Musings: Lessons from an old photograph

It was a sepia photograph of an incredibly old airplane in the snow. I came across it among my great uncle’s things after his passing in 1987. My great uncle was the only grandfather figure in my life and more than lived up to the role. He had been raised in an orphanage with his brother and sister, his parents unable to provide for them at the time and forced to make an unimaginably difficult decision. He loved baseball and fishing. He had hunted, fished, and trapped the blackwater swamps in the South Carolina low country during the Great Depression with his brother to earn a living and loved every minute of it.

He became a welder and worked on the Fort Peck Dam Project in Montana. His blue eyes lit up every time he spoke of Montana. I was obliged to go there eventually and was not disappointed. He taught me to fish and shoot, and when (and why) not to shoot. He was as much a hero to me as was my dad. He bought me my first guitar at Sam Solomon in Charleston when I was 12. I played Down in the Valley over and over from a Mel Bay instruction booklet until my fingers bled. I was mesmerized every time we went fishing on the backwaters of the Edisto River. It was mystical, primordial, and serene. But blackwater runs swift and deep and to this day I have yet to see larger snakes, gators, or owls anywhere else. He let me drive his 1954 Buick and Lone Star boat and laughed when I crashed it into a dock.

I never thought much about the picture, or the signature at the bottom, but I had it blown up and framed, and kept it on my desk because it was cool and reminded me of him. Ten years later, a retiring South Carolina Law Enforcement Division captain, Walter Powell, was cleaning out his office. Powell was at the aviation unit and was throwing out an entire Time Life Books The Epic of Flight collection. The picture on the cover of one of the books looked vaguely familiar. It was the Stars and Stripes, a 1928 Fairchild FC–2W2, one of three aircraft then-Lt. Cmdr. Richard Byrd took on his first Antarctic expedition. I rescued the book from the trash and began my quest. It was the same aircraft as the one in my great uncle’s photograph!

The signature on the bottom of the photograph was that of L. (Lloyd) K. (Kellogg) Grenlie, one of the radio operators on the expedition. The airplane first flew over the Antarctic on January 15, 1929. It soon set a world record for long-distance communication. The airplane was buried in a snow cave in January 1930, located and restored, and flown again in December 1934.

It was returned to the United States in 1935 but severely damaged when loaded on the ship, after accumulating 187 hours aloft in the Antarctic. This expedition was chronicled in the 1934 Paramount Newsreel Men with Admiral Byrd in Little America, another book I found along my search. I wrote to the National Geographic Society, which confirmed the airplane in my photograph was indeed the Stars and Stripes. They suggested I contact The Ohio State University Byrd Polar Research Center. The floodgates opened, and I nearly drowned in the vast sea of chronicled historical data. But no one could answer the only question I had. How did my great uncle come to have in his possession a signed photograph of the airplane? The quest was far more rewarding than the answer. I found the names of all the explorers in the expedition (all awarded medals of honor), their assignments and length of tour, the ships and airplanes that participated, the sponsors, the fate of the aircraft, and so much more. It was the gift that kept on giving. I can still research that expedition and learn something new every time—and remember my great uncle.

We can learn so much from our past, but only if we are willing to do our research. I may never know how my great uncle got the photograph, but I am truly grateful for the opportunity it gave me to expand my horizons in understanding the challenges of the expeditionary aviators of a century ago. The Stars and Stripes is currently on display in the Boeing Aviation Hangar at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. The framed picture and letters are proudly and prominently mounted on my log cabin wall in Elizabeth, West Virginia (2WV3), next to my great uncle’s rifle, shotgun, bayonet, and fishing rod. I regret that his catcher’s mitt was lost in a house fire in 1982 or it would be there too.

Ted Lightle is a 38-year law enforcement veteran, with 24 years in aviation and a CFI specializing in air rescue training. He is currently a deputy/pilot for the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office on Florida’s Space Coast.