Ted DuPont is a technology public relations/corporate communications professional from Hammond, Indiana. He attended the University of Chicago where he graduated in 1977 with a bachelor's degree in political science. After graduation, DuPont worked as a newspaper and magazine writer and editor before launching a career in public relations with a variety of firms including Burson-Marsteller and Amdocs. He has also worked in public education as a teacher. In his spare time, he builds and launches model rockets and is active in his community of Montclair, New Jersey.
Robert Pirsig (1928-2017) was an instructor of English for Montana State College from September 1959 to June 1961. Pirsig was the author of
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Lila. Pirsig's book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a fictional account of his motorcycle trip from Minnesota to California with his son and coming to terms with his nervous breakdown. The book featured conversations with his old friends, Bob and Gennie DeWeese, at their Cottonwood Canyon home.
The description of the Robert Pirsig letter received by Ted DuPont is best told in his own words:
In the spring of 1974 I was a 20-year old college student at the University of Chicago (where, perhaps not coincidentally, Pirsig studied for his PhD.) In the throes of an existential crisis, I left school, but without a plan. In short order I met another U of C ex-student named Jim Vavrinchik, and we hit it off. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance had just been published, and that was all we needed. In short order, we bought a 1973 1/2 BMW R75/5, outfitted it for long-distance touring and formed a mad plan to do a road trip from Chicago to San Francisco and back again. We decided to retrace part of Pirsig's route west. Our first stop was Minneapolis, and we decided to pay him a visit for his spiritual blessing. Robert Pirsig was listed in the phone book so his house wasn't hard to find. We pulled up in front of a tidy white suburban house. There was no answer at the door, so we went around back. We met Chris, Pirsig's son, who was very friendly and told us his dad was out doing errands. And that was that. Following a diversion up to Hibbing to see Bob Dylan's stomping grounds (that's another story), we gunned the bike west, having the time of our young lives, The Black Hills...the plains...sleeping in our pup tent and sleeping bags. Nearing Yellowstone, we decided to take the Bear Tooth Highway [sic], which Pirsig described so luminously. It was exhilarating moving through all the changes of altitude and topography in just a few hours. We treated ourselves to a hotel soon after, and decided to write to Pirsig to tell him what it meant to us. We continued on our 5-week trip, miraculously arriving back in Chicago in early September without any hitches but with a million stories to tell. Soon after I got back to Hammond, I got a small letter with Pirsig's return address stamped on it.
Pirsig's letter to DuPont mentions how busy the success of the book has made him and expresses his pleasure at reading about DuPont's trip and similar emotional experience. The photographs, which are scanned and printed reproductions of the originals, depict Ted DuPont, his companion Jim Vavrinchik, and the motorcycle during the course of trip, including stops at Pirsig's house and along the Beartooth Highway, a scenic All-American road in Montana and Wyoming.
[Creator Name], [Date of Creation], [Brief Description of Object], Folder [#], Box [#], [Collection Name], [Collection #], Montana State University (MSU) Library, Bozeman, MT