Profile, Terry Seitz: From the spice markets of Istanbul to the bright lights of Boca Grande

Terry Seitz

“My dad was a colonel in the Army,” he said. “I was actually born at Ft. Bragg in North Carolina, but when I was 3 weeks old, we went to Germany.”

They were there for three years before they came back to the U.S.

“We lived in Alexandria, Va. until I was 6, when my father was transferred to Istanbul, Turkey,” said Terry.

He has many vivid memories of his life in the city which sits on the banks of the Bosphorus, and marks the border between Europe and Asia.

“My sister was born there,” recalled Terry. “I remember that we couldn’t drink the milk because of the risk of tuberculosis from unpasteurized milk.”

He often spent days fishing in the fabled Bosphorus with just a metal plug and hand line,

“I was fishing for tuna,” he said. “This was during the Cold War, and I remember when we would ride on a boat towards the Black Sea, there were sub nets stretched across the river, so no Soviet submarines could come into the river. Back then there weren't any bridges between the two banks, and you had to take a ferry from the Asian to the European side.”

Though he attended a school for the children of American servicemen, Terry also got to know the city.

“My mother sent me to the local bakery for our bread,” he smiled. “The bread was fresh and hot from the oven, and many times I had eaten the entire loaf before I made it home, so she would send me right back to get another loaf. There was a trolley system in the city, which is a lot like the system that is in Milan today. The kids would wait until the conductor wasn't looking and hop on the back to get around for free.”

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