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Valerian Jan Walter Pieczynski (Wanderwell) b. 1893 d. December 1932

From Rodovid EN

Person:918359

Lineage	Pieczynski
Sex	Male
Full name (at birth)	Valerian Jan Walter Pieczynski
Other last names	Wanderwell

Events

1893 birth:

1925 marriage: Riverside (California), USA, ♀ Idris Galcia Aloha Hall (Wanderwell) [Hall] b. 13 October 1906

December 1932 death: California, USA

Notes

Valerian Johannes Pieczynski was born in 1893 or 1897 at Thurn, Poland. His father was German, his mother was Polish.

A global seafarer and hiker, Pieczynski explored Siberia and the Amazon jungle, trekked across the Arabian Desert and the Sahara.

Captain Walter Wanderwell, an adventurer, inventor and former sailor with an itch for world travel, conceived the notion of circling the globe by automobile. An emigrant from Poland, he changed his name from the un-pronounceable ‘Johannes Pieczynski’, to Wanderwell during a 1914 walking tour of America. This rugged individual was yet to meet Aloha, his young partner on this extraordinary odyssey, who would become the first woman to circle the globe in an automobile!

Inevitably the young Aloha and the Captain, 13 years her senior, would fall in love. The Captain married Aloha at city hall in Riverside, California, in 1925. Over the next seven years they had two children and continued to travel, film and lecture together. Captain Wanderwell founded an organization dedicated to the establishment of an international police force. The International Police, as envisioned by Wanderwell, would be comprised of volunteers from all countries and work under the umbrella of the League of Nations enforcing all inter-governmental laws and treaties to prevent war. This, however, was a dream he would not see realized.

In December 1932, the Wanderwells purchased a schooner and prepared to sail from California to the South Seas to make a new documentary film. A crew of six men and eight women had been assembled and were scheduled to depart Long Beach. Headlines screamed: “Wanderwell Murdered!” A member of a prior Wanderwell expedition, known to have a grudge against the Captain, was put on trial for the killing. With an airtight alibi, the accused was acquitted. To this day, the murder of Captain Wanderwell remains unsolved. Yet, what also remains is an exciting chapter of early automotive adventure, for these two daring adventurers made real history with the sturdy Model T Ford.