Alain Semmel

 Born on December 2, 1943, eight days premature, my mother having slipped on a patch of black ice while fleeing the hunt for Jews. Ironically, a Gestapo car escorted the ambulance that was taking my mother to the hospital in Moutiers. First miracle. My father was a prisoner, my uncle was called to help me find my identity, and I was baptized in the church in Moutiers. As a child, my hero was Surcouf. I dreamed of adventures on my three-masted schooner, heading towards the great south, chasing the horizon. Of this three-masted ship, I built cardboard models in my father's back room, after school. "No, my son," my mother would say, "the Naval School is not for you. It's a very anti-Semitic environment. You will be an engineer, like your cousin Serge, and you will have a sailboat for your leisure, with two masts and two sailors. " Engineer. I didn't want to. Fortunately, I met my second hero while reading Ayn Rand's The Living Spring , found by chance in my grandmother's closet. Howard Roark, an uncompromising architect, became my horizon. "Fine, agreed my parents, you will study Fine Arts." I became an architect, I had my sailboat, but with only one mast, and the two sailors were replaced by friends. Not having an architect father, I began my career, unlike Howard, by compromising myself with developers, out of financial necessity. Gaining experience, I ended up imposing my style and acquiring, in the absence of fortune, the respect of my clients. At the municipal council of Biot, where I was, for twenty-four years, deputy mayor delegated to culture, I met the wife of the director of Marineland in Antibes. He trusted me, even though I knew nothing about marine biology. My professional life changed. I was able to combine my passion for the sea with that of my job. For thirteen years, I was able to develop and modernize the park, by building the shark pool, the pools and stands for the orcas and dolphins, the lagoon, the restaurants and shops. And I sailed the seas on my sailboat. Not all of them, for lack of time, I would have loved to! But arriving in Rio, all sails out, at night under a black storm, is still a nice adventure.