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By Peter Rejcek
Visitors to the newly constructed, elevated station at
the South Pole will surely marvel at the sheer magnitude
of materials and manpower it took to erect one of the
world’s most high-tech, scientific research facilities
in the middle of Nowhere, Antarctica.
But today’s South Pole is only the latest incarnation
in a steady stream of historical watersheds. Countless
reminders of past glories sit in glass displays and hang
from the walls of those spotless hallways, witness to
50 years of habitation and human drama.
Photos, paintings, plaques and pole markers make up the
bulk of South Pole’s physical memories from the last
five decades. These artifacts and memorabilia were donated
and created by those who passed through 90 South—from
famous explorers and adventurers to blue-collar machinists.
Items include faded, black-and-white photographs of crews
who spent the winter at South Pole, dating back to 1957;
as well as belongings as unique as the sweater apparently
worn by Adm. Richard Byrd during his historic flight over
the geographic pole on Nov. 29, 1929.
Some items were originally displayed in buildings under
the iconic Dome. However, those structures were demolished
during the last couple of years. Other items were squirreled
away in boxes, finally seeing the light of day after who
knows how many years.
For Jerry Marty, a South Pole history buff and long-time
Polie, such items are treasures without price tags. The
facilities construction manager for the National Science
Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs, Marty was
at the South Pole last austral summer and discussed what
to do with the “boxes and chests” of memorabilia
with some of the station management.
“We said, ‘Gee. Now is the time. We need to
start displaying this, and do it appropriately [in a way]
that would be compatible with the design of the new station,’”
he says.
That task largely fell to Andy Martinez, the 2007 winter
site manager. It was another item on a long, winter checklist
that soon became a job outside his normal 54-hour, six-days-a-week
role as the station’s leader.
“It’s been a pretty fun project, but pretty
time consuming,” Martinez says over the phone, still
about a month shy of the arrival of the first LC-130 aircraft
flown by the New York Air National Guard at the end of
October.
Framing the past
It turned out the task involved more than just throwing
a few pictures on the wall and ensuring they weren’t
crooked. Martinez soon found himself in the restoration
business.
A number of the wood picture frames were busted, particularly
those from many of the early civilian winter-over crews
after the domed station was dedicated in January 1975.
Some photos were not even framed, but merely displayed
behind Plexiglas. Carpenters of other Pole seasons past
built frames from scrap wood or old cargo pallets. But
Martinez came up with an even better idea—a source
that would wed the new station to the old.
This past winter’s ongoing demolition included the
former gym, which sported a hardwood floor. Martinez got
the idea to salvage some of the seasoned maple for a new
set of frames. He had to rip out nails, and trim, sand
and plane the wood to remove 30 years of wear and tear
and smells. He ended up building some 30 frames.
“I knew I wanted to repair a few of the frames,
but I didn’t realize I would do so many,” he
says. “There’s a lot of creativity that has
to happen down here, I think, and [I thought] bringing
some of the old station into the new station with these
frames … would be a good idea, to incorporate both
stations into one.”
Spindler’s List
There might not have been so many pictures to frame if
not for another Polie who, over the years and thanks to
the material he archived on the Internet, has become the
unofficial South Pole historian. Bill Spindler’s
Web site, www.southpolestation.com, began as a method
to chronicle his 1977 winter, leading up to a reunion
with his old Polie pals in 2000.
“While doing this, I realized that I had a bunch
of historical info from clippings and personal notes that
existed nowhere else, so I started putting the timelines
together,” he explains via e-mail.
During a return visit to the Pole for the 2005 winter,
Spindler scanned and photocopied all of the photos in
the old library under the Dome before that building was
disassembled.
The Web site is now a sprawling archive of photos, historical
essays and trivia. Martinez has dubbed the site “Spindler’s
List” as, while working with Spindler, he was able
to retrieve about 18 missing winter-over photos. Many
of the shots were Navy-era teams who wintered at the original
International Geophysical Year station between 1957 and
1974.
About a dozen winter-over group photos from the last
half-century are still MIA, but Martinez has created temporary
plaques with the names of each crew.
“I’ve made it a major effort over the past
eight … years to first try and collect the station
managers’ names and numbers of winter-overs, then
the actual list of names, and finally photos,” Spindler
says.
Now, 51 photos and name plaques line the long, second-floor
hallway of the station’s A3 wing in chronological order.
The timeline is a window on the past, starting with smaller,
all-male crews (some pictured with dogs, when canines were
allowed on the continent) to the modern-day, color photos
of winter-over teams with as many as 86 men and women.
“It’s really funny how you can see on the wall
these small frames, and they’re gradually getting
bigger as you get to the end of the wall,” Martinez
says of the evolution.
He thinks the current crew appreciates the new display.
“It’s been kind of fun to see these old faces,”
he muses. “They were doing exactly what we did—wintering
over at South Pole … It gets [us] thinking about
past winters, and what it was like wintering here in 1962.”
Marking a new era
Modern-day Polies contribute to one of the most popular
mementos on the continent—the pole markers. (In fact,
they have become something of an Antarctic phenomenon,
with replicas on sale at all three U.S. stations.)
The first marker was created in 1959 by the U.S. Coast
and Geodetic Survey, and a later marker by the U.S. Geological
Survey commemorated the Bicentennial in 1976, according
to Spindler.
“These markers were no different than the bench
marks you might find along any American city street or
section corner,” he says. Later on, winter crews
would simply fashion a sheet metal tab etched with the
year, stick it on a galvanized pipe, and place it at 90
degrees south on New Year’s Day.
(The spot for the marker moves by about 10 meters per year
as the South Pole is on a dynamic, moving ice sheet.)
Recent crews have created virtual works of art in pole
markers shaped like Antarctica or the new elevated station.
These are safely locked away in glass cases now. But many
of the older markers are buried under ice and snow, perhaps
as deep as 15 meters. Marty would like to see some of
them recovered, if the effort can be done safely.
“I personally really, really enjoy seeing the markers,”
he says. “The creativity, the thought, and the time
and attention to detail we are seeing … is pretty
darn special.”
More to come
There’s certainly plenty of room in the new station
for them. Martinez says there are enough walls and space
in the building to accommodate new works of art and photographs.
“We don’t have enough [memorabilia]… to
fill up the entire station. But I think in 20 years’
time, you’re just going to accumulate that stuff,
and it will fill up pretty good,” he says.
“We’re trying to brighten this place up a bit,”
he adds.
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