Remembering friend and CCJ journey 'co-pilot' Robert Bush

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Written By Cilla Utne

Robert Bush October 2016

Our Cuba travel group on the dock in Cienfuegos Bay, November, 2022.I am deeply sad to learn about CCJ Journey Leader and "co-pilot" Robert Bush's passing. My heart goes out to his family and everybody who loved him in is local community in Charlotte, NC. Robert was a special human being who had chosen Cross Cultural Journeys as his international travel companion for the past decade. His first trip with us was to to Cuba back in 2013. Our small travel group in St Kilda, Outer Hebrides, Scotland, July 2016. Robert and I met when we traveled to Scotland together in 2016. We became fast friends and started to make plans leading journeys together sitting atop a hill on the remote island of St Kilda, in the middle of nowhere in the North Atlantic. The travel group with ASC to Cuba in March of 2017. The year after, in 2017, Robert invited 20 other travelers to join him on an unforgettable exploration of the Culture and Arts of Cuba through the North Carolina Arts & Science Council (ASC), the organization Robert led between 2014 and 2019. We had plans to do a trip with the same group to Spain in 2018, which unfortunately didn’t get off the ground, and then a cancellation for another Cuba trip due to the pandemic.Robert Bush and Cuba guide Jesus Noguera outside of one of Robert's favorite stops - the print shop in Cienfuegos.This last trip to Cuba was a smaller group, including some very close, old friends of Robert’s. This journey felt like a long time coming. Robert spent the last couple weeks of his life immersed with unmatched talent in arts and music of Cuba, eating great meals, having good conversations and just sitting on a chair watching the world go by...doing all those things he deeply loved.Robert Bush and Lonnie Davis in the backseat of our 1954 Caddilac. We were chuckling this day that "they both got the memo" - matching shirts! :)To learn more about Robert's lifelong achievements in the arts community in Charlotte and beyond, here is the announcement that was put out by North Carolina Arts & Science Council (ASC) last week. Robert was a dear friend and travel companion. I will miss him. Godspeed my friend.

Cilla Utne

Cilla is the owner and CEO of CCJ since January of 2015. A native of Sweden and a world traveler, she has lived for extended periods in Spain, the UK, Chile and Guatemala and has been based in the US since the late 1990's. She holds an undergraduate in intercultural studies from Stockholm University and an MBA in Sustainability from Presidio Graduate School. Cilla also wears the hats of intercultural trainer and consultant and is also a facilitator of systemic and family constellations. A budding author, she is also working on a trans-generational memoir about her mother’s childhood. Cilla loves nature and the outdoors, good food, yoga, healing and meditation, watching her son's soccer games and taking long walks with her French bulldog Lola. Cilla spends her life living between Bainbridge Island, WA, and Norrtälje, near the archipelago and hour North of Stockholm, Sweden.

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