Q: What happened with Dean Smith's diary?
ER: During the winter at Little America the men had time on their hands. One
way Dean Smith filled this time was to write a diary, a voluminous diary by all
accounts. He'd write down apparently everything that happened on the
expedition, write down his opinions of what happened. Byrd knew that Dean
Smith was not devoted to him. Dean Smith did not got the piloting assignments
that he felt he deserved, that he felt he had bargained for with Byrd. He felt
Byrd hadn't been entirely square with him. He was a bit resentful. So Byrd
wondered what was going to be in his diary and what it might do to his own
image. After the expedition on the plane the ship voyage from Panama to New
York City Dean Smith was on board. And he kept his diary in his locker, and he
kept it in a case. And one day he went to his locker and found the locker door
had been jimmied open. And he rummaged inside and saw the diary case empty.
Someone had broken into his locker and stolen the diary pages. He reported
this immediately to Byrd. And Byrd says, well, I'll mount a search and try to
find it. But the diary was never found. Dean Smith admitted later to me that
the Hearst Corporation had offered him money for this diary, after he composed
it. He said he hadn't done the diary with publication in mind or at least sale
to Hearst in mind. But certainly that was the motive later on. And Byrd was
always afraid of Hearst getting something like this and turning it against
Byrd. Smith felt that the culprit behind the theft was Byrd himself. Smith
claims that he heard from others afterwards that Byrd indeed had stolen the
diary. He said, Harold June admitted to him later on that he, June, had stolen
the diary on Byrd's orders. This is what Dean Smith says.
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