In the Shadow of Cousteau
A forgery, a train ticket and an address. The childhood dreams of Damien Leloup hung in the balance as he awoke in his parents’ home in the town of Montcourt-Fromonville, France. The forged sick note would get him out of school. The train ticket would get him to Paris. And the address would get him to the doorstep of the world’s most famous ocean explorer, Jacques-Yves Cousteau.
Leloup was just 17 when he boarded the train, old enough to find his way in the city but too young to realize his plan was a brash one. “The day before, I went to school expecting a good grade that turned out to be terrible. Everyone was making fun of me. My parents were yelling at me, because my two brothers had snitched on me before I even got home. Th at night, I switched on the TV and my eyes opened wide. I saw Jacques Cousteau in an inflatable boat with a red cap on, and I knew that was what I wanted to do.”
At the end of the program, Leloup jotted down the address for the Jacques Cousteau Society—233 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris.
“Hello, I would like to see Jacques Cousteau,” said the runaway
