Rochester man took historic first step on Antarctica

Joyce Gibbs had been a widow for a couple of months when she moved to a smaller place in Rochester. Her husband of 47 years, George, died of cancer on Nov. 7, 2000 — his 84th birthday.

So, that January, she packed up their home of 37 years, hoping the change would trigger fewer memories and lessen her loneliness.

"I was selling our bedroom set because it was going to be too big for where I was going," Joyce, 82, said the other day. "As I scooted the chest out from the wall, I noticed a plastic bag that had fallen back there."

That's how she found two lost journals from 1940 belonging to George Gibbs, who according to experts became the first black man to set foot on the continent of Antarctica.

Gibbs spent his last 41 years in Minnesota, graduated from the University of Minnesota and has a Rochester elementary school named after him. He was working as a Navy cook 75 years ago on Rear Admiral Richard Byrd's third expedition to the planet's frozen bottom.

"He thought he'd lost those journals," said Joyce, who promptly called her daughter in Colorado with news of the discovery.

"She said: 'I have a surprise for you,' " said Leilani Henry. After chastising her mother for failing to send the priceless journals via registered mail, Henry "inhaled" her father's paragraphs, written in two slender journals every day for six months in late 1939 through May 1940.

"He paints these wonderful images of icebergs like city buildings," she said. "They were amazing and read like a film, with adventure and suspense, from the perspective of someone at the lowest level job — cleaning, sweeping, cutting potatoes and serving officers."

She points to one of her favorite excerpts: "Seamen of yester year often told me that in the old days they had wooden ships and iron men and that today they have paper men and iron ships. I had taken it as a joke, but after last night on the USS Bear, I was convinced that they were right. Everyone lost his food. Even I lost mine."

The journals, carefully transcribed by Henry, who graduated from John Marshall High School in Rochester and works as a leadership consultant outside Denver, have "given me momentum for the 15 years of research I've been doing," she said.

That research took her to Antarctica in 2012 and to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. She descended to the museum's basement to touch some of the preserved Adelie penguins that George Gibbs captured on his Antarctic trek. She's working on a book and play about her father's extraordinary life.

George Washington Gibbs Jr. was born in Jacksonville, Fla., in 1916 and joined the Navy at 18 in Macon, Ga. Escaping southern racism was among the reasons he enlisted, his daughter said.

After sailing across some of the earth's most wicked seas, they arrived at an Antarctic exploration camp called Little America III on Jan. 14, 1940.

"When the [USS] Bear came up close enough to the ice for me to get ashore, I was the first man aboard the ship to set foot in Little America and help tie her lines deep in the snow," Gibbs wrote in his journal. "I met Admiral Byrd. He shook my hand and welcomed me to Little America and for being the first Negro to set foot in Little America."

A few days later, Gibbs volunteered to climb in a boat and row through thick fog to catch the penguins for the Smithsonian and zoology researchers back home.

"My father almost died catching those penguins," his daughter said. "The radio didn't work."

The wail of the ship's horn helped them find their way. Back on board, Gibbs was among several black sailors, but the first to set foot on Antarctica. Black men had sailed to the Antarctic on whaling ships, including Philadelphia's Peter Harvey abroad a sloop named Hero in 1820. Black seal hunters landed on the islands near Antarctica and worked at nearby whaling stations.

His journals reflect racial harmony on the Bear, although "there are two naval officers aboard … who at times make this cruise very hard for me."

Life grew only harder when the U.S. entered World War II within two years of his historic landing. Gibbs served as a gunner in the South Pacific aboard the USS Atlanta, which was destroyed off Guadalcanal — killing nearly one-third of the crew.

After 24 years in the Navy, Gibbs retired in 1959 and moved to Minnesota. After Antarctica, the Floridian "certainly wasn't going to mind" the cold weather, his daughter said. He earned an education degree at the University of Minnesota, and later joined the personnel department at IBM in Rochester for 18 years before launching his own employment agency.

Active in the NAACP, Gibbs helped knock down a racial barrier in 1974 when Rochester's Elks Club balked at allowing a black member. Complaints were filed, liquor licenses were pulled and Gibbs gained membership.

"He was always upbeat, positive and inspirational," his daughter said. "He treated strangers like his best friend."

His widow, Joyce, spent 11 years as a substitute teacher at Gibbs Elementary School until she retired a few years ago at age 80. Their daughter, meanwhile, is looking for student researchers to help write and edit her father's story (you can e-mail her at lrh@beingandliving.com).