Byrd Need Not Be Lonely

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 394, 30 June 1928, Page 24

Byrd Need Not Be Lonely

EXPLORER DELUGED WITH LETTERS FROM MEN AND WOMEN WHO WISH TO ACCOMPANY HIM TO SOUTH POLE

■IP Commander Richard Evelyn Byrd accepted all the offers to accompany him to trie South Pole made since he returned from his flight to France a city of some 15,000 persona would spring up in the Antarctic this autumn, as motley and futile a community of thrillhunters as was ever assembled in one place. There would be men of all ages, from old ones to whom the years have brought realisation that they have never accomplished anything very brilliant and who wish to top their drab career with one glorious gesture, to boys fresh on the threshold of life who see all before them only in terms of dashing adventure. Women Ask, Too And there would be women, too; bored rich ones, with fond visions of heated igloos staffed by a retinue of servants, and hero worshipping young ones with romantic notions of impossible dramas in which they would inevitably be cast as the dashing heroines. Commander Byrd receives an average of about 40 such applications a day, largely from people whose only common bond is their monetairy desire and their almost universal unfitness for any expedition in which hardship, labour, technical training and perseverence under trying conditions are the component parts. Not all the women who write to the air conqueror of the North Pole, however, want to accompany him to the frozen wastes. About four a day write him soft letters that a matinee idol might preen himself over, but which Byrd merely tosses aside with a smile. 200 Letters a Day The rest of the flyer's daily mail, to which he and a secretary have to devote most of their mornings, and which runs from 50 to 200 letters, is divided between pleas for financial assistance, letters of advice from people who don’t think much of aviation and hate to see a nice man wasting his time at it; invitations to speak at meetings or dinners, and rambling letters of no special import. A less efficient man might find such a 7 ai *J load of mail an almost unbearable burden in the busy season of preparation for such an adventure as nil* nOW Panning, the South Pole '* M, . but he takes it all in his stride, ine c»uTi S D ° trace of annoyance, goIhe da' y °” t 0 the °' her duties oi Goes for Walk ■ ,n A wh n ichV„ here iS alway " a walk, |H h ctl he ls accompanied, as a

rule, by his son, Dick, who is eight, and at least one dog. At five o’clock the office work is again suspended for exercise, this time of a more active sort. In winter Byrd plays squash and in summer tennis or golf. Swimming and sailing are also among his favourite sports.

No matter how great is the pressure of his affairs. Byrd always manages to set aside time for exercise. He knows that there are strenuous days ahead of him, days in which his endurance will be taxed to the utmost, and he is constantly building himself up against that time. He prefers not to work after dinner, but often it is unavoidable; there are so many people to see, so many letters to write, proofs of book and article to read, plans to make. Relaxes for Hour But by eleven o’clock he is through, ana for an hour he relaxes, reading as he sips a glass of milk and eats a few crackers. By midnight he is in bed, and when his work is cleared up early he often Is asleep an hour before that, storing up the strength which later will be called on to send him circling above the South Pole. This daily routine is of course frequently altered by trips to New York, and other places for visits to his publishers, for business arrangements in connection with his next expedition, and for direction of test flights of the three planes he is to take with him. As a rule he is an observer ou these tests, but not infrequently he takes the stick himself. Because of his fame as a navigator the fact is sometimes lost sight of that Byrd is a pilot himself, and one of the best in America. Although he has the co-ordinated body of an athlete Byrd is by no means a large man. Pie weighs close to 1601 b and is well under six feet tall. With bis wavy hair, classic features. and the soft Southern drawl of

his courteous voice it is sometimes difficult for persons meeting him for the first time to visualise him in the role he has played time after time of conqueror against seemingly insuperable odds. Some of his friends have a whimsical theory by which they explain his indomitable nature. When Byrd was at Annapolis he broke the bones in one foot twice in sports and one of the bones failed to knit. Because of his injury he was somewhat later retired from the navy, his career apparently ended, leaving him, in his own words, a “fizzle” at life. The broken ends of the unknitted bone in his foot were nailed together by surgeons and friends say with a laugh that iron from that nail must have permeated Byrd’s system and made him strong beyond all possibility of defeat.

As a matter of fact, of course, Byrd’s determination to follow his urge for adventure dates back much farther than that nailed up foot, back at any rate to the time when he was 12 years old that, unaccompanied, he circled the world whose hidden places he was later to seek out from the clouds.

Seventeen Years

Without Seeing a Tree Growing * 777. 17-YEARS-OLD girl, who had never seen a tree, a 'vTlEilTl h° rse . a motor-car, a railV.ki way train, a cinematoWVJBpJKT graph picture, a teleJL Ht-j phone, or a telegraph pole, was taken for a motor-car ride through Blackpool recently. She is Miss Rachel Gillies, a native of St. Kiida, the lonely island in the Outer Hebrides, Inverness-shire, which has a population of between 40 and 50, and is only about seven miles in circumference. St. Kiida is over 100 miles from the Scottish coast. It is difficult to grow even vegetables on the island owing to the sea spray, which blows across and turns everything black. She laughed when she saw a policeman in uniform, with white sleeves, directing the traffic. “Isn’t be funny?” she said; “I have never seen anything like him before.” Her brow knitted in bewilderment at the electric tramway cars, which moved without any visible method of traction. “How do they go like that?” she said. At the South Shore fair ground at Blackpool she was filled with alarm that people should go for amusement on contrivances which seemed to her so dangerous and ihysterious. “I would not like to go on that,” she said with finality when she saw the “Big Dipper.” “There are none of these things on St. Kiida.”