MARCH 2021 | D 3
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unremitting cold. The average daily tem- perature was 25 degrees Fahrenheit, but in the winter months, it dropped as low as -65 degrees during his stay. “Let me just say this, if I took a can of soda pop and set it outside on the step, if I didn’t retrieve it in 14 minutes it would pop open because it had frozen,” Grisham said. Raised in Douglas, Arizona, Grisham enlisted in the Navy in 1948. He started out as a weather technician, then moved up to weather forecaster and was pro- moted to the rank of lieutenant in Ant- arctica. His job took him to duty stations in Guam, Hawaii and Japan, and he served twice aboard aircraft carriers in the Pacific. He spent four years aboard the USS Bennington in the 1950s and ‘60s, and a two-year stint on the USS Hancock during the Vietnam War. He was onboard the
Hancock in April 1975 during the fall of Saigon, when the ship’s flight deck crews had to push empty helicopters overboard to make room for new ones touching down with evacuating U.S. military per- sonnel and refugees. In between those shipboard assign- ments, Grisham was assigned duty in Antarctica as part of “Operation Deep Freeze,” where the Navy provided logistical support to civilian scientists on the frozen continent. At the time, Grishamwas in his mid-30s and married with two toddlers.
is covered with ice up to 10,000 feet thick, but McMurdo Station is one of the few places that sits on an exposed landmass of volcanic rock. During Antarctica’s sum- mer months, which are our winter months, Grisham said there were as many as 1,100 workers at the station. But during the Antarctic winter, the onsite staff shrunk to 180 because sea ice and sub-freezing temperatures make travel and supply runs impossible. During the winter, all of the food was canned and workers passed the time play- ing cards, chess, the backgammon-like game of acey-doucey and bowling at a two-lane alley. His sole luxury was a daily after-work martini. Once a week he talked to his wife, Wilma, via a voice relay through two shortwave radio operators. The year’s highlight was a morale-lifting visit from Sir Edmund Hillary, the New Zealand mountaineer who crestedMt. Ev-
erest in 1953. He’d traveled to Antarctica that year for a climbing expedition.
In 1977, Grisham retired from the Navy and settled in Monterey, where Wilma passed away in 2000. A year later, while vacationing in Paris, he met Salazar, who lost her husband, Gil, in 1995. They struck up a conversation on the bus to Orly Air- port and five weeks later he came to visit her in San Diego. They married in 2003. McKee, with Indiana Spirit of ‘45, said he’s delighted to know that Grisham was pleased at the return of his wallet. An Air Force veteran himself, he knows the value of military mementos. “I have a deep love for those that serve and their stories,” McKee said. “Something such as an old wallet can mean so much to someone with the memories that item holds.”
“I went down there kicking and scream- ing,” he said.
Grisham said it’s hard to grasp the vast- ness and remoteness of Antarctica. It’s the size of North America and the journey to get there by ship from New Zealand is 1,100 nautical miles. Most of Antarctica
Paul Grisham said it’s hard to grasp the vastness and remoteness of Antarctica. It’s the size of North America and the journey to get there by ship from New Zealand is 1,100 nautical miles.
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