Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 8, 1995 TAG: 9501100013
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MICHAEL KILIAN CHICAGO TRIBUNE
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Some dreams take longer to achieve than most.
Sixty-five years after he accompanied Admiral Richard Byrd on the famous 1928-30 expedition to the Antarctic, and just three days shy of his 89th birthday, Norman Vaughan reached the summit of a 10,302-foot peak named after him.
``I couldn't believe it was all over,'' he told reporters Friday at the headquarters of National Geographic, a sponsor of both Byrd's and his expedition. ``I just couldn't believe it was happening.''
Vaughan reached the summit of his mountain, which had never been climbed before, on Dec. 16. Treacherous arctic weather delayed his return to the United States until last week.
In 1930, when South Pole expedition leader Byrd told him a mountain was being named after him, Vaughan immediately replied, ``I want to climb it!''
Alas, the adventurer took his time. And it is the only mountain Vaughan has ever tackled.
Operating from a base camp they'd been flown to at the foot of the mountain, Vaughan, his wife, Carolyn, and other members of his 13-member team took nearly nine days to reach the top.
``I climb very slowly,'' said Vaughan, a Boston native turned Alaskan. ``I climb straight up instead of diagonally, because I have the unfortunate situation of a fused ankle, and on the same leg, a knee replacement.''
Vernon Tejas, a professional mountain climber from Alaska who has conquered Mount Everest, served as Vaughan's guide and cut steps into the ice and snow for him to follow. But when they neared the summit, Vaughan took the lead.
``We got to the top and Carolyn grabbed the hat off Vern and we kissed the top of his [bald] head,'' Vaughan said. ``We were just glad to be there. ... I looked down and I counted 85 peaks and ... only 2 or 3 percent of them have ever been climbed, and that by a few scientists we knew that were there.''
Vaughan was a 21-year-old student at Harvard in 1927 when he saw a headline in a Boston paper that read, ``Byrd to the South Pole.''
``I just thought of nothing but that,'' he said. ``I had to go.''
Unable to obtain an audience with the explorer, Vaughan used a reporter as intermediary to offer the admiral the free services of himself and two Harvard classmates, Edward Goodale and Freddy Crockett, both now dead. Byrd accepted, and Vaughan and his two friends spent 18 months on the ice during the trek, with Vaughan serving as chief dog handler.
When they'd all returned to Boston, Byrd told Vaughan he had been so impressed by their work that he'd have mountains named for all three of them.
Instead of returning to Harvard, Vaughan became an adventurer, seeing the world as a traveling salesman, advertising agency employee and, in later life, a snowmobile dealer.
A legend among sled dog drivers, Vaughan participated in the 1932 Olympics, the only games to feature sled dog racing as an event, and the 1952 North American Sled Dog Championships. He has run in 13 Iditarod Sled Dog Races, winning admission to the Musher Hall of Fame and finishing his last Iditarod in 1990 as what he calls the ``oldest and slowest'' musher, at age 84.
As a U.S. army colonel, Vaughan commanded sled dog rescue units in World War II, evacuating the wounded from enemy fire during the Battle of the Bulge. Over the last decade, he has helped salvage six P-38 aircraft of the ``Lost Squadron,'' which were located in Greenland under 268 feet of ice.
Vaughan said he and his wife met in Atlanta in 1987, ``when I was carving a roast pig in a hangar at a reunion.''
The decidedly younger Carolyn, who is 52 now, was with two women friends, and Vaughan asked each of them to spend the winter with him in Alaska to help handle his sled dogs. The three finally agreed to make two-week visits in turn.
``Carolyn was last,'' he said. ``I fell in love with her, and we married.''
A National Geographic Explorer show on Vaughan will air April 2 on TBS.
Vaughan had tried to climb his namesake mountain in 1993, but that effort was abandoned when his expedition's main supply aircraft crashed short of a runway. He lost four of the 20 dogs he had brought with him in the plane crash. He dedicated his climb to his friends Goodale and Crockett and the lost dogs. Vaughan carried a stuffed toy Huskie named ``Zippy'' to the summit in tribute.
``I want people to dream big, and I want them to dare to fail,'' Vaughan said Friday. ``People should dream about what they want to do when they retire. But they want to be sure they don't think of it in terms of an armchair.''
by CNB