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By Peter Rejcek
Madey Ridge, located in Antarctica’s Pensacola Mountains
near the Ronne Ice Shelf, is named for a teenager who
played a critical role in the lives of hundreds of Antarctic
pioneers. Today, ask any number of retired Navy Seabees
if they remember a Jules Madey and every one of them will
happily tell you that Jules was one remarkable young man.
In 1955, the U.S. Navy sent hundreds of Seabees, the
Navy’s construction battalion, to Antarctica to build
seven research stations for the impending International
Geophysical Year (IGY) . Over the course of the next two
years, these men braved primitive conditions to do what
no one had ever done before — build functioning facilities
with electricity, running water and science labs in locales
where the explorers before them had struggled to survive.
Ham radio was the only means of talking to loved ones
back home in the era preceding satellite-enabled telephony.
For the men who arrived at what is now McMurdo Station
in December 1955, and who did not depart until a year
or two later, hearing a wife’s voice or son’s
laughter was an important morale booster.
Jules Madey was a 16-year old ham radio operator in 1956
when he read about the Antarctic expedition. The Clark,
N.J., teen and his 13-year old brother, John, were radio-control-airplane
enthusiasts when they learned a person could increase
flying capabilities by operating on the ham radio frequencies.
Studying together to learn the Morse code, they both
got their ham licenses in 1954 and soon realized that
talking to people around the world via ham radio was as
much fun as flying airplanes. With the encouragement and
help of their parents, they soon had a 110-foot tower
in their back yard, enabling a better reception than most
operators in the world had at that time. Jules also hooked
up a telephone to the radio that allowed him to make phone
patches.
“I’d be in the basement doing my homework with
the radio on when I’d receive a radio call from McMurdo,
South Pole , Byrd Station … I talked to all of them.
Monty [a U.S. Navy radioman] was a person I spoke with
almost every night,” Jules says during a phone interview
from his home near Albany, New York. He would have a dozen
men who were lined up there in McMurdo wanting to place
a phone call home to their wives or parents.
“Monty would give me the phone number and I’d
place the collect call. The first time I placed the call,
no one knew who this Jules kid was, but after the first
time they eagerly would accept the collect call being
placed by m.”
Talking over a ham radio takes getting used to, Jules
said. “I would have to explain to the person how
to say ‘over’ when they had finished speaking.
I had to listen to all the conversations because I had
to switch the radio from transmit to receive after each
speaker. It got to where I felt I knew these men and their
families pretty well.”
“Jules was a very mature teen,” recalls Tom
“Monty” Montgomery, now of Clearwater, Fla..
“I was a 30-year old married radioman with three
children when I first arrived in Antarctica. My wife and
children were living in Martha’s Vineyard, and I
remember very well the time Jules put a call through to
her for me.”
Disney studios even got involved, filming a ham call
from Monty in McMurdo to Jules in New Jersey, who patched
the call through to Monty’s wife.
Ham radios most frequently operate on Federal Communications
Commission -designated high-frequency bands between 1.8
and 30 MHz. Long distance communication is possible because
these wavelengths reflect off the ionosphere, where the
waves bounce around the world. At the same time, because
of the ionosphere’s role, disruptions can be caused
by solar flares, auroras and whether it is daylight or
nighttime.
The Madey boys had also rigged up a radiofax machine,
allowing them to transmit scientific data as well as photos.
Jules recalls, “A typical 8x10 photo took about 20
minutes to send in those days.”
Montgomery says Jules ended up patching through the majority
of calls for the Deep Freeze men because he had a better
set-up than most people had at that time.
“He had a huge antenna, so his reception was good,
and he had a telephone hooked up for patching calls. Sometimes
when I would be transmitting, I’d be picked up by
someone in, say, California, but they didn’t have
the capability of placing a phone patch. Jules did. It
was just easier working with Jules than anyone else. I
talked to him almost every night for over a year.”
In touch with fame
The list of people who Jules patched through in those
days is a virtual list of Who’s Who of Antarctic
history.
The notables include figures like Paul Siple, the scientific
leader at South Pole in 1957 whose first trip to Antarctica
was as a member of Admiral Byrd’s 1928 expedition.
Scientist Carl Eklund at Wilkes Station, whose name would
become attached to the forerunner of today’s Crary
Lab, was another.
Paul SipleCapt. Finn Ronne, the military and scientific
leader of Ellsworth Station, for whom the Ronne Ice Shelf
is named, also talked to Jules, as did Vivian Fuchs, who
teamed with Edmund Hillary in the first trans-Antarctic
expedition, from Shackleton Station on the Weddell Sea
to Scott Base, via South Pole.
There were other famous people who were eager to talk
to the men in Antarctica, the vast unknown frontier. Arthur
Godfrey and Art Linkletter made a point of talking to
the heroes of the era, after which they would proudly
announce this communiqué on their radio shows.
Meant a lot to morale
According to Dian Belanger’s definitive history “Deep
Freeze: The United States, the International Geophysical
Year, and the Origins of Antarctica’s Age of Science”
when Deep Freeze personnel were asked to name people deserving
recognition, the overwhelming majority began their lists
with ham radio operators. Jules’ name appeared on
everyone’s lists. The radio operators received certificates
of appreciation for their support of polar morale, but
Jules’ efforts were so extraordinary he got a geographical
feature named for him.
Vic Young spent the winter of 1956 at Little America
V running the ham shack during the evening hours. When
recently contacted to see if he remembered Jules, an enthusiastic
burst of energy came through the phone.
“Jules? Jules Madey? Sure I remember Jules. He was
terrific. Almost every time I’d be on the radio,
I’d contact Jules. I remember he was a young man
going to school. It would be 2 or 3 a.m. in New Jersey
where he was and he’d be up doing his homework and
patching through phone calls for us. I cannot say with
enough emphasis what a great kid he was.
“The men would come into the ham shack to talk to
their wives. They’d be a bit down because here it
was cold and dark, and they’d come into the shack
and I’d put them through to Jules. I’d watch
the person change from morose to his morale going way
up as soon as he heard Jules’ voice, putting through
the phone patch. I do not think Jules could possibly understand
at his young age how important he was to us. He did a
wonderful wonderful job.”
Meeting the Madey brothers
Several of the men made a point to visit Jules when they
returned to the United States.
Ken Waldron was one of the 18 men who spent the first
winter at South Pole in 1957. He first heard of Jules
before he deployed, while still stationed in Davisville,
R.I. “I didn’t know who Jules was, but his name
stuck in my mind because I figured he was someone pretty
important. Then when I got to Pole, I found out that Jules
was this wiz kid who patched through our phone calls.
“You know, the thing that I remember best is that
Jules would get the Sunday paper and read the comics and
the sports pages to us over the radio. He was precocious
enough to realize how important it was for us. Can you
imagine being 16 years old and understanding the psychological
impact of hearing the news like that?
“Gee, when I was that age all I thought about was
football and girls. Here these two boys would do their
homework, get straight As, stay up all night to patch
through phone calls for us and then go to school the next
day. What they were accomplishing would take a project
manager today.”
Jules made such an impression on Waldron that he visited
the Madey family when he returned home. “One day
Jules and John and their group of friends took me out
to eat lunch and I was blown away by this group of friends.
They were the most intelligent and polite high school
kids. I remember one young lady was so intelligent I had
difficulty following what she was talking about. Here
I was 21 and I thought these kids were already several
steps ahead of me.”
Waldron asked the boys’ dad how much he was involved
in helping them get the radio and antenna set up. The
Madey patriarch said that the boys figured out what they
needed, he bought the equipment, and they did the rest.
“Their dad said everything they have, they figured
out on their own,” Waldron marvels.
Another Deep Freeze II Polie, Earl Johnson, has another
story about Jules. “I had just finished talking to
my fiancée, Celeste, and had signed off. Jules
was a long time coming back to me, and I thought that
the band had gone out. However, the band was OK and when
Jules came back on he told me he had been discussing with
Celeste about the possibility of him attending our wedding,
upon my return to the States.
“Celeste and I were honored that a young man whom
we had never met, but who had handled all our phone calls
for the past year, would want to do that. Jules and his
father flew down to West Palm Beach, Florida, for the
wedding. We had the opportunity to visit with Jules again
a couple of months later when passing through New Jersey.”
Not forgotten
Cliff Dickey was also at Pole that first winter in 1957,
and would sometimes operate the ham radio. “I don’t
know when the guy studied. He was always there. He was
a constant. My wife was in Cleveland and my parents were
in California, so I would try to get a ham radio operator
close to them, so the phone patch would not be long distance.
But sometimes you couldn’t get through to the hams
who were close to where you were calling and you just
knew you could contact Jules.
“You knew he would be there and he would put through
the call for you. No matter what time it was, every night
of the week. He was always there. K2KGJ. That was his
call sign. Everyone in Antarctica knew it. It’s been
over 50 years and I still remember it. My wife and I made
a point of visiting Jules when I returned to the U.S.”
Jules was the first ham radio operator contacted from
the South Pole, according to Dickey. Records kept by wintering
personnel indicate contact was made on December 24, 1956,
at 4:08 am GMT.
So high was the Navy’s regard for Jules that they
arranged for him to take a trip to Antarctica in December
1959. He flew in on a Super Constellation (C-121C) by
way of Hawaii, Fiji and New Zealand. He got to visit Byrd
and Hallett stations, but was unable to make it to the
South Pole.
Making waves their livelihood
Jules and his brother John made careers out of their fascination
with radio waves. Jules holds an electrical engineering
degree from CalTech. He was a biomedical engineer in visual
neurophysiology and sensory aids for the blind at Smith-Kettlewell
Institute in San Francisco before moving back to the East
Coast in the 1970s.
Cliff Dickey uses the ham radio to make a call to the
United States during the 1957 winter at South Pole.Today
he is the director of Technology Development for the New
York State Thruway Authority. He is responsible for development
and design of components and systems for manual and electronic
toll collection and Intelligent Transportation System
functions — all which utilize radio waves.
But Jules is quick to point out that it is his younger
brother who has gained fame for his study of electromagnetic
waves, specifically laser technology. As an undergraduate
student at CalTech in the late 1960s, John developed the
first Free Electron Laser, and a few years later received
a patent for it.
Today John is the director of the University of Hawaii’s
physics department Free Electron Laser group. “I
can picture myself in the basement on a cold winter night,
staring at the glowing vacuum tubes in the ham radio and
wondering about the nature of them, knowing there had
to be more to the physics by which radio waves could be
amplified. There is no doubt that my ham radio days led
me to where I am today,” John recalls.
“We had extraordinary parents. They were children
of the Great Depression who came of age during [World
War II], witnessing amazing scientific and technological
developments, from the birth of the atomic age to radar,”
he adds. “Mom graduated at the top of her class and
Dad had his own automotive repair business, and although
neither had a college degree, they were both very intelligent.
“They were surrounded by friends who were some of
the leaders in high tech. Their friends would come over
and discuss a recent invention or development, and thus
our parents were always learning and then conveying this
information to students who would be sent to our dad’s
business to learn. Our parents were determined that their
two sons would have the opportunities that they had not
had.”
The New York Times widely covered IGY and Operation Deep
Freeze, so the Madey boys were well aware of this global
cooperative scientific effort. But to become a part of
it, by patching through phone calls from the likes of
Siple, already quite famous, and facilitating the science
by transmitting scientific data reports, allowed the boys
to feel that they, too, could become scientists.
John remembers, “Seeing, as a student, what goes
on in these projects and understanding at a very basic
level that you, too, could make things like this happen
in your own career is an essential part of the education
of the next generation of our leaders, whether scientific,
business or political.
“I look at my own children today and lament the
fact that we, I, did not facilitate the opportunities
that we children of the 1950s had. Jules and I could get
our hands dirty in our dad’s machine shop, learning
how to build things. Then we became an integral part of
the IGY, being intimately involved in the science conducted.
We were encouraged to experiment and build our ham radio
tower. There was no end to it.
“Do children today have that opportunity? There
has been no global effort to solve scientific mysteries
as there was in the 1950s. Maybe global warming and the
push toward alternative fuels will reignite an effort
bringing youth and scientists together.”
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Antarctic
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