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Quirky tale #9:
Doppelganging a Dorpat
On a 2005 trip to Paris, his first since age 16, our favorite Seattle historian, Paul Dorpat, then 68, was on a mission. Newly available birth records from a Grand Forks, N.D. hospital questioned his family history. In a double whammy, he learned not only that he was adopted in 1938 but also had an identical twin, Denis Poisson-d’Avril, who had moved to Paris after World War II with his own adoptive family. Hoping to visit this noted Left Bank philosopher at his Sorbonne digs, Dorpat serendipitously caught a glimpse of his twin at a sidewalk café and without a word sat at an adjoining table.
Sing along to “April (Fools) in Paris!” Twinless, Dorpat did encounter his doppelganger on the streets of the City of Light. Spectacles, beard and heft were almost identical. Urged on by companions Jean Sherrard and photographer Bérangère Lomont, Paul sat at the table next to his look-alike. And the aforementioned surname, Poisson-d’Avril, is French for April Fools!