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Hey, I was there to help, right?
Right there in the kitchenette loaned us by the Roosevelt Hotel in
Anchorage. My wife, Pam, ran the headquarters for the Iditarod
Dogsled Race, and it was the second year of the race, 1974, and
there I sat, a genuine Alaskan long-distance dog musher who had
participated in the first race the year before.
So when a nicely dressed elderly gentleman with a thick Boston
accent stopped by for coffee and questions about the race … hey, I’m
there for you.
He said his name was Norman Vaughan and he had some questions, and
we talked for more than an hour. Oh, I explained to this obvious
city guy all about how the dogs were hooked up, and how far we could
go each day, depending on weather. He was a good student, too. When
he rose to go, he said, “Slim, I think we’ll be seeing a lot of each
other and become good friends.”
Okay …
I’d never thought of dog mushing as something an elderly gentleman
in a suit and tie from Boston would be interested in, but I’ve been
fooled before. As a newspaperman, I’ve interviewed all kinds of
fascinating folks over the years.
But there was something about Norman that I genuinely admired, even
if I couldn’t have said exactly what it was.
Pam and I discussed how this race had captured the attention of the
world after just its inaugural run. For the record, it has begun
(for 50 years now) on the first Saturday in March in Anchorage, then
crosses Alaska to end up on Front Street in Nome in front of the
Board of Trade Saloon, where Wyatt Earp was once the bartender, back
when Nome was a boom town. This gives a guy a long, cold camping
trip before he gets to Front Street. Many aren’t able to complete
the race for various reasons, and I was one of those. Four days in,
I crushed an ankle. I crawled in the sled and the team took me 20
miles to the next checkpoint, where I was ignominiously airlifted to
a hospital in Anchorage by Army helicopter.
So I guess it’s only natural that a Boston gentleman would be
interested in seeing how something like this could happen. And
that’s what Pam and I were discussing for the next half hour after
Norman left.
Pam mentioned how nice it was of me to fill our visitor in on the
wonderful world of dog driving. Hey, our cabin was 12 miles from the
nearest road, and we had to drive the dogs to get to the car, right?
Experienced dog mushers, both of us.
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So about a half hour after Norman
left, we were discussing him and sipping coffee when the news guy on
the radio said, “The special guest at the musher’s banquet tonight
will be Colonel Norman Vaughan, who drove a dog team to the South
Pole in support of the Byrd Expedition in 1930.”
I didn’t have to say anything because Pam was laughing so hard she
couldn’t have heard me anyway. Much to my regret, the floor in the
Roosevelt Hotel didn’t open up and swallow embarrassed dog mushers.
I’ve had to live with the memory all this time.
Norman Vaughan drove his dog team to the South Pole as a possible
rescuer in case Richard Byrd’s plane was forced down. During World
War II, Norman was in charge of dog team rescue in Greenland, where
they could rescue any air crews forced down on the ice cap. More
than 100 fliers were rescued by his dog teams.
Byrd named a peak in Antarctica after
Norman and Norman went down there and climbed it with some friends
just before his 89th birthday. He and I were friends for the rest of
his life, and when Norman Vaughan finally was able to finish the
Iditarod Race in Nome, one of my dogs was his leader.
But after giving this polar explorer the benefit of my vast
experience in that hotel room for more than an hour, about all I
could do is grin and shrug and say, “Well, at least now he knows how
to do it the right way.” [Text from file received from
Slim Randles]
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