Q: Tell me how you first learned about Byrd's expedition and what you
decided you wanted to do when you read about it.
NV: I was studying at Harvard College one night and the door opened and in
came the Boston Transcript, the evening paper of the city, and there with
banner headlines it said, "Byrd to the South Pole." I read it and at that
moment I decided I wanted to go. I said to my roommates, look at this, I've
got to go. And one of them said how in the world can you go, if you don't know
Byrd. I answered by saying I don't know but I'm going to go and I'm going to
tell you what I'm going to do. And I left right away and that very next
morning I was at Admiral Byrd's house in Boston and that's how I started.
I approached Admiral Byrd's house with the expectation of meeting him and this
buxom gal came to the door, and when I asked for an appointment she put her
arms akimbo and said, if you don't have an appointment nobody gets by me. And
she really meant it and so she blew right there, all the thoughts I had the
previous evening and night about going across the tundra of Antarctica and I
just thought I'd never make it. But I turned around and started down the
sidewalk and had a new idea and that was to find the journalist who had written
that story about Admiral Byrd because I know he could get back to see him and I
found him. I asked him to help me reach my message to Commander Byrd. And
with some interest first, and a great deal of interest later, he said he would
do that.
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