Norman D. Vaughan
Norman Vaughan ( born December 19, 1905 in Salem, Massachusetts, † 23 December 2005, Anchorage, Alaska) was an American polar explorer and musher.
Life
Vaughan was the son of a wealthy tanner and shoemaker. In his youth he was enthusiastic about the reports of the first polar expeditions in 1928 and broke his studies at Harvard, as if he heard that Richard Evelyn Byrd was planning an Antarctic expedition. Byrd took him into his team. In Praise of Vaughan's services during the 1928-1930 lasting Byrd Antarctic Expedition was an Antarctic mountain, Mount Vaughan, named after him.
With the knowledge gained in the expedition in 1932 he adopted a dog sled race in the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid (New York) part.
During the Second World War Vaughan musher was Colonel in the U.S. Army and was involved in rescue operations in Greenland.
At the age of 68 years, Vaughan moved to Alaska to begin a new life after his divorce from Carolyn Muegge and his bankruptcy. He subsequently took 13 times a part Iditarod, the longest sled dog race in the world, and caused an uproar in the Präsidentenvereidigung 1976, to which he appeared as a representative of Alaska with sled dogs. 1980 and 1984, he and the Alaskan Messenger officially participated in the parade.
In 1994 he took part in an expedition 88 years who ascended the Mount Vaughan named after him. Three years later he organized the Norman Vaughan Serum Run, to commemorate the delivery of diphtheria serum from Nenana to Nome in 1925 (see diphtheria epidemic in Nome ).
His plans, centennial back in December 2005 on the Mount Vaughan, failed in August to a lack of capital, so he moved it to 2006.
Since Vaughan had promised his mother never to drink alcohol until he was 100, he drank his first glass of champagne on the occasion of his 100th birthday in 2005 during the preparations for this expedition. A few days later died Vaughan on the morning of 23 December 2005 Alaska Medical Center.
Work
- My Life of Adventure. Stackpole Books, 1995, ISBN 0-8117-0892-6.