A member of the United States Navy Reserve
who assisted Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd
in explorations of Antarctica, died on August
10, 1992, in the Fernwood Nursing Home, Bethesda,
Maryland. He was 90-years-old and died of
cancer.
He was born at Grand Forks, North Dakota,
and trained as a civil engineer at the University
of North Dakota. In the 1920s, he worked
on railroad, mining and other engineering
projects.
From 1933 to 1935, he served in Byrd's Second
Antarctic Expedition as a civilian in charge
of East Base in Little America, for which
he received the U.S. Navy Special Silver
Medal.
Over the next thirty years, he served in
four other expeditions and was an active-duty
officer planning Anarctic expeditions. While
working for the U.S. Interior Department
he was based in Hawaii and was in charge
of preparing Howland Island for the arrival
of Emilia Earhart in her attempt to fly around
the world in 1937. He monitored her last
message before she vanished over the Pacific
Ocean. As we know, he was also quite involved
in the projects on all the equatorial islands,
including Jarvis Island.
As a member of the Naval Reserve, he was
called to active duty in August 1941 and
was stationed at Pearl Harbor on December
7, 1941 when the Japanese attacked U.S. bases
there.
During World War II, he fought in the battles
of Tarawa and Saipan and was awarded the
Bronze Star. After the war, he worked as
a Federal aeronautics official in Hawaii,
then did research at Johns Hopkins University
in Baltimore. He was a civilian aide in South
Korea during the war there and was later
appointed an operations analyst for the Office
of Naval Research.
He retired from the Naval Reserve in 1962
and from government work in 1967. His first
wife, the former Ruth Slayberg, died in 1932.
He was survived by his wife of 55 years,
the former Aviza Johnson and three children.
He is buried in Section 30 of Arlington National
Cemetery.
His second wife, Aziza Johnson Black, died
in Washington, D.C. on May 7, 1997 and is
buried with him.