Around the World in 227 Days (Reminiscence)

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As I was growing up, it was well known in our household that my dad - many years before, when he was a very young man - had made an educational world tour on board ship.

Not that he talked about it a lot.  He didn't.  Mother reminded us about it from time to time.  Once in great while a man named Largent Parks, who apparently lived in Dallas 200 miles away, would show up at the front door and chat with Dad alone in the living room for a half-hour or so.  We knew that Mr. Parks flew in from Dallas, in his own plane.  Mr. Parks had been on the cruise with my father.

We had a model Viking ship on our mantelpiece carved and put together by an Austrian man whom Dad had met (somewhere, somehow) during his tour.  When I was 12 or so, Dad showed me a box of coins - from France, Siam, and many other countries - which he said were coins he'd ended up with as he had left each of the countries visited by the tour.  Each country's coins were in a different old pill box.

In our family scrapbook, Mother had posted two or three photos of Dad on a camel or in an exotic-looking port.  We knew too that, as Dad went from country to country - years ago - he sometimes sent news reports back to be published in American newspapers.  He had interviewed Mussolini back before anyone in the US had heard of him, for example... and King Chulalongkorn of Siam, son of the king (of The King and I), and others.

But we only heard little snippets like this, from time to time...

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After Dad had been gone (that is, dead) for ten years or so, I began to wonder if the University of Texas archives had anything interesting among his papers.  Dad had taught there for almost 50 years.

My wife S----- and I made a visit and found much to be interested in, including a whole box of materials relating to the 1926-27 world tour.  We've had the coins since before Dad's death,

but lots of other things that we'd never seen were there in the UT archives.

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At the end of our visit, we asked the archives to make us copies of quite a few of the materials related to the World University tour, including a small number (relative to the sum total of all there) of photos, the unfinished, or at least unedited manuscript on a book-length narrative of the whole 9 months, and materials related to the articles Dad had written that were published in a total of 23 newspapers back in 1926 and '27.  (The family legend was that Dad had borrowed the money to pay for the tour and that he was able to pay back the loan immediately upon his return to Austin with the money these newspapers had paid him.)

There was also a copy of the passenger list.

When I retired in 2008, I reviewed all these materials fairly carefully.  It was great, of course, and especially interesting to compare what had been published by a newspaper to what he had written for the longer narrative.  I could see why he had abandoned the book-length project, since it would have required a lot of work to re-organize it before it was ready for the public.  As I remember it, Dad had tried two or three different modes of organization.  I made quite a few notes, but finally felt it wasn't worth my time now to cobble it together.

The pictures might hold some independent interest, but I haven't dug them out from all the papers we moved with us from New York to Missouri a couple of years ago.

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A few days ago, now, I was examining a photo of Dad at about age 4, which I had posted on my family tree some years back.

Next to this family photo on the same page was an old published photo of a cruise ship that I only vaguely recalled having posted, having found it on the Internet back then, when I was putting up visual material.  Sure enough, it was the S. S. Rijndam, ca. 1925.

With some time to kill that day last week, I suppose, I happened to look up the ship again on the Internet.  W[onder]O[f]Wonders], a whole bunch of stuff appeared for the first time, which included information specifically on the world tour on the Rijndam taken by my father in 1926-27.

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It turns out that the Rijndam's 1926-27 educational world tour ("The World University") was the very first college credit-bearing shipboard cruise.  500 students from all over the U. S. were involved.  I had thought it was maybe 50 or 60.

The whole experience was organized and sponsored by New York University.  It turns out that at least two books were published relating to the tour, one diary published in 1928 which has been recently republished as a historical facsimile and the other - apparently 200 photos - more recently published by the Holland-America Line, which ran the Rijndam.  The photo book is available by interlibrary loan and the diary can be bought via Amazon.

I have ordered the republished diary and have requested the photo book on interlibrary loan.

In the online notice of the photobook, two samples appear.  One is inconsequential.  The other shows a group of the Rijndam students posing behind Mussolini.

Despite the blur, the young man indicated below on El Duce's left is unmistakably ... my dad!

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