The AFS student exchange program's slogan is “Connecting Lives. Sharing Cultures.” One AFS student's year in Butler in 1977 forged a 35-year-old connection that has brought her back repeatedly to visit her host family.

Rosalind Clark Selby of Bridgetown, Barbados, was in Butler last month visiting with her former host mother, Barb Stanko, 111 Grandview Blvd. A 16-year-old Clark arrived as an exchange student at the Stanko house, then on West Brady Street, in August 1977 for her senior year at Butler High School.

She and the Stanko family — Frank “Skeeter,” Barb, daughters Michelle and Kelly, and son Frank — grew strong ties during her year in the United States.

“I would think she is one of my children. I grew to love her like one of my children. When she came, we bonded right away. She just fit right in,” said Barb Stanko.

Selby credits her parents in Barbados for teaching her to be the sort of “individual who can go anywhere and adapt.”

Since then, she's come back to Butler several times to reunite with her second family.

“When I came back in 1980, it was around Christmas time,” said Selby. “They left the tree up and had all the gifts out for me.”

She came back in 1993 to pay condolences after Frank Stanko died and the next year for Barb Stanko's birthday.

“She was here about 11 years ago when I had my 60th birthday,” said Stanko of Selby's last visit.

“She didn't know I was coming. We arranged it very clandestinely. Frank Stanko picked me up at the airport,” Selby said.

Selby also has returned for Michelle's wedding in 1985.

A lot has changed in the last 35 years. The foster sisters have had their own children: Kelly had three and Michelle, five.

Selby said, “I have my own family now. My 15-year-old son, he's a swimmer who hopes to make the Olympics. He is going to a school in the States. The Baylor School in Chattanooga, Tenn. He is boarding there.”

“He sometimes complains, but I remind him that if this is what you really want to do, this is what you must do,” Selby said.

Neither the Stankos nor Selby knew they were starting a decades-long relationship when they got involved with AFS.

Stanko said she and her family joined the AFS program when “my oldest daughter, Michelle, she was a French student and the AFS program talked in her class about the program.”

Stanko said their first exchange student was a French student who came for a weekend visit.

In Barbados, Selby said she learned of the exchange student program at her school.

“They would ask if anyone was interested in AFS and I always wanted to do that,” Selby said.

“It wasn't my first time in the country. I was too excited really to think about anything,” said Selby. “I was just really excited being here and trying to fit in with my family, that I did very well.”

Selby said she enjoyed her senior year at Butler High, embracing the All-American traditions of football, homecoming and attending the senior prom.

But some differences stood out.

In Barbados, Selby said, “The students stayed in the classroom and the teachers had to come to us, and here the students moved from room to room.”

“You don't wear a uniform to school. I remember asking how will I know who is a teacher,” said Selby.

But Butler High offered its students many more elective classes, she remembered. “I was able to take German,” she said.

But a Pennsylvania winter took some getting used to.

“Getting cold was the biggest thing for me. I did not like the snow,” Selby said.

Stanko said, “The first time she went out the door, she fell.”

Selby remembers during a three-week teachers' strike, staying at home and making snow angels in the backyard.

And she got to experience Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney.

“I got up early in the morning to watch a little groundhog come out of the hole in the ground and all the men in the top hats, and again the snow,” said Selby.

And there was the American way of eating. Selby said Stanko, as a Polish-Italian mother, really piled on the food at meals.

“When I left here, I had put on 50 pounds. You thought I was having a baby,” she said.

Although Selby never took to kielbasa and sauerkraut. “I still don't like it, but now I can appreciate it,” she said.

Now, Selby and her husband, Albert, own an airport coffee shop in Barbados. In addition, he works as an architect and she sells life insurance.

Selby said it is not unusual for Barbadians to work several jobs.

Although, she said, she can do without the staff calling her when she's in the United States to tell her the coffee shop oven is not working.

“I use this as my retreat when I come here. There is no stress here,”Selby said.

Stanko said “We are going to take her shopping. We are going to take her to the outlets and maybe up to Volant and look at the crafts.”

“We might let a year go past without talking, but we still know how to get in contact with one another,” Selby said.

But now, Stanko said, “We have Skype. My daughter Kelly started with it.”

Stanko said she and Selby contacted each other over Easter via Skype.

“Rosey's on Skype,” Stanko said. “She wanted to see each and every one of the grandchildren.”