Robert E. Peary High School
Flag and Sledge Ceremony
November 23, 1964
and Article by Commander Edward Peary Stafford
The "North Pole" flag was flown from the mizzen gaff of the Roosevelt when
Commander Peary entered the harbor at Sydney, Nova Scotia on September 21,
1909, and when the ship entered New York the same year. Matthew Henson sewed
NORTH POLE on a white diagonal strip on both sides of the Stars and Stripes.
The flag was given to the students and staff of Robert E. Peary High School
by Mrs. Marie Peary Stafford and Robert E. Peary, Jr., daughter and son of
Admiral and Mrs. Peary.
Upon Admiral Peary's return from the North Pole, the sledge was unloaded from
the Roosevelt and placed on Eagle Island, in Casco, Maine. Four similar sledges
were on display in New York, Maine, Massachusetts, and Washington, DC.
In photos below: Commander Edward Peary Stafford, Dr. Dunn, Mike Rasch (1965),
Art Ridgeway (1966), Mr. James, Christine Gilbertson, and King.
National Geographic Magazine (1965)
Peary's Sledge: Prized Gift for a Proud School
By Commander Edward Peary Stafford
All summer, every year while I was growing up, the sledge stood on the front
porch of our island cottage. Its uprights slanted above the window sills and
seemed to look out at the distant islands and the sea horizon. The handles of
the sledge were worn smooth at the top by a strong fur-gloved hand -- holding,
twisting, shoving -- while the other hand cracked a rawjide whip at the heels
of the dogs. The long oak runner, shod with iron, stretched for eight feet
along the floor and then rounded strongly up. Rawhide bound the cross boards
to the runners and held the sledge together so that it was not stiff or rigid
but lithe and flexible.
Long before we were old enough to know why it was made that way or by whom, or
where it had been, my brother and I were a little in awe of the sledge. Like
so many other things on that Maine island, it seemed to be trying to tell us
something. Neither of us had really known our grandfather, the Admiral. He
was gone before I was two, and six months before my brother was even born. And
yet, in a very real way, we did know him. We came to know him from our mother
who was his daughter, from our grandmother Peary who was like a second mother,
and from this Eagle Island which he had so loved and which bore, everywhere,
the mark of his hand, the print of his personality.
Only Robert E. Peary would have perched the big cottage high on a pointed cliff
like the bridge of a great ship. Only he would have designed the massive
chimney with its double mantel and three fireplaces, which came down through
the middle of the living room like a colossal spike, mailing the cottage to
its cliff. No other man would have cut the wooded paths yards longer and
crooked as snakes to spare promising young trees; no other would have cut
wrecked boats in half, set them on end and turned their seats so that at
vantage points around the island a person could sit in comfort in any weather
and watch the surge of the sea and the surf booming on the rocks.
Although the great old Admiral had been long gone, his warm, aggressive spirit
was with us every summer on the island -- and never stronger than there on the
front porch where stood the sledge he had designed and built and driven across
the frozen Arctic Ocean to the Pole. As we grew older we learned more about
the sledge. We learned that our grandfather had taken the time-tested Eskimo
type of sledge and, using his ability as a civil engineer, had redesigned it,
keeping its strength and flexibility but reducing its weight from 125 pounds
to 40. We learned that this kind of sledge when pulled by eight dogs harnessed
fanwise could carry seven hundred pounds in addition to its own weight. But
more important than materials or pounds, we came to appreciate more than ever
the kind of man it took to create this thing of strength and grace and
efficiency -- the kind of man who, on his seventh try, when he was 53 years
old, with eight toes long ago frozen and amputated, walked behind this sledge
four hundred miles over the sea ice to the Pole and four hundred miles back.
In our minds the sledge symbolized the man.
Later, when I was grown and married, with children of my own growing up, it
was a sad thing to see the great old sledge lashed to the ceiling beams of my
mother's garage, stored away above musty crates of old letters and newspapers.
It was sad because all its glory and meaning seemed wasted. How could it ever
mean to anyone again what it had meant to my brother and me on the sunny front
porch of the cottage on the island cliffs? For those half-dozen years,
gathering dust in the dim New England garage, the sledge was only a sterile
relic of a man long dead.
But now Admiral Peary's sledge has found a home. It stands again in the sunlight,
clean and proud, and perhaps even more useful than when, 56 years ago, heavily
laden behind its straining dogs, it crunched over the pressure ridges and ice
floes of the polar sea. Now it stands in Robert E. Peary High School at
Rockville, Maryland -- not for just boys to admire, but for successive thousands
of boys and girls.
Over the years, as classes come and go, students may appreciate Peary's
accomplishments and absorb some little part of the aggressive, determined
spirit of the man whose mind and urgent need created this sledge.
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