The Ronne Family

OBITUARIES

The Washington Post, June 18, 2009

reproduced in the San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribute, Seattle, Boston, etc.

The Wall Street Journal, June 20, 2009

Time Magazine, July 6, 2009

ABC News TV:  "This Week with George Stephanopolous", June 21, 2009

Associated Press

Antarctic Sun

Tributes

Karen Ronne Tupek's Eulogy

Edith 'Jackie' Ronne 1919-2009

First U.S. Woman on Antarctica

Marylander Found Beauty, Hardship, Fame on '40s Expedition

PHOTOS

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Edith "Jackie" Ronne, who died Sunday, was photographed in an ice cave on a return trip to Antarctica in 1971. (Family Photo)

Ronne in 1946, before the expedition her husband led to Antarctica. She found the continent beautiful and the trip stressful. (Family Photo)

From her husband's antarctic expedition in 1947 and 1948, Edith "Jackie" Ronne and her husband, Finn Ronne.

By Patricia Sullivan

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 18, 2009

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/17/AR2009061703502.html

Ronne, a Baltimore native with a degree in history from George Washington University, was the trip's recorder-historian. She also assisted the seismologist, who measured the first earthquake recorded in Antarctica and kept track of the tides. She filed dispatches, often under her husband's name, for the news alliance and the New York Times, which later described her as "young and winsome."

The continent's natural beauty took her by surprise. "The approach to the Continent through light pack ice was magnificent. I was totally in awe of where I was going and I anticipated a great adventure," she wrote in the book "Antarctica's First Lady" (2004).

She kept a daily diary in which she recorded a range of experiences, including the difficulties of living in a 12-foot-square hut that was also the expedition's base and the dangers that beset the men. H.C. Peterson, a physicist, fell 110 feet down a crevasse and hung, upside down, for 12 hours until he was rescued. ("It was like pulling a tooth from a socket," one of his colleagues said.) Ship's crew member Nelson McClary stepped backward off a 60-foot cliff and plunged through thin ice. He later broke his collarbone in a sledding accident. U.S. Air Force Lt. James J. Adams slipped into his plane's spinning propeller, which gashed his head through his thick fur cap. Adams flew the plane back to the main base for first aid.

The adventure was also plagued by interpersonal difficulties, brought on by isolation, boredom and close quarters. Small disagreements became major disputes. Factions formed. Because their husbands were at odds, the two women stopped speaking, out of loyalty to their spouses.

Even before it started, the last major private expedition to Antarctica ran into trouble. Admiral Richard E. Byrd, a neighbor and friend for whom Capt. Ronne had worked, urged him to join forces. But Capt. Ronne refused. Byrd's subsequent opposition to the Ronne expedition tamped down the donations upon which explorers depended.

Nevertheless, the trip was a scientific success. The group explored more than 250,000 square miles of the continent, including both coasts of the Antarctic Peninsula and the Weddell Sea's southern margin. They traveled by land and by air, setting down at 86 points to make celestial observations.

"Perhaps most important," National Geographic reported in 1993, "the explorers at East Base had finally proved Antarctica was all one continent, laying to rest the theory that a frozen sea divided it."

Capt. Ronne named newly discovered territory Edith Ronne Land for his wife. Later, at her request, the name was changed to the Ronne Ice Shelf, to match the name of the Ross Ice Shelf and to honor her husband and his father, a member of the Roald Amundsen expedition that reached the South Pole in 1911.

When they finally sailed home, however, Jackie Ronne said, "I will never, never go back to the Antarctic." The unexpected difficulties of the trip so depressed her that she didn't re-read her diary until 1995.

"I didn't want to be reminded of the pain," she told The Washington Post.

She did return to Antarctica, drawn by the beauty of the landscape. She was on the first tourist trip to the continent in 1957, the International Geophysical Year. In 1971, she and her husband were guests of the Navy and flew to the South Pole. They were the first married couple, and she was the seventh woman, at the pole.

Her husband died in 1980. Her survivors include a daughter, Karen Ronne Tupek of Bethesda, and two grandchildren.

Ronne lectured widely about her long-ago adventures and became a popular speaker aboard cruise ships. A documentary film, "First Woman on the Ice," was made about her. She became president of the Society of Women Geographers and was a member of the Explorers Club and the American Polar Society, which honored her for her adventures.

In 1995, Ronne finally revisited the expedition's base, six years after it was designated a historic monument under the Antarctic Treaty. The hut was still there but nothing else. When she left for the last time, she said, she firmly closed the door.

From D.C. to Antarctica

Edith "Jackie" Ronne grew up "scrubbing the steps" of her Baltimore home, her daughter said, and knew one thing -- she wanted a life different from what she saw. She spent a couple of years at a college in Ohio, then moved to Washington, living with her aunt and uncle in Chevy Chase while going to George Washington University.

Fast forward a few years, and she's married to a man 20 years her senior, a veteran polar explorer who's talked her into accompanying him and his expedition to Antarctica. Her life story and obituary is in the Washington Post today. Here's a terrific documentary about her in two parts that Skeeter and Tracy Jarvis produced, with some funding from the Maryland Committee for the Humanities.

Time Magazine:  July 6, 2009  http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1907152,00.html

Milestones:

In 1947, Edith Ronne, 89, became the first U.S. woman to set foot in Antarctica. Her Norwegian-born husband Finn, a former U.S. Navy captain, asked her to join the expedition so that Edith--who had better English skills--could pen his newspaper dispatches.

Wall Street Journal:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124546920980433709.html 
 

• REMEMBRANCES
• JUNE 20, 2009

Edith Ronne 1919-2009

Last-Minute Whim Began a Long Antarctic Stay for First Known U.S. Woman on the Continent

By STEPHEN MILLER

A rare female in a formerly all-male bastion, Edith Ronne was the first known American woman to set foot in Antarctica and one of two women who were the first to spend the winter on the southernmost continent.

Ms. Ronne, who died Sunday at 89, ended up in Antarctica more or less by accident, when her husband, Antarctic explorer Finn Ronne, insisted at the last minute that she accompany his 1947-48 mapping expedition to help keep written records. Since the Norway-born Mr. Ronne's English was sketchy, she ended up writing dispatches about the expedition's progress that appeared under his byline in a number of newspapers.

"I was in love with him," Ms. Ronne told the Washington Post in 1995. "I would have done anything to support the expedition. ...I would have gone to the moon. It was the moon."

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Ronne Family

Edith Ronne, with a model of a dogsled her husband designed, became one of the first two women to spend the winter in Antarctica in 1947-48.

The men on the expedition, some of whom were volunteers, also had misgivings. In part to even out the sex ratio, another woman, Jennie Darlington, the wife of the expedition's chief pilot, agreed to come along.

The summons to adventure had come at such short notice that all Ms. Ronne had by way of luggage was some cocktail dresses and nylons. After stopping in Punta Arenas, Chile, for supplies, the party disembarked at Stonington Island in Antarctica, where they built a base just ahead of winter. From there, the Ronne expedition conducted aerial mapping sorties and geological investigations that included detecting the first known Antarctic earthquakes.

When winter closed in with blinding blizzards and pack ice that prevented contact with the outside world, life got harder. The Ronnes lived in a 12-foot-square hut separated from the main quarters by a tunnel, affording them a bit of privacy. Ms. Ronne occupied herself writing up scientific results and skiing to visit penguin rookeries.

"It's one of those adventures you wouldn't miss for a million dollars and you wouldn't do again for less than a million," she told the Christian Science Monitor after disembarking in New York on her return in April 1948.

Antarctic Sun:  http://antarcticsun.usap.gov/features/contenthandler.cfm?id=1808

Photo Courtesy: U.S. Navy

RIP Edith 'Jackie' Ronne

First Lady of Antarctica passes away at age 89

Posted June 19, 2009

Antarctica’s First Lady, Edith “Jackie” Ronne, wife of the famed polar explorer Finn Ronne and the first American woman to visit the continent in the 1940s, has passed away. She was 89. Ronne, along with Canadian Jennie Darlington, became the first woman to winter-over in Antarctica from 1947-48. In 2004, she published a book about her experiences, Antarctica’s First Lady. The photo above was taken during a 1971 trip to South Pole. Ronne is holding a Society of Woman Geographers flag.

San Francisco Chronicle:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/19/BA44189FHA.DTL
 

Tributes:  http://www.tributes.com/show/Edith-Ronne-86156324

Edith "Jackie" Ronne

Last-Minute Whim Began a Long Antarctic Stay for First Known U.S. Woman on the Continent

The following article courtesy of The Wall Street Journal

By STEPHEN MILLER

A rare female in a formerly all-male bastion, Edith Ronne was the first known American woman to set foot in Antarctica and one of two women who were the first to spend the winter on the southernmost continent.

Ms. Ronne, who died Sunday at 89, ended up in Antarctica more or less by accident, when her husband, Antarctic explorer Finn Ronne, insisted at the last minute that she accompany his 1947-48 mapping expedition to help keep written records. Since the Norway-born Mr. Ronne's English was sketchy, she ended up writing dispatches about the expedition's progress that appeared under his byline in a number of newspapers.

"I was in love with him," Ms. Ronne told the Washington Post in 1995. "I would have done anything to support the expedition. ...I would have gone to the moon. It was the moon."

The men on the expedition, some of whom were volunteers, also had misgivings. In part to even out the sex ratio, another woman, Jennie Darlington, the wife of the expedition's chief pilot, agreed to come along.

The summons to adventure had come at such short notice that all Ms. Ronne had by way of luggage was some cocktail dresses and nylons. After stopping in Punta Arenas, Chile, for supplies, the party disembarked at Stonington Island in Antarctica, where they built a base just ahead of winter. From there, the Ronne expedition conducted aerial mapping sorties and geological investigations that included detecting the first known Antarctic earthquakes.

When winter closed in with blinding blizzards and pack ice that prevented contact with the outside world, life got harder. The Ronnes lived in a 12-foot-square hut separated from the main quarters by a tunnel, affording them a bit of privacy. Ms. Ronne occupied herself writing up scientific results and skiing to visit penguin rookeries.

"It's one of those adventures you wouldn't miss for a million dollars and you wouldn't do again for less than a million," she told the Christian Science Monitor after disembarking in New York on her return in April 1948.

Associated Press article below

BETHESDA, Md. - Edith "Jackie" Ronne, who became the first U.S. woman to set foot on Antarctica when she accompanied her explorer husband there in 1947, died Sunday. She was 89.

Ronne died of cancer and Alzheimer's disease at a Bethesda nursing home, her daughter, Karen Ronne Tupek said.

The Baltimore native was married to Finn Ronne, who persuaded her to accompany him on the expedition.

Finn Ronne, a Norwegian-born former U.S. Navy captain who died in 1980, insisted he didn't have the language skills to write dispatches for the North American Newspaper Alliance, one of the trip's sponsors. Jackie Ronne wrote the dispatches for him. She later lectured on cruises to the South Pole and wrote the book "Antarctica's First Lady" in 2004. She wrote that the continent's natural beauty took her by surprise.

ABC NEWS "This Week with George Stephanopolous"

Eulogy

Edith Maslin “Jackie” Ronne

By Karen Ronne Tupek

My mother was a great woman, not only because she a most devoted and loving mother, but also because she was the First Lady of the Antarctic. 

First Lady of the Antarctic - That title has many components, as she was first and foremost, a lady, with many charms - as well as social graces and a vivid personality - that have allowed her to sparkle across the globe, from the places of common men to the palaces of royalty.  But secondly, she was a first, a pioneer.  As the first American woman to set foot on the Antarctic continent, she was also the first woman in the world to be a working member of an Antarctic expedition and to winter-over on the frozen continent.  She firmly has her place in Antarctic history. 

As a result, her pioneering achievement accorded her a rare honor for a woman of non-royal birth: Antarctica’s Ronne Ice Shelf, the world’s second largest, is named for her.

Mom was born and raised amidst the marbled front steps of Baltimore as Edith Anna (she hated that name) Maslin.  She also hated scrubbing those marble steps.  Her parents had modest means, as her father worked for the B & O Railroad.  She longed for a different life, and she certainly had one. 

When Mom, having skipped two grades, graduated from Baltimore’s Eastern High School at the tender age of 16, she kissed Baltimore “good-bye” with a “farewell” “good riddance” “aurevoire” “adios” “sayonara” and “I’m outta here”.  She hated Baltimore!  She came to Washington to live with her well-educated aunt and uncle, and was exposed to a wider view of life.  She flourished while living with them in Chevy Chase.  Since she valued education, “Auntie” sent my mother to Wooster College in Ohio for two years.  While there, she really tried hard to major in boys.  But when the college wouldn’t award that degree, she transferred to George Washington University here in Washington, and eventually joined Phi Mu sorority.  It was there that she went from being “Edith” to Jackie.

Mom got the nickname of “Jackie,” taken from her father’s middle name of Jackson, at Camp Mayflather, a Girl Scout camp in Virginia.  It was long forgotten until she encountered a former scout friend on her first day at GW.  Introduced around campus with her old Girl Scout moniker, the nickname “Jackie” stuck with her ever-widening social group.  Everyone thought it suited her better.

She graduated from GW at the young age of 20 with a degree in history, which is ironic, since she ended up making some history of her own in the Antarctic.

She worked briefly for the National Geographic Society, then the State Department, where she befriended, among others, my Godmother, and that changed her life.

She met my Norwegian father, Finn Ronne, on a blind date arranged by my Godmother, Bettie Earle Heckmann.  Bettie paired them up, despite a 20-year age difference, because they both skied.  Now, my father had already ski-jumped off of every small mountain in Norway, skied down glaciers and across miles of snowfields, and guided sledges behind dog teams in the Antarctic.  And my mother’s skiing consisted of sliding down the hill behind the Shoreham Hotel into Rock Creek Park.  Their skiing conversation was over in a matter of minutes, but fortunately they found more things in common.  Mom enjoyed his maturity, nationality, "charming" Norwegian accent, and stories of exploration.  He had charisma.  My father proposed before Christmas of 1943 and they were married on March 18, 1944.

My father was very athletic, and indeed they went to Stowe, Vermont, to ski on their honeymoon.  Mom began to get an idea of what was coming – lots more snow. 

Shortly after their marriage in March of 1944, my father planned his own private expedition to the Antarctic, his third over-wintering experience, to conduct scientific investigations and to discover and chart new lands.  The Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition finally got going after the end of WW-II and departed the end of 1946.  When my father needed her assistance, he gradually persuaded Mom to go along on the expedition, rather than assist from afar in Washington.  As she sailed further and further south to help with last minute preparations, and with correspondence, since English was his second language, she was also grabbing more and more last minute supplies as her fate was becoming clearer and clearer.  She wrote her Aunt of the possibility.  Her horrified aunt cautioned in the last paragraph of her last letter attempting to dissuade Mom from going, “And don’t forget, the cold will ruin your complexion.”  So off she went, having started the journey with only a cocktail dress, nylon stockings, and high-heeled shoes, – to become a pioneer of women in the Antarctic.

Mom handled the daily logs of the expedition, wrote newspaper articles for the North American Newspaper Alliance, kept the official expedition diary, and assisted in many scientific experiments.

The experience made her life and opened doors she never imaged.  Upon her return in 1948, she was a bit of a world celebrity and toured the U.S. and Europe on a lecture tour, often pinch-hitting for my father.  Articles, TV appearances, and honors followed.  She received a special Congressional Medal for American Antarctic Exploration.  Over the years, she helped write and edit my father’s four books and wrote numerous articles for the annual editions of the various encyclopedias, as well as many articles for the North American newspaper Alliance.

Mom went on the very first tourist cruise, by the Argentines, to the Antarctic in 1957, and was later flown by the Navy, along with my father, to the South Pole in 1971, the first couple to be there, to commemorate Amundsen’s 60^th anniversary of attaining the South Pole.  She was the seventh woman to stand at the South Pole.

Mom served for three years as international president of the Society of Woman Geographers.  Shortly after they started to admit women, Mom became a fellow of the Explorer’s Club.  In addition to SWG and the Explorer’s Club, she was an active member of the Washington Chapter of the National Society of Arts and Letters, and ARCS.  She also had a special circle of friends with whom she partied and played lots of bridge. 

But, she was an explorer at heart.  She always had the travel bug.  In fact, travel has been a major theme of her life.   We skied in Aspen, sailed on the Chesapeake Bay, and traveled twice all over Europe, spending much time in my father’s homeland of Norway.  One summer, in 1962, we took a unique voyage to the Arctic, far north of Norway, ending up at Spitzbergen, even pushing back the Iron Curtain there with a landmark “cold war” visit to a Russian Base.  Ann Becker, who is here tonight, was with us on that expedition.  During and after college, she and I together took trips to the western National Parks, Spain, and the Greek Isles.

Since my father’s death in 1980, Mom forged trails to New Zealand, Australia, Alaska, and Western Canada.  In 1987, Mom asserted her independence and did something that my father always wanted to do, but never did: she bought a condo in Boca Raton, Florida.  It became her refuge and has become our family's second home.

In later years, Mom became a “celebrity” lecturer on two cruise ships to the Antarctic, including one expedition in 1995, when she returned to her former Antarctica base at Stonington Island.  Another year, we all went along, enabling our whole family to visit the continent of our heritage.  In her lifetime, she made 16 trips to Antarctica.

I was most fortunate to have her as my mother all these years.  She was the one to sit up late at night with me when I was sick, wake me up early in the morning for school with breakfast on the table, chauffeur me to every sort of activity imaginable, attend every one of my school performances, and talk late into the night about school dances or my latest crushes on boys.   And during college, she sent me the best “care packages”; they saved the day!

She was always loving, nurturing, even-tempered, and accepting of me and everything I’ve done.  Most every child says their mother was the best, but I’ll say that she was very special because she was always there, always available as a mother.  She was truly my best friend.

As a grandmother, she was not only been a loyal babysitter to help out Al and me, but she has been a constant stabilizing support to her pride and joys, grandson Michael and granddaughter Jackie, who is obviously named after her.  She enjoyed being a part of their lives – attending all their sporting and creative events as well as every celebration.  She has ensured that they get the best education possible. 

Mom was a loyal friend and went out of her way to do favors for other people.  She got involved in people’s lives in creative and meaningful ways.  Everyone comments to me about how wonderfully warm, open, and especially charming my mother was.  She could just as easily converse with a common man on the street as with the King of Norway.  She was easy to talk to and confide in, and it was always so interesting to hear her stories.  Even stories I’d heard a million times were fun to hear again, because of the enthusiastic way in which she told them.  

And tell them, she did.  She never really stopped lecturing from the time she first left the Antarctic.  In preparation for our going to the Antarctic on the Explorer in 1995, I wanted to read her diaries from the Ronne expedition.  She had not wanted to face them and relive that challenging and stressful adventure.  But, she took a peek at them and realized that they made a fascinating story.  So, in 2004, she finally published her memoires in a book titled, most appropriately, “Antarctic’s First Lady.”   

In recent years, she was recognized with an Outstanding Achievement award from the Society of Woman Geographers, received a special Achievement Award from Columbian College of George Washington University and dedicated the Polar Section of the National Naval Museum.  To top it off, Mom was honored by the American Geographical Society.  She was asked to sign her name over the Ronne Ice Shelf on their historic Flyer’s and Explorer’s Globe, joining signatures ranging from Amelia Earhart, Charles Lindbergh, John Glenn and Neil Armstrong, whom we met that night, to Sir Edmund Hillary, a family friend, and Roald Amundsen, discoverer of the South Pole.  

My mother marveled at all of her incredible experiences.  She felt privileged to have been exposed to such a rich and stimulating life that came from her year in the Antarctic.  She never envisioned that she would be celebrated upon her death, but so she has been.  In the last week, her story has been literally all over the world, one last time – in newspapers in far-flung parts of the world and on national TV.  I am so glad that so many people came to know about this woman.  I’m grateful that so many people are here tonight to share in this celebration of her and recognize her lasting legacy.  She was a wonderful and beloved person.  All of our lives have been enriched by this woman – my mother – Jackie Ronne.