esposito - live out west.
Leon Gillis, meanwhile, opened the Roz-Lynn Steak House in Dublin with his third wife.
In 1985, he climbed into the wagon - alone this time - and set out once again.
This time it ended badly. Gillis would not discuss it. But according to stories in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution and court records, police stopped Gillis on a busy thoroughfare in Jonesboro, Ga., in December 1985.
The wagonmaster was charged with cruelty to animals - a Jonesboro veterinarian said the horses needed shoes, and one was lame - and other minor offenses, all later dropped. His horses and wagon were impounded. For reasons not entirely clear, Gillis never got them back.
Nowadays, Gillis does his traveling by car.
His children, meanwhile, say their parents gave them something special. And that their wagon ride convinced them they could do anything they set out to do.
"I'm glad that I did it. I really am," said Janet Voss. "I was a very lucky kid."
by CNB