Albert Slugocki
(October 29, 1931 – December 9, 2023)
Margaret Vaccaro Slugocki
(May 10, 1943 – March 23, 2024)
It is hard to appropriately describe the impact that Albert and Margaret Slugocki have had on the world and to give them due credit. I will say that they changed the course of my life, and that of many others*.
*If you have a tribute or a photo that you'd like to add, please pass it on to me at devon@projectamazonas.org
Albert’s life was a turbulent and almost unbelievable one, as you can, and should, read in the U.S. Special Forces Taps honoring his life. Many additional details can be found in his 2013 memoir, The Autumn Man, a book for which I had the honor of writing the preface. He was a soldier and a patriot who deeply loved his adoptive country, the USA, as well as his homeland of Poland.
Albert’s internment in Arlington National Cemetery on 15 May 2024 was a truly moving event with over 70 service members involved in the ceremony (I counted). The honor, respect and dignity that was displayed to military veterans by everyone from the chaplain to the band and the honor guard made me very proud. Click on the videos below to see some of the ceremony. I had never been to Arlington before, but it is truly a sacred place, and I thank John Vaccaro, Lonnie Slugocki Bero, and Richard Jagusztyn for use of their video clips. Any awkward editing is entirely my responsibility.
I am frequently asked how I became involved with Project Amazonas, and this seems to be an appropriate place to tell that story because it was all due to Albert and Margaret. I first met Albert in 1994. I was at the University of Miami, and in the process of writing my dissertation based on ecology field work in Costa Rica when he called me up and arranged to come down for a visit from Ft. Lauderdale, about a 45-minute drive away (I didn’t have a car, and it would have been quite the bike ride!). Albert had been given my contact information by David Schleser, a retired army dentist turned aquarist who I had met and befriended in Costa Rica when he spent time at the same field station where I spent the better part of 3 years collecting data.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, Albert had for many years captained the M/V Margarita riverboat in the Amazon, originally just carrying freight, and then also passengers between Peru, Colombia and Brazil, at the time still a wild and lawless corner of the Amazon. A fascinating storyteller, he was soon persuaded by his clients to offer ecotour trips, and in 1983, Margaret founded Margarita Tours. David Schleser had led fish-collecting trips for tropical-fish hobbyists for Margarita Tours, and knew Albert well, so when the Slugockis decided to expand the types of trips that they offered, Albert asked David if he knew someone who could help with trips catering to botanists and birdwatchers. David immediately thought of me, as that had been the precise focus of my dissertation research. Hence the 1994 visit. A couple of visits, actually.
Albert was an impressive man – 6’2” and with a large frame. If he wanted to, he could be very intimidating, but mostly he was very charming and persuasive. Former clients of a jungle survival course that he ran in the Amazon had decided that they needed to do something to help the communities on the river that they had visited, and so they, together with Albert, had just founded the non-profit, Project Amazonas. Albert was planning on heading to Peru to build facilities at the field site that had been selected on the Orosa River, and he invited me to go, along with Guy Clark, a Special Forces medic. My role was to evaluate the biological diversity and potential of the site, while Guy would offer medical services to the local communities.
As a kid living in Africa for six years, and then as a teenager in Canada, I was an avid reader. I had stumbled across books by the naturalist/zoo-keeper Gerald Durrell at a used bookstore in Kampala, Uganda, and was immediately hooked. The first book of his that I found was Three Singles to Adventure, describing an animal collecting trip to Guyana, South America. Another book from the same bookstore was the massive Birds of the World which I spent all of my allowance on, and hours poring over. I still have both books.
I read stories of being lost in the Amazon, encounters with head-hunters, bushmaster snakes, jaguars, piranhas, anacondas and caimans. I read about the naturalists who spent time in the Amazon – people like Bates and Müller and Humbolt. I also distinctly remember thinking that the Amazon was SO remote, that I would probably never have a chance to see it. When Albert invited me to go in September of 1994, of course I said yes! As Albert put it, “Costa Rica is the size of a postage stamp. I can give you the entire Amazon”.
That trip was a turning point in my life, although I didn’t realize it at the time. Albert, Guy and I met at Miami International Airport for our Faucett Airlines (named for another Amazon explorer) flight to Iquitos, Peru. Three and a half hours, and one plane-wide bingo game later, we were on the ground in the heart of the Amazon. Gone were my illusions of the Amazon being SO remote! We stayed the night at the aptly named Safari Hotel, where candles and buckets of water were standard in every room due to the frequent and extended electric and water outages. The following morning, after purchasing provisions and building materials we headed downriver in a rented thatch-roofed wooden pamacari boat to the Orosa River.
To say I was beyond excited would be putting it mildly. I had my binoculars and The Birds of Colombia (there was no field guide for Peru at the time) handy and spent every moment scanning the river and shoreline for new species. It was a long trip and the boat was slow. Night fell, and we ran aground on a submerged sandbar in the pitch blackness. Albert said, “get out and push”. Guy and I looked at each other, took off our shoes and socks, and got in the water along with the Peruvian crew members, and pushed. When Albert told you to do something, you did. I had visions of stingrays, electric eels, piranhas and candiru catfish running through my head. Being inducted into the Amazon this way wasn’t exactly what I had been anticipating. We got the boat off the sandbar, however, and eventually made it to the field site. How Amazon boat operators manage to navigate and find the right channels based on the shape of the (ever-changing) shoreline or the silhouettes of distinctive clusters of trees still amazes me.
The next few days were a blur of excitement. Albert and the Peruvian crew worked at finishing the initial structure – a raft that had two bedrooms, a kitchen and dining area, toilet, and a store that would be stocked with essentials that local people couldn’t get anywhere else. Guy attended to patients who arrived from nearby communities, and I familiarized myself with the flora and fauna of the area. I also saw the high respect that the local people had for Albert, as well as the many scars from his war wounds that proved he wasn’t making up the stories he told. All too soon the week was up, and I was on the once-a-week Saturday direct flight between Iquitos and Miami. I wrote up my report for Albert and the board of directors of the fledgling Project Amazonas and focused on finishing up my dissertation. Several of those original board members are still deeply involved with Project Amazonas. Albert kept in regular contact, and I met Margaret, whose real job was teaching essential life skills to new immigrants – things like how to open a bank account, use an ATM, read a bus schedule, and get a phone number. She loved her work and her students.
The following summer, I returned to Peru for two months and stayed on the finished raft along with David Schleser. Albert brought a couple of ecotour groups down, and David and I served as hosts and on-site naturalists. I was still dealing with a steep learning curve as the biodiversity was intense. I spent considerable time mist-netting and banding birds, and once spent two days repairing a mist-net that a cow walked through. Those two months cemented my love for the Amazon.
Upon returning to the US, I’d spend a day each week at Margaret and Albert’s house, working on client communications, mailing lists, budgets, brochures and more. In the succeeding years, Albert worked me into doing more and more for the ecotour trips – sending me down a week earlier to get things ready, and then he’d arrive with a group on Saturday, and we’d all return to the US the following Saturday. Albert would always provide me with a super-sized cooler to transport to Iquitos – sometimes it would be full of cans of paint (none was available in Iquitos), mixed in with cheese and ham and pancake mix and towels and whatever was needed. Once it included a large frozen turkey for Thanksgiving. This was before the shoe-bomber, and security was lax to non-existent. I brought back traditional 8’ long fish spears armed with barbs fashioned out of large nails. I just wrapped the sharp points with socks and laid the spears in the aisle of the plane against the seats, or between a couple of rows of seats and the windows. Once I brought back a wooden canoe, but that went in the baggage hold.
When Albert decided that I had enough experience, he and Margaret would send me down to host ecotour groups by myself. He still always gave me a day-by-day menu to give to the cooks until eventually I told him it was not necessary – every meal was different, and everyone loved the food. I was not doing everything by myself, of course. Our Iquitos manager, Fernando Rios Tulumba, had worked with Albert for many years before Project Amazonas was founded, and he was, and still is indispensable. We built a several boats over the years, and Albert was always on hand to make sure that they were constructed to his liking and high standards. Project Amazonas also started to operate medical service trips to meet the urgent needs on various rivers, and we started hosting researchers and academic courses as well. The field station facilities grew and expanded, and my involvement morphed into what was essentially a full-time, but un-paid “job”.
Eventually Albert stepped down as the president of Project Amazonas, and I took on that role. I could always expect a 10 AM phone call from “Uncle Albert” every weekday to see how things were going. Margaret wouldn’t let him call any earlier than that or allow him to call on weekends. When Margaret decided to retire from the ecotour business (Margarita Tours being the major funder of Project Amazonas), she sold the company to me for the symbolic sum of $10. When my own mother died of pancreatic cancer when I was in my mid-30’s, Margaret stepped in as a surrogate mom, and both she and Albert always treated me as a family member.
I feel that I have been so fortunate to have met Margaret and Albert. I had always assumed that I would end up teaching in a college somewhere as a traditional professor. Instead, I have had the opportunity to experience one of the natural wonders of the world, and to interact with thousands of interesting and knowledgeable people and share my love of the Amazon with them. It has been an amazing journey, and I can’t thank them enough. I never dreamed that in addition to being a teacher and biologist, I’d also be an architect, accountant, builder, psychologist, tour operator, dental assistant (70 extractions in one day…), apprentice shaman and so much more.
The last time I saw Albert and Margaret in person was on 9 November 2023. They were both in great spirits and sound minds. Albert had turned 92 and he had told me numerous times that he never expected to live that long given the war injuries he had suffered. He had been admitted to hospice, but checked himself out because he didn’t want to be cared for by strangers. We had a meal and reminisced and laughed about the early days of Project Amazonas, and I took a selfie with Albert and Margaret when I left (unfortunately it is a bit blurry). Exactly a month later, Albert passed away, and then Margaret passed away a little more than three months after.
Albert, Margaret, you made me a better person, and the world a better place. Rest in Peace.