This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Oct. 12, 2011 - For the first time, the venerable international Explorers Club will present its prestigious Lowell Thomas awards in St. Louis at a gala dinner Oct. 15. The awards, established in honor of the journalist and broadcaster who made Lawrence of Arabia famous, have been given in New York since their establishment in 1980.
The St. Louis chapter of the Explorers Club, working closely with St. Louis Academy of Science, is sponsoring the event. Titled "Exploring the World's Greatest Mysteries," the festivities will take place from October 14-16. The awards dinner and a scientific symposium are open to the public.
"Considering the nearby discovery of Cahokia Mounds and St. Louis' role as home base for the Lewis and Clark expedition, the city is a fitting location for our first awards dinner outside of New York," said Lorie Karnath, president of the Explorers Club.
Members of the Explorers Club, founded in 1904 by illustrious explorers of the time, have accomplished a number of firsts. Among them are firsts to both north and south poles, first to the summit of Mount Everest, and first to the surface of the moon.
Why was St. Louis chosen for the first out-of-New York awards dinner? The St. Louis chapter of the Explorers Club is quite active on the national as well as local levels, explains Benjamin Hulsey, chairman of both that group and the Academy of Science. He, for example, is co-chair of the national legal committee. The organization has only 19 chapters in the United States and seven internationally.
St. Louis Explorers Have Diverse Interests
To become members, applicants must have done significant fieldwork or exploration in the course of their travels.
Hulsey works with the NASA Mars project in the Mojave and California deserts. On the supposition that caves will provide necessary shelter if we ever get to Mars, his project maps cave entrances using thermographic imaging.
Thermographic imaging measures -- and then displays -- the infrared radiation that all living and non-living objects give off. Since there is a temperature gradient at the mouths of caves, NASA could use this technique to distinguish caves from shadows. He also is a member of a caving group that collects microorganisms from caves. The group collaborates with a biologist in Arizona, who screens their collections for microorganisms that might live in the extreme climatic conditions of Mars.
Mary Eileen Burke, vice-chair of the St. Louis Explorers Club and executive director of the Academy of Science, specializes in outreach. She directs programs that connect science to the community, both adults and children -- 60,000 in grades K-12. Recently she led a group of 80 middle-school students through Yellowstone and Grand Teton parks.
"St. Louis has long been a city filled with explorers," Burke said. "Not only in the traditional sense of exploration -- as the Gateway to the West or the vision of transatlantic flight via the Spirit of St. Louis -- but through the exploration of science and engineering. James Eads, Henry Shaw and the founders of the Academy of Science of St. Louis recognized that exploration of medicinal plants, climate data or chemical compounds could open new worlds. It is this history of scientific exploration at both the macro and micro level that enticed me to join the Explorers Club."
Gretchen Freund uses a camera in her explorations. About 12 years ago, she began photographing the orca pod in Peninsula Valdes, Argentina. This pod of these most dangerous ocean predators come to the peninsula each spring to prey upon the baby seals as they frolic in the water. One year she met Ingrid Visser, a prominent orca biologist, who recognized the value of Freund's photography. Together they established Punta Norte Orca Research to use photos to identify this pod. Photo-identification is possible because each orca's fin and saddle patch are unique. Thus they can keep a record of which animals return each year, which are new and which have disappeared.
Because of her work in South America, Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans asked Freund to do the same kind of study in the Arctic. For the past three years she has spent summers there documenting the pod to find what effect diminishing ice has on the orcas, the narwhals, belugas and other whales. Freund emphasizes that she is an amateur helping scientists, but her photos have found their way into many scientific publications.
Dr. Sherman Silber, another member of the St. Louis Explorers chapter, is known as a world expert on human fertility and has an extremely active medical practice. But 40 years ago, when he was with the U.S. Public Health Service, he became interested in what happens when so-called primitive cultures are juxtaposed with Western culture. At that time he was in the far north working with Aleuts, Eskimos and Inuit Indians. He found a systemic problem with alcoholism. When he has worked with Hadzi bushmen in Africa or Australian aborigines, he also documented alcohol abuse. These groups are not genetically related, but all showed the same syndrome when their culture met Western culture.
When the far north natives were out on the ice, living as their grandfathers did, they were happy and did not abuse alcohol. But when they came back to their village, they turned on the TV, got out a beer, and got drunk. They said they were happiest living the way their grandparents lived -- but they chose the "comfortable" lifestyle. "People will always give up joy for comfort," he said.
Winners of 2011 Lowell Thomas Awards
During the upcoming weekend, St. Louis Explorers will meet the distinguished recipients of the 2011 Lowell Thomas awards. Award winners will give presentations at the symposium on October 14. Robert Archibald, president of the Missouri Historical Society, will moderate.
The honorees represent a wide range of disciplines:
- Edmundo R. Edwards, Patricia Vargas Casanova, Claudio P. Cristino study the culture of Eastern Polynesia, and the enigmatic moai -- human figures carved from rocks -- that stand on the shores of Easter Island.
- Albert Yu-Min Lin is a research scientist attempting to find the tomb of Genghis Khan and protect a sacred region of Mongolia.
- Thomas E. Levy has revolutionized the dating of the Biblical land of Edom, pushing the sequence some 500 years earlier than the scholarly consensus -- and brought researchers closer than ever before to testing for the potential existence of "King Solomon's Mines."
- Brent S. Stewart is a senior research scientist praised for studies of the mysterious whale shark and other migratory marine species.
- William C. Stone is one of the world's foremost expeditionary cavers and a proponent of using technology to help explorers survive and thrive as they challenge new frontiers.
- Kenneth R. Wright and Ruth M. Wright are partners whose work on water conservation has brought enduring benefits to the environment, water resources, and communities in both North and South America.
Several of the honorees shared some thoughts about receiving this award.
Edmundo Edwards wrote, "As I live in the most isolated place on earth (our closest neighbor is Pitcairn Island, home of the descendants of HMS Bounty mutineers, 2,000 miles westward, population 50) it is very exhilarating to receive such a unexpected honor and an invitation to visit again the USA." He wrote further, "Through my travels I have learned that most of us share that yearning to learn more about the world in which we live, not just its archaeological past, but also the cultural motivations that led people to become who they are. We are all explorers of a world we still barely know."
His colleague Claudio Cristino, along with Edwards, looks forward to spending time with friend and collaborator Peter Raven.
Albert Lin, whose research is in Mongolia, echoes Edwards as he writes, "With the Lowell Thomas award comes the responsibility to honor the legacy of the past recipients. They have instilled in all of us the desire to seek the unknown, stand at its banks and venture in. I am humbled and incredibly honored to be a part of that group."
Ken Wright of Boulder, Col., praised the choice of St. Louis as the first city to host the awards outside of New York. "The Explorers Club has made an inspired choice by hosting this award named after an esteemed explorer in the hometown of another intrepid explorer, Charles Lindbergh. Ruth and I feel very honored to be included."
Jo Seltzer is a freelance writer with more than 30 years on the research faculty at the Washington University School of Medicine and seven years teaching technical writing at WU's engineering school.