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Alaska Cruise Reviews: Spirit of Columbia

Glacier Wonderland - May 30, 2006

Back for her 16th Trip!
Submitted by John Kreilkamp, Vice President of Alaska Operations.

Quyana Member, Ila G. arrived in Anchorage for her 16th cruise with Cruise West. She has sailed on almost all of our cruises and Prince William Sound is her favorite (her 4th trip to this area). Each year, she celebrates her birthday by giving herself a cruise with Cruise West. Because I had a previous engagement with my visiting family, I asked Andy Compton to take her out to dinner but to bring her over for a glass of wine first. He did and Ila delighted us all...she was in her prime....she held court over the gathering of my 12 relatives and they realized that they had met a rather significant person in history.

What makes her so special? Ila is a nuclear physicist. Not just any nuclear physicist but a pioneer physicist. Beginning in 1948, she worked at the Los Alamos research lab and was there for 34 years...she witnessed several atom bomb detonations in the Nevada Desert, she knew Robert Oppenheimer. She was one of the first women to work at the Los Alamos site in the post war development of the Bomb. Ila is fairly unpretentious...she disdains those who thought their work was too important. She recalled with a devilish wink when Oppenheimer went into a local restaurant with shorts on one day for lunch and the waitress, who noticed he was not wearing the required apparel refused to give him service....no slacks - no service.

Ila is celebrating her 82nd birthday with us on the Spirit of Columbia this weekend, she almost missed her cruise with us after last year's heart attack. Her doctor advised her not to go...but she told him if she was going to go, she would rather have it be in front of a glacier in Prince William Sound.