My childhood super-hero

 

I’ve always wanted to talk about my grand-father.

Growing up he was the most interesting person I had ever met.

The way he told his stories made me truly believe that he was a real super-hero.

Not just the fictional stories about gnomes and other creatures that lived in his house in Belém do Pará in Brazil, where I spent the best summers of my childhood, but also the real ones where he survived two plane crashes, two cancers and even received the Order of the British Empire from Queen Elizabeth II herself.

The stories he told us about our family's history made me love history, any history, because it made me understand how our own history is so closely related to the World's History.

He also made me want to live my life as if I was writing a book. He life's book was so interesting, so rich with wonderful different experiences that I wanted mine to be just as exciting.

Now that I am a grown-up I know that he was far from perfect. But super-heroes are not perfect, just super. Here are some of his amazing stories and some of my best memories.

  

This picture was taken in 1973, when my grand-father William Bolivar Kup came to visit us while we were living in England. I was not even 2 yet but I vividly remember his visit.