Peter Joseph Capelotti, freelance writer and director of The Great Northeast Expedition Company, Inc., attended the University of Rhode Island from September of 1978 to May of 1989, earning a B.A. in history (1983) and an M.A. in history (1989). During this time he wrote over eighty articles, 36 of them for the student magazine/newspaper The Great Swamp Gazette, 25 for The Providence Journal-Bulletin, 8 feature pieces (four of them cover stories) for The Rhode Island Alumni Quarterly, roughly a half dozen for the daily student newspaper The Good 5 Cent Cigar, one feature piece for The Narragansett Times, one political essay for The Boston Globe, and one for the Providence-based publication East Side-West Side. From the spring of 1981 to April of 1982 he was Managing Editor of The Great Swamp Gazette, which won Best Student Magazine in the Northeast Award from the Society of Professional Journalists in both of those years. In 1978 he chartered the non-profit organization, The Earth Research Organization, which subsequently became The Earth Research Group and, on October 1, 1984, The Great Northeast Expedition Company, Inc. It was under the umbrella of this group that he produced, wrote, and directed the 1984 documentary for television, The American Lieutenant and the War in the Air, in which he planned to combine the subject matter of his master's thesis on the history of five twentieth-century explorers with a cross-country flight in an FP-303 ultralight aeroplane. This expedition, from Calais, Maine to Key West, Florida, was planned for June of 1985.
In 1976 Capelotti became the youngest person ever to have hiked alone the 2,000-mile Georgia-to-Maine Appalachian Trail in a single season. Another trek, retracing the route of Lewis and Clark, scheduled for the summer of 1979 and featured on the cover of the Rhode Island Alumni Quarterly, was subsequently aborted for lack of funds.
Open for research.
Terms governing use and reproduction: Photocopying and scanning of materials is a fee based service available in the repository and is allowed at the discretion of the Archivist when in compliance to the Unit's policy on copyright and publication.
P. J. Capelotti Papers, Mss. Gr. 45, University of Rhode Island Library.
This collection is arranged in four series. The first series, Personal Papers, contains Capelotti's family records and personal correspondence. The second series contains manuscripts of articles, essays, and four unpublished books, The Panacea Papers (1979), The Desert (1980), Coming of Age on the Third Planet (1981), and A Riff in Empire (1982). The third series contains Capelotti's notes and notebooks, and the final series, Correspondence, contains Capelotti's correspondence with novelist Norman Mailer, oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau, archaeologist Thor Heyerdahl, U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), Mailer researcher J. Michael Lennon, and hiker/explorer Eric Ryback, among others.
The papers were given as a restricted gift to the University of Rhode Island by Mr. Capelotti.
In November, 2000 Dr. Capelloti sent draft copies and research materials for the book, The Svalbard Archipelago: American Military and Political Geographies of Spitsbergen and Other Norwegian Polar Territories, 1941-1950, edited and with an introduction by P.J. Capelotti, Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Co., c2000. There is a copy of the book in Special Collections Rare Books (call number G778 S83 2000). The materials were processed and added to the original collection in March 2001.
The collection is arranged in four series:
The papers were given as a restricted gift to the University of Rhode Island by Mr. Capelotti in the fall of 1984.
No further materials are expected for this collection.
Series I, Personal, consists of records from Patricia McMillan's (Peter Capelotti's mother) family; birth records and service records; photographs from Capelotti's grandfather's retirement from The Brockton Enterprize newspaper after forty years of service; clips of music written by Capelotti in high school from 1974-78; and general personal correspondence and notes from the spring of 1980. Most of these notes concern drawings and plans from an underwater archaeology expedition that was undertaken on the Nemasket River, a tributary of the Taunton River in Massachusetts, in August of 1980. There is also a letter from Harry 'Red' Caughron, director of athletics at Woodberry Forest Prep School in Virginia, to Patricia McMillan concerning Capelotti's aborted Lewis and Clark voyage.
Series II, Manuscripts, consists of articles, essays, novels, and collections of essays in various stages of completion. The unpublished 1979 novel, The Panacea Papers, is perhaps most well documented, with four long-hand notebooks and the corrected manuscript mostly intact. Many of the early essays and articles were collected into a book, Coming of Age on the Third Planet, which was turned down by Bertha Klausner, the literary agent, in the summer of 1981.
In November 2000, Dr. Capelloti sent draft copies and research materials for the book, The Svalbard Archipelago: American Military and Political Geographies of Spitsbergen and Other Norwegian Polar Territories, 1941-1950, edited and with an introduction by P.J. Capelotti, Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Co., c2000. There is a copy of the book in Special Collections Rare Books, G778 S83 2000. The materials were processed and added to the original collection in March 2001.
Series III, Notes--Notebooks, consists of several 8 1/2-11" note pads, as well as many loose notes and memos, used by Dr. Capelotti during the years 1979-1982 for articles, essays, and interviews written in that period. The note pads also contain class notes, and random scribblings. One folder contains several "embargoed for delivery" speeches that were delivered at the 1980 Democratic Convention. These were given to Dr. Capelotti by his employer at that time, Richard Curtis of Curtis Liquors in Whitman, Massachusetts, who worked as a page for ABC News that summer. He got for Capelotti a note done in jest by ABC Correspondent Sam Donaldson, which reads "Good luck to a great novelist." There is also some correspondence from the Earth Research organization and letters from a brief time in the spring of 1980 when Capelotti served as coordinator of a Peace Studies program.
Series (IV), Correspondence, consists of 29 letters predominated by fifteen letters from novelist Norman Mailer. After authoring an article about Mailer researcher Michael Lennon, Capelotti began a correspondence with Mailer that continues to this day. Mailer helped the unsuccessful effort to get A Riff in Empire published in 1983, and since that time has helped interest publishers in financing Capelotti's cross-country Ultralight expedition. Also included are seven letters from Lennon, and letters from archaeologist Thor Heyerdahl, oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau, and a letter written to Capelotti when he was thirteen by hiker/ explorer Eric Ryback. There is also a letter from Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy congratulating Capelotti on his trek on the Appalachian Trail. Box 6 contains the originals, and Box 7 a set of Xeroxed research copies.