A pregnant woman in San Francisco boarded the S.S. Lurline after World War II ended, determined to journey across the vast sea to meet her husband who was in the Foreign Service and stationed in New Zealand.

Luckily, the luxurious Matson ocean liner had been converted into a hospital ship—complete with three doctors and 20 nurses—because by the time the ship docked in Hawaii, the young woman would have more than luggage in tow.

“My story was worldwide news, because not many babies were born on ships at that time,” said Donna Lurline Woolf of her birth.

Eventually, Woolf would grow up to lead a nomadic life like the ship she was born on and embark on a successful career as a foreign service officer like her father.

Woolf, who attended Singapore American School from 1957 to 1960, recently took a trip down memory lane with Journeys magazine to some of the places she has lived and worked over the years. Singapore, of course, is chief among them.

Thanks to her father’s Foreign Service career, Woolf moved to the Lion City from Tokyo in 1957 and immediately enrolled in sixth grade at SAS, which had just opened the year before.

Classes took place in a black and white villa on Rochalie Drive and the student body, though small, was quite diverse.

“I remember really enjoying the diversity of the student body,” Woolf said. “As SAS is today, it was definitely the school of choice for the very large expat community. There were British kids and German kids and Indian kids and Indonesians—it was quite a mix… I had not been in a school that had such a rich mix of people.”

Woolf distinctly remembers her English teacher Mrs. Biggs—a British woman who loved reading the classics to students. She “was able to read in all these different accents so these novels came alive in a very special way,” Woolf said, attributing Mrs. Biggs for teaching her a “great love of English.”

Life outside the villa’s walls was just as memorable, Woolf said. Her father built an aviary, which she filled with colorful tropical birds. She even tamed two parakeets—one of which, named James B. Budgerigar, learned to say a few words as she paraded him around on her shoulder.

Woolf also recalls how her family loved spending their weekends boating to the uninhabited islands and sand bars surrounding Singapore. “We would drop anchor and swim around and eat hot dogs and go back home,” Woolf said.

Their mode of transportation on these weekend jaunts: an old police boat her parents won at an auction, which they painted pink and named the Lurline Marie after the ship Woolf was born on. Lurline Marie also happens to be Woolf and her sister’s middle names, respectively.

The job of Woolf’s father as economic counselor for the US State Department added some spice to their home life too. Woolf says her father got to know Lee Kuan Yew, who would go on to become Singapore’s founding father and first prime minister. In fact, he was a guest in her family’s house for dinner.

“Lee Kuan Yew was just making an appearance on the political scene,” Woolf said, describing an era when Singapore was still a crown colony of the British Empire, but would eventually become an independent country. “He was the leader of the People’s Action Party.”

Woolf ultimately moved back to the States and attended Tufts University, where she studied history and political science.

Although she would eventually answer the call to foreign service, Woolf said she first fell in love with film as a means of telling stories thanks to a job on a film crew. She then spent 20 years in film and television, starting at the CBS News Paris bureau and later with KQED San Francisco. In Washington, DC, her career as a television producer took her to USIA-TV, and later to the US Agency for International Development, producing news and documentaries around the world and winning over 15 national and international awards.

Eventually, Woolf decided to join the Foreign Service. According to the US State Department’s website, the mission of a foreign service officer is to promote peace, support prosperity, and protect American citizens while advancing the interests of the US abroad. Foreign service officers, also known as US diplomats, can achieve this mission in a number of ways—from facilitating adoptions and helping evacuate Americans as a consular officer, to analyzing host country’s political events and economic issues as a political or economic officer.

Woolf’s particular role in the Foreign Service as a public diplomacy officer put her education, experience living overseas, and media savvy to work. She handled press and cultural affairs at embassies in Brussels, London, Tel Aviv, and Tunis. Meanwhile, her Washington, DC assignments included work on Middle East partnerships, international women’s issues, and as liaison to the Voice of America.

Now, Woolf is retired but still working as a contractor part-time at the State Department in Washington, DC and gets to travel around the world. She even visited SAS’s Woodlands campus during a recent trip to the Little Red Dot for work. “I was really quite overwhelmed how the school had expanded to now be a campus of 4,000 students and when the alumni director walked me around and showed me all of these amazing programs and activities, it was beyond my wildest dream,” Woolf said.

SAS may not have had the robust offerings it does now when Woolf attended the school in its early stages, but there were still great lessons to learn. “SAS was a great learning opportunity, though the school had none of the many classes and activities now being offered,” Woolf said. “What it did teach me was how important it is to learn, at an early age, to appreciate the diversity of cultures in the world.”