Ahead of Her Time (From Spokes on-line magazine 2/2/02)

by Patrick Gilsenan

Sitting comfortably in her wheel chair in an Arlington nursing home, you'd have no idea Helen Richardson Coyle was once kicked out of Latin America on suspicion of being a spy.

She wasn't a spy, of course, but the year was 1942 and the authorities didn't know what else to make of a fiercely independent 27-year-old woman pedaling alone through the backwoods of Uruguay. They'd never seen such a woman before.

Women didn't often travel alone in 1942 and they certainly didn't travel on bicycles along back roads of developing counties.

But Coyle was not like most women. She had inherited her family's lust for travel and exploration which included a father who spent six years at the turn of the century circling the globe and a brother who was among the first white men to visit the native tribes of New Guinea in a late 1930's expedition.

She wasn't going to let the fact that she was a woman stop from her from having her own adventures.

So in 1941, she grabbed her Raleigh three-speed and decided to spend two years pedaling the gravel and dirt roads of South America.

"I didn't plan on anything. I just had my idea of seeing the country and pedaling my bike," Coyle, now 86, recently told SPOKES.

Though she didn't consider herself or her trip a feminist statement, a single woman traveling alone by bicycle in a foreign speaking country was undeniably radical for the time.

"They thought I was a little off track ... they didn't think (such a trip) was anything anybody wanted to do," she remembered of friends' reactions. "They couldn't understand how my mother and father could allow such a thing."

But Coyle had previously spent summers cycling in Japan and Europe and, with an adventurous spirit of their own, her parents supported her idea.

So she left her family's ranch in Porterville, Calif., in mid-November 1941 and jumped aboard a banana boat bound for Panama as the only passenger on a nine-day voyage.

With war raging in Europe and soon to reach the Pacific, Coyle arrived in Panama to high powered search lights scouring the sea and military aircraft buzzing overhead.

Coyle spent three weeks exploring Santa Clara and Panama City before cycling to the Atlantic city of Colon where she began her trip in earnest aboard a second ship bound for Valparaiso, Chile.

It was on that 12-day journey that Coyle first encountered a trend that remained throughout her trip: men happy to, shall we say, assist a single woman traveling alone.

"They were ... persistent," Coyle jokes. (But) there was nobody that was very intrusive. I didn't have any experiences like that ... I just said 'good bye' and rode on."

Coyle arrived in Valparaiso, Chile, Jan., 2, 1942 and pedaled down the coast before heading back inland for Santiago where she joined protests denouncing the Nazi regime and enrolled in a two-week program at the University of Chile in an effort to learn Spanish.

For her trip, Coyle brought only what she could fit in two saddlebags and a briefcase-size piece of luggage that fit on the back of her bike.

She also had a basic set of tools and patch kits which she used regularly along bumpy, unpaved roads. When something broke, she said, she simply taught herself to fix it.

Promising her mother she would sleep in secure locations, Coyle choose not to camp and planned her days along routes that would lead to the next town by night fall. Coyle's family back home in California's San Joaquin Valley had become wealthy through a relative who was a founder of what is now the American Standard Company. The money helped support Coyle's travels. Between towns, however, Coyle ventured off the beaten path as often as possible.

"(The backroads) took me out to into country that wasn't so spoiled with humanity," she said. And each new town brought out curious folks happy to talk and share with the North American woman on the bicycle.

After Santiago, she began a five-day ride over the Andes mountains headed for Mendoza, Argentina. Her journey over the Andes was an odyssey including bread and tea with an isolated telegraph operator high in the mountains, and an evening in the Puenta Del Inca Army barracks and another in the grand Hotel Portillo.

She rode for 300 miles, even pushing her bike uphill to a peak of 12,000 feet.

After leaving the Andes she headed for Cordoba, Argentina, where she encountered another trend of her trip: police asking lots of questions. As war had now moved to the Pacific, authorities had grown more suspicious.

"Two new officers questioned me," she wrote in her diary at the time. "Why was I in Argentina? Why was I alone? (they asked) ... And my simple answer that I travel only because I love to travel seemed entirely too simple for their grave implications of these questions. They told me frankly they suspected me of having an interest in the politics of their country."

After only one afternoon's delay in Cordoba, however, police agreed to allowed Coyle to continue en route to Buenos Aires and a two-month stay with her female cousin and her cousin's well connected Argentinean family.

As Coyle was the great granddaughter of former Ohio Governor William Bebb, she was not intimidated by her time among Argentine's high society.

After more than two months - July and August, 1942 - in Buenos Aries, Coyle left Argentina planning to travel to Montevideo and then on to Rio de Janeiro.

The political climate changed quickly, however, as she cycled into Uruguay. She was questioned twice by police during her first three days in the country and on September 3 she was stopped by local authorities, questioned and taken to the local police station where she was further questioned repeatedly the rest of the day. She was then escorted to a second police station were the questioning continued.

Though she didn't know it yet, her trip was about to come to an end.

"A man with keys was waiting. Tired from a lack of food and an afternoon of grilling, I lost control and gave up to tears which came in spite of me. Why was I being held? What had I done?," she wrote in her journal at the time. "Down a long hall of barred rooms I was led, then a door was opened and (my bike) and I were ushered inside. A clanking of steel, a turning of a key in a lock, and for the first time in my life I knew the meaning of the loss of liberty. And I felt utterly hopeless and alone."

Before dawn, police roused her from her sleep and transported her back to Montevideo where a crowd of reporters and photographers awaited her arrival.

A second day of questioning followed, included inquiries from a representative from the U.S. Embassy. Authorities confiscated her papers to prevent her from leaving the city while they decided her fate.

By the next morning the bicycling "North Americana spy" was on the front page of all of the city's newspapers. Coyle spent the next 10 days dodging photographers as she fought to be allowed to continue on her journey.

On September 17, 1942, however, she was informed that the U.S. State Department had requested her immediate return.

"It made me mad, because they cut short the things I wanted to do ... (but) there was nothing I could do," she said.

Though she had planned to spend a second year in South America, she spent her remaining money on a plane ticket home with short, sight-seeing stops in Peru, Columbia and Mexico. She arrived back in California two months later.

Despite the abrupt end to the trip, the journey was one of the highlight of Coyle's young traveling days.

"For a whole year I lived a happy, irresponsible life, pedaling from one country to another and living with the constant joy of activity, the beauty of an ever changing landscape, the warmth of strangers hospitality. And I loved it all," she concludes her diary.

After returning to the states, Coyle joined the Red Cross and was shipped to New Caledonia to run a donut factory for locally stationed U.S. Troops. She met her future husband, William E. Coyle, a navy sailor, while in New Caledonia.

The two moved to Washington in 1945 where he worked for the Washington Star and later for the Washington NBC affiliate as director of advertising and public relations. Helen Coyle settled down to life as a full-time mom to six children.

And now, living a quiet life, the bike and travel long gone, she still smiles when she thinks of her love of far off places.

"Just the freedom of going out on the road, no destination no obligations, just rolling ... I don't think (that desire) ever goes out."

In 1997, Coyle's son William, a 53-year old economist from Alexandria, discovered his mother's trip journals and compiled them into a book: Road to Montevideo. A single woman's one-year bicycle adventure in South America 1941-1942. To obtain a copy, send $10 plus $1.50 for handling to William T. Coyle, W. Windsor Ave., Alexandria, Va. 22301.