Robert St. John said a Beatles-themed Monopoly game and his daughter’s laugh prompted him to take his family on a six-month trip through Europe in 2011, a journey he told Magnolia Tribune covered 72 cities in 17 countries across two continents.
St. John, who told Magnolia Tribune he has been clean and sober for a little more than 43 years, said Destin, Florida, was the last place he lived while he was in the throes of addiction. He said he was fired from a restaurant job there in May 1983 and moved back to Hattiesburg, where a grandmother took him in. He said he was later arrested while driving at high speed, entered rehab in Jackson and spent time in a halfway house in Omaha.
Four years into sobriety, St. John said he moved back to Florida and waited tables at Harbor Docks. He said his then-boss, Charles Morgan, invited his family onto a boat during a recent trip to the Florida Panhandle. St. John told Magnolia Tribune that the family, which has long rented the same beach house, played games during the visit and that the Beatles Monopoly set resurfaced from a closet. He said the daughter who had been 12 during the earlier game was now carrying a grandson due in December.
St. John said the 2008 Monopoly game changed his plans. He had considered taking the family to a different European country each summer, he said, but decided instead to do it all at once. He told Magnolia Tribune the 2011 trip was “the best thing” he ever did for his family and that shorter trips — a week at a longtime beach house or a dinner on a friend’s boat — can also create lasting memories.
Jon Ross Myers is the executive editor and publisher of the Mississippi News Network, Mississippi's largest digital only media company. He can be reached at editor@tippahnews.com
