Explorer: The Life of Richard E. Byrd

Chapter 5 - Hero

Chapter 5 Hero he Byrd party entered New York Harbor on the morning of June 22, 1926, to a tumultuous welcome that would become routine for returning heroes within the next few years. Yachts, sailboats, and steamers filled the huge anchorage , proudly bedecked in national bunting, pennants, and signal flags. Chantier steamed slowly toward the dock next to Battery Park through a din of cheers and sirens, the waters rocking and heaving as fireboats spouted great jets into the clear blue sky. The little steamer was accompanied by Mayor Jimmy Walker’s official tug, Macon, filled with state, national, and local officials, including several U.S. senators and representatives. Press boats raced out from the Manhattan and Brooklyn shores, those on board determined to get the first direct story of the polar flight from the gallant aviators. Battery Park was black with people as Chantier arrived. Immediately, New York police commissioner Grover Whalen, Walker’s chief greeter and himself well connected to the powerful Manhattan merchant princes, strode aboard, his signature white carnation neatly placed in its usual buttonhole. Whalen swept Byrd and his men ashore into mass confusion. The explorer felt himself “tossed about like a leaf in a storm.” The scene “resembles a riot.” Perhaps he had a moment with Marie, perhaps not, before Harry Bruno, who handled all Byrd’s arrangements, raced to him through the crowd and began chattering in his ear an impossibly busy schedule that included a parade, a civic honor at city hall, a luncheon banquet (where Richard would speak), a brief rest at the Hotel McAlpin, a rush to the train station, and a hasty trip down to Washington, where that evening President Coolidge would greet him with a gold medal. Suddenly, Byrd was whirled about to look at an airplane in the sky pulling a message, someone else yelled in his ear that he must meet Mr. So-and-so, a very prominent . . . 144 and he was whirled about again to be told that the press wanted pictures of him and his mother. Amid the din and crash of voices the parade formed, ready to march uptown through the canyons of Manhattan, where several million lined the sidewalks or waited in windows to throw tons of confetti down on the new hero. Bennett came in close behind, followed by the rest of the expedition, including the ship’s crew. Aboard Chantier Captain Mike Brennan was the last off but one. Striding down the gangplank he glanced up at the lone figure on board. “Balchen, you’ve got the watch,” he called over his shoulder as he gave a final hitch to his pants and hurried to catch up to the parade. Balchen, after all, was not part of the expedition that got Byrd and Bennett to the pole. The bands began to blare, and the parade started off across the park. Long years later Balchen remembered it all and how “the roar of the crowd tracks into the echoing canyon of Broadway,” the drums and trumpets suddenly muffled by the high buildings. Striding along in a blizzard of torn newspapers and telephone books behind the blaring bands with Bennett nearby, Dick Byrd experienced his first ticker-tape parade as a surreal wall of noise and people and stopped traffic. It is not a triumph so much as a bewilderment that he will get used to. This is the first of three such events. No one before or since has had three ticker-tape parades down America’s most famous street. Back at the battery, Balchen found himself alone, “the only sound . . . the mewing of sea gulls and the monotonous creak of the Chantier’s hull against the pilings.”1 Reaching the capital that evening, Byrd and his men were promptly hustled over to the Washington Auditorium, where before a glittering crowd of six thousand, including President Coolidge, the leadership of the army and navy, members of Congress, and members of the foreign diplomatic corps, Byrd and Bennett received from Coolidge’s hand the National Geographic Society’s Hubbard Gold Medal. In his remarks Gilbert Grosvenor stated that a committee of the society had already examined Byrd’s flight records and found them to be “carefully and accurately kept.” Many critics and skeptics raised eyebrows at how suspiciously soon after the event the review and conclusion followed. In rather rambling remarks , Coolidge tried to define Byrd’s feat. The naval officer had added undoubted luster to his service and to the country...