Sometime toward the middle of a record-breaking journey by foot through the Americas three decades ago, George Meegan found himself walking up Perry Avenue in the Bronx. Now, some 30 years after his 19,019-mile walk from Tierra del Fuego in Argentina to Alaska’s Point Barrow, which earned him global notoriety, Meegan is back, stopping through on what has become a lifelong trek.

Meegan is in New York trying to drum up buzz for a documentary he ‘s working on. Looking for a place to stay, he called up Norwood native Evan Camp, whose family became friends with Meegan on his journey years ago.

“I’m back where I am,” Meegan said. “And this all connects with the longest journey, in fact, because I came up Perry Avenue, and of course, was in this park,” he says, pointing to Williamsbridge Oval Park.

Now in his 60s, Meegan walks with sturdy, brown shoes. He has a long stride and moves quickly with his head up. He has an eager smile, laugh lines, small eyes that disappear with his growing grin, and a full, salt and peppered beard.

Ostensibly, Meegan’s here promoting a documentary project titled, “The Lynching of Santa Clause: A True Story,” based on the account of a 1927 bank robbery in Texas. But he’s also here meeting, talking and connecting with people, which is what he does best.

While staying with the Camps, he spent time at the Mosholu Library, spoke at a Bedford Mosholu Community Association meeting and managed to set up his next adventure, fighting for native rights in Ecuador.

“I believe I can guarantee (native cultural groups) their future survival,” he says. “Every two weeks, another indigenous group has vanished off the face of the earth with their language, and the reason is the educational system doesn’t value their culture, their language, their history, or their health.”

During his famous walk, Meegan developed the dream of reforming the world’s vision of health and school systems.

At 16, Meegan left behind his village in England and signed on as a merchant seaman in the British Merchant Marines. He traveled through 60 countries before he was ready to devote nearly five years of his life to the walk, which began in 1977 while he was in his mid-20s.

“Physical journeys, if you let them, become spiritual ones, too,” Meegan says.

Though the walk made him famous — he was featured in People, interviewed by Larry King and the Today Show — it didn’t make him rich. That was by design.

“I count every single penny,” Meegan says, adding that he doesn’t ask for money because of his code.
Meegan explains: “Like, let’s say in Colombia — they’re tremendously helpful in Colombia if they don’t kill you first — they would say, ‘Can we give you money?’ and I’d say, ‘No, I’m okay.’ But if they said, ‘can we help you on your way?’ Well, yeah, of course! I didn’t want to be seen as using my adventure background for an illusion of personal gain.”

Meegan finances his life similar to the way he financed his trip across the Western Hemisphere —with a little bit of luck, a lot of goodness from people, and by being “in harmony” with the world as it is.

Inside the empty children’s playground in the Oval, Meegan points down at the pale green and pink, concrete floor — it’s a world map. With his finger, Meegan draws an imaginary line, tracing his “longest journey.”

“The journey was the dream of all people,” Meegan says. “I could do nothing, totally useless of everything, but at least I could move. So I took my carcass down there and moved on the wings of the dream. And that’s the magic of your life.”

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the March 21-April 3 print edition of the Norwood News.

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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.