HEROES: Byrd Return

“But. Uncle Dick, weren’t you afraid when those whales came up through the ice? They were positively huge!”

“Maybe, but you know when I was only 12 years old I had been around the world by myself. How would you like to do that?”

Thus Hero Richard Evelyn Byrd to a small niece last week. Modern heroes do not have the fun of telling and retelling their exploits. All that is so fully told in advance by syndicate writers and radio that even small nieces know it. Modern heroes must, in fact, go about hearing others tell their story.

A summary of last week’s triumphal Byrd Return might be tabulated as follows:

Noise. A New York harborful — whistles, foghorns, airplane motors; a Broadway canyonful— shouting scores-of-thousands, motor horns, firecrackers, motorcycle sirens; minor outbursts wherever members of the Byrd expedition were recognized for a week following. (“One of the things we missed down there was noise,” said Byrd.)

Things Thrown. By the fireboat John Purroy Mitchel: eight sparkling plumes of harbor water. By Broadway: 70 tons of ticker tape, wastepaper. torn telephone books.* By other onlookers along the route from Manhattan’s Battery to Washington: hats, flowers, confetti, kisses.

Speeches. Mrs. Eleanor Bolling Byrd (mother) : “Next time you start on any expeditions someone is going to chloroform you.”

Mayor James John Walker: “You played both ends and the middle [North and South Poles, Atlantic Ocean] . . . welcome home, welcome home, forever and a day!”

Dr. John Huston Finley of the New York Times: “Your fame must already have reached the Gates of the Day of Judgment. Admiral Byrd is Ulysses; Rusell Owen Homer.”

Chancellor Elmer Ellsworth Brown of New York University (bestowing an honorary degree of Doctor of Engineering): “You are a poet.”

The U. S. Navy, in signal flags over the proscenium of the National Geographic Society’s auditorium: “Yoke, William, X-ray.” (Translation: “Well done.”)

The President of the United States: “I do not minimize the scientific gains of such expeditions, but the human values are so immediate and so universal in their effects that it may well be that they transcend the scientific service.”

Dr. Gilbert Novey Grosvenor, President of the National Geographic Society: “It is with much pleasure we see on our platform every member of this marvelous aggregation of executive, seafaring and scientific talent, 80 courageous explorers.”

Rewards. National Geographic Society medal specially evolved, because he already holds the society’s highest award.

American Geographical Society’s David Livingstone gold medal, its highest.

New York City’s medal (third time he has received it).

Oil painting of the expedition’s return, by New York Advertising Club.

Medal of Achievement Through Fitness, from New York City’s Public School Athletic League.

Silver bowl, from 12,000 persons of and near Winchester, Va., Byrd family homestead.

Sword wrought in gold and silver, from the State of Virginia.

American Arbitration Association’s medal for distinguished service.

To other members of the expedition went honors also—to all, New York’s Medal of Merit, also Congressional medals, to be presented later.

Laurence McKinley Gould: Associate Professorship of Geology at the University of Michigan; a wife, Margaret Rice, U. of M. student, of Grand Rapids, Mich.

Russell Owen: Pulitzer prize; dinner by the Newspaper Club of New York.

Results will be published later this year in at least four volumes. Explorer Byrd, however: “We didn’t get a chance to scratch the surface, and there is yet much to do down there. Why, we found land ‘with a greater area than the U. S. and Mexico.”

Significance: what was the use of this antarctic exertion? The Hero looked approval when Vice President Lincoln Cromwell of Merchants’ Association of New York offered its significance: “A fund of information has been brought back to us. While we wait for the future to decide its economic value, let us remember that Europe took over a hundred years to find any value in America after Columbus had discovered it.”

*The Byrd litter reputedly cost New York City $21,915 to clean up. History says that the Lindbergh paper-shower tonnage in 1927 was 1,800.