Episodes with Kit

On August 6, 1938, the world became a brighter place, for that was the day Christopher Lord Salter (Kit as his mother called him) was born.  He is now 88 years old, and as I sat down to write a birthday message to him, images from his life and our life together flooded across my mind.  Kit’s extraordinary life has been filled with family, friends, students, travel, stories and adventures that he collected in his 2022 memoir Episodes in a Life.  To the episodes he penned and published four years ago,  I would like to add a few quintessentially “Kit Salter moments” from our life together across the past sixty years.

With Kit, every day has been an adventure.  In the summer of 1977, I took a UCLA summer Environmental Education course that he’d designed for inner city geography teachers in Los Angeles.  I remember the first day of class when he walked into the classroom as being electric.  Over the course of the six-week institute, I fell in love with that energy, and learned a whole new language for how to read a landscape. And yes, readers, I married him and continue to be amazed at his capacity to bring joy into the lives of everyone he meets.

The day before we were married, I had just finished teaching my classes at Audubon JHS when a note arrived telling me to stop at the main office before heading home.  “Someone is waiting for you down the hallway,” the secretary said with a smile on her face. Something was up, and before I knew it, Kit appeared in a white suit, Panama hat and a vintage-era tie.  Then, in a scene right out of the movie An Officer and a Gentleman, Kit picked me up and carried me the entire length of the hallway filled with junior high school students and teachers.  The next day,  Ms. Riggs began life as Mrs. Salter and life with Kit has been one memorable adventure after another.

Fast forwarding now to our summers working together at the National Geographic Society in a K-12 geography education program that brought teachers together from every state around the country. Just as Kit’s teaching had changed my understanding of geography as a way to understand the world, those summer institutes changed the lives of hundreds of teachers who spent a hot and humid July in Washington, DC. They returned home energized and ready to change the world.  Like I’d been the summer Kit and I met, they’d been “geo-evangelized” by Kit’s dynamic lectures and the urban field trips he led them on.

At the end of the SGI (Summer Geography Institute) in 1989 on the cusp of Kit’s 51st birthday, Gilbert Grosvenor (President of NGS) hosted a party at his home in McLean, VA.  Kit had called the teachers together in the Grosvenor Auditorium before we boarded buses for the drive to McLean.  Everyone was dressed for the volleyball game and picnic that had been planned.  In a moment that was pure Kit, he took the stage dressed in shorts, a sleeveless tee shirt, and one of his vintage ties. 

Knowing it was almost Kit’s birthday, the class presented him with a copy of Fit to be Tied:  Vintage Ties of the Forties & Early Fifties.  The inscription inside reads—

August 3, 1989

Dear Kit,
In appreciation for a truly memorable four-week experience.  You have enriched our lives with knowledge, inspired us with your spirit and enthusiasm, and you have warmed our hearts with friendship. 

Globally yours with warmest regards,

SGI Participants.

Each of the sixty teachers at the institute signed the inside covers of the book and left a brief message.  One of my favorite notes was from a teacher from Alaska who wrote, “I’m glad you’re never tongue-tied.”

Happy 88th birthday to my love Kit, who after all these years and a world of episodes still brings joy and warmth to those around him…and to me.

NFNF…Chloe