Working on Boston to Rio

I’ve started working on organizing and researching the trip my father did in 1954 with Gérard Fabry. The short version of the story is that instead of getting a summer internship from business school, they decided to drive from Cambridge to Rio de Janeiro in a 1953 MG TD. Sponsors, press passes, letters of introduction to automobile clubs and 16,000 mile adventure.

I’ve done work on this before — back in 2019 I pitched Harvard Magazine and got some way before the story was killed. I jumped into Scrivner and started researching a full book along the lines of Salt or Road Fever with more interesting asides. Now that I’m working at the International Center of Photography, I’ve decided I should really make the photos the hero of the book.

There are about 450 slides. I’ve found about 30 press articles with my Dad’s by-line that were posted on the trip or on returning. And there are some family stories from our family, or the Fabrys.

Feels like a good first story to get this new site running and I’m looking forward to sharing my progress.