My friend Patsy Musto, who has died aged 74 of leukaemia, co-founded and ran the educational travel company French Encounters, which organised French language trips for British schoolchildren.
Born in Alexandria, Egypt, Patsy was the daughter of Gordon Callow, a British naval officer stationed there, and Soula (nee Cassolou), who was from a Greek family that had escaped to Alexandria from war-torn Smyrna in 1922. In 1949 the family moved to Jamaica, and in 1955 to the UK, eventually settling in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, where both parents were teachers.
As a child Patsy frequently visited the south of France to stay with maternal cousins, which contributed to her passion for multicultural encounters and the importance of speaking other languages. After leaving Bromsgrove County high school, she studied English at the University of East Anglia. She did not complete her degree, instead training as a secondary school teacher at Shenstone teacher training college in Bromsgrove, graduating in 1968.
She taught in London until 1971, when she returned to Bromsgrove and, after a brief spell teaching at a school, worked for more than 20 years as a senior lecturer in management studies at Birmingham College of Food, Tourism and Creative Studies. While working there, Patsy gained a BA degree through the Open University (1982) and a master’s in social science from the University of Birmingham (1986).
In 1981 her mother went to work in Normandy, France, for Guardian Overseas Education, which organised language trips for school pupils from the UK. I met Patsy through working for Soula during this time. After the Guardian withdrew from this activity in 1986, Soula and Patsy took it over through French Encounters.
Patsy left the College of Food in 1993 to manage French Encounters full-time, and in 2000 she and Soula bought a house at Villequier as a permanent base in Normandy for the company. Patsy tirelessly developed the programme and, with more than 1,000 pupils participating every year, its impact on language learning was significant. Many of the company staff were gap-year students, away from home for the first time, and Patsy was hugely supportive of them.
She discontinued the educational travel side of French Encounters in 2007, but kept the company going, providing bed and breakfast at her Normandy home.
Promoting young people’s communication skills in their own as well as other languages, Patsy made an immense contribution to the English Speaking Board, including as honorary secretary during the 1990s, and was chief judge (2009-2019) in the public speaking competition organised by the Soroptimists, of which she was a committed member. She loved Shakespeare’s plays, and participated in and directed many amateur dramatic events.
Patsy was a generous host, funny, outspoken and a committed socialist and internationalist. She put her heart and soul into everything she did. Dismayed by Brexit, she had recently applied for French citizenship.
A marriage to David Musto in 1975 ended in divorce in 1985. Patsy is survived by several cousins.
