Little did Bill and Jean Wothers know when they invited 16-year-old French high school student Sophie Sicot into their home back in August 1979, they were beginning a friendship that eventually would enter its third generation.
Thirty-one years later, Sophie, now Sophie LeClerc, her husband Christophe, 21-year-old son Thibault, and daughters Cassandre, 15 and Morgane, 11, are on their 10th visit to the Wothers home. The family, except daughter Marion, 18, who didn’t make the trip this year, are spending three weeks in Delaware and taking in nearby sights such as New York City and Hershey Park, Pa.
They’re also spending time with the Wothers’ daughter, Lake Forest High School teacher Karen Williams and her family, including 5-year-old son Weston.
The idea of hosting a foreign student for a month all those years ago was an easy one for the family to make, Jean Wothers said.
“Karen was taking French back then and brought home an application to have a student stay the summer,” she recalled. “I’d never been to France before and Karen was so enthusiastic about it we thought it would be a neat experience for our whole family.”
Sophie arrived for a one-month stay later that summer.
“I wanted to learn to speak English more fluently,” Sophie said. “I had studied in England before I came to the U.S., but wanted to discover what it was like in the states.”
“I didn’t really have any idea what it would be like,” she added. “But it was love at first sight.”
It was a bit of a whirlwind summer, with trips to the beach and other attractions plus Sophie’s introduction to roller coasters and some usually unappreciated examples of American cuisine, including sweet corn and peanut butter.
The end of her sojourn almost ended with a stay in the hospital however, when Sophie, in a rush to get outside, ran into and shattered a sliding glass door she thought had been left open. A photo with Karen shows Sophie’s legs covered in bandages, and she still carries the scars today.
After that, “I thought her mother would never let her come back,” Wothers said.
But the bond between the families was strong. In 1980, Sophie, her parents and members of her extended family visited Washington, D.C., meeting the Wothers family in the nation’s capital. Karen later traveled to France, and she and Sophie studied together in London, beginning a series of round trips across the Atlantic they hope will continue far into the future.
Christophe, an insurance executive in France, said he had no concerns about being inducted into this international family following his marriage to Sophie in 1987.
