World traveler Jean Bird, 94. has visited 150 countries, territories and islands. Bird is shown at her home in Waterville on Tuesday. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

Not many people can boast having visited 50 countries and territories, let alone three times that number.

But Marilyn Jean Bird, you might say, is a bird of another feather.

Bird, 94, of Waterville, recently received a prestigious award from an international travel club of which she is a member, for having visited more than 150 countries and territories.

“It’s the greatest experience you can have because you learn about different people,” Bird said in a recent interview. “It’s incredible.”

Two months ago, she traveled to Sao Miguel island, one of nine in an archipelago off Portugal, with her daughter, Leslie, and son, Paul. There, she received the award from The Travelers’ Century Club. To be a member of the club, one has to have visited 100 countries and territories.

“There were 160 people there from all over the world and one of the surprisingly large delegations there was from China,” Bird said. “I was there four days. We had an amazing time.”

An engaging conversationalist, Bird graduated from Cony High School in Augusta. She caught the traveling bug many years ago while a student at Bates College in Lewiston, where she majored in English but also took art classes. She became enthralled with the cathedrals she read about.

“I said to myself, ‘I’ve just got to go over and see these things,'” she recalled.

In 1951, she graduated from Bates and signed up for a trip to Europe led by a professor. She and a group of students spent time in several countries as part of the three-month excursion. The cost was $750 per student, she recalled.

“We went by ship, you know. People didn’t travel by airplane then. It was a fantastic experience. We went to England and Holland and after Holland, Germany. Cologne was devastated by World War II. We went to Switzerland and Capri, off Italy. I swam in the Blue Grotto. I jumped out of the boat and went swimming there.”

World traveler Jean Bird, 94. has visited 150 countries, territories and islands. Bird is pictured at her home in Waterville on Tuesday. She received a framed certificate from Travelers’ Century Club for the accomplishment. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

As a Bates English major, she said students there were serious about their studies.

“We had classes six days a week starting at 7:30 a.m.,” she said. “That included Saturday. You know, we didn’t fool around. It was strictly studying.”

She moved to Boston after the European trip and worked for a large insurance company. After marrying Philip Bird in 1952, she worked at the Pentagon for the U.S. Department of the Navy. They moved to Waterville, where Philip Bird opened a law practice and they started a family. They had Paul and Leslie and another daughter, Lisa.

Marilyn Bird, who goes by her middle name “Jean,” worked at the Miller Library at Colby College for years and was a longtime volunteer at the Colby College Museum of Art. She traveled the world with her husband, who died three years ago.

“We went to St. Pierre, off the coast of Canada, off Newfoundland,” she said. “It belongs to France. It’s remote, and a very obscure island.”

When people ask Bird what place she loves the most, she mentions Timbuktu, a city in Mali.

“Actually, some people don’t think it exists, but it does,” she said.

Bird also loves Africa. One of the most interesting things she encountered there, she said, was a museum in Algeria that contained military miniatures created by the late Harold Pestana, a Colby College geology professor and an artist. Someone in the U.S. had traveled to Waterville, purchased a lot of Pestana’s miniatures and brought them to the museum where Bird discovered them, she said. Another time, while she and her husband were on a three-week trip driving through Kenya, they met a man at a swimming pool wearing a Colby College sweatshirt, she said.

“The closest I came to what I thought was dying was in the Galapagos Islands,” she recalled.

She and her husband stayed at a German hotel. Each day, they would walk the beach and get away in a small boat. One day, the waves became very rough.

“The water was coming over the top of the boat. I was terrified and I thought, ‘This is the end.’ I considered myself very lucky then, not to have died. We got home and learned that a group of tourists were at the same spot and their boat overturned and at least two or three died.”

Born on her mother’s birthday, March 1, Bird will be 95 next year. She remains very active and has been a member of the American Association of University Women for more than 50 years, is a lifelong bridge player and loves film.

Friend and longtime women’s club member Berry-Jane Meader, also a film buff, said she enjoys talking with Bird about a lot of topics, including movies they have attended at the Maine International Film Center in Waterville.

“Because she has traveled so much, she has such a knowledge about everything when she goes to movies,” Meader said. “It’s amazing that she has been to so many countries.”

Amy Calder has been a Morning Sentinel reporter 35 years. Her columns appear here Saturdays. She is the author of the book, “Comfort is an Old Barn,” a collection of her curated columns, published in 2023 by Islandport Press. She may be reached at acalder@centralmaine.com. For previous Reporting Aside columns, go to centralmaine.com