Brian Shoemaker

Brian was born on the 4th of July, 1937, and hence is a real Yankee Doodle Dandy. His dad was a mining engineer and moved all over the United States and Canada, but Brian claims Bishop, Calif., as home, since he graduated from high school there. He attended the University of California graduating in 1959 with a degree in Geography—and the Selective Service breathing down his neck, threatening to draft him as a boot into the armed forces.

Accepting the inevitable, Brian enlisted into the Navy and, shortly after boot camp, extended his terms of service to attend flight school. After earning his wings, he was assigned to a helicopter squadron in Norfolk, Va. Toward the end of this tour he again extended his terms of service and was assigned to VX-6, the Antarctic Support Squadron. This decision proved to be a momentous one that changed his life.

Circa 1968

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Brian Shoemaker

Beginning in 1966, Brian flew helicopters in support of the United States Antarctic Research Program. It was so much to his liking that he volunteered to winter-over at the McMurdo Station in 1967. During this time, he flew missions throughout the winter in the dark; however, the practice was considered so risky that it was cancelled. Toward the end of that winter, Brian broke his ankle and, at the end of the season, was flown out to have it repaired at Tripler Hospital in Hawaii. His Christchurch girlfriend, Johanne, followed him there, and they were married in the historic Pearl Harbor Chapel that had miraculously survived the Japanese attack in 1941.

After a squadron tour in Key West, Fla., Brian was assigned to the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., to take a Masters Degree in Oceanography. He decided to do research in the Arctic Ocean for his thesis and so traveled to the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory in Barrow, Alaska. From there he flew out to Ice Station T-3 at 88 Degrees North. T-3 (also named Fletcher’s Ice Island) was a tabular iceberg, eight miles long, with a runway (or “skyway”) and a scientific station located on it. It had drifted around the Arctic Ocean for a number of years and proved to be a superb scientific platform. Brian conducted acoustic research there for his Master’s Degree in Oceanography.

After several years back in the fleet, Brian was telephoned by the Office of Naval Research and asked if he would like to be the Commanding Officer of the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory (NARL). Brian accepted on the condition that his family could move to Barrow, Alaska with him. The Navy agreed, and his wife Johanne and their two children moved with him.

This was the heyday of national research in the Arctic. Eight ice stations were constructed as platforms for scientific experiments. Operation AIDJEX (a research program that covered the entire Beaufort Basin) was initiated. After all this research was launched and running smoothly, Brian was again transferred back to the “regular Navy,” where he became the Commanding Officer of several fleet helicopter squadrons.

From 1982 to 1985, Brian was again called back to polar duty when he was appointed Commander of the Naval Support Force Antarctica. Basically, this job was to provide the logistic support for the U.S. Antarctic research programs in the Antarctic. In this position, he directed Navy and Air Force flying squadrons, three Coast Guard Icebreakers and two USNS supply vessels for three years, in support of National Science Programs in Antarctica.

After retirement from the Navy in 1988, Brian attended the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge University, England, for a year where he was awarded a master of Science in Polar Affairs. Afterward he spent 10 years sailing with tourist groups on Russian icebreakers from South America to the Antarctic Peninsula—51 round trips across the Drake Passage.

Concurrent with the tourist business Brian, with the help of Charlotte Sinclaire and Della Robinson, resurrected the foundering American Polar Society in the early 1990s and revived and upgraded The Polar Times, a process that continues to this day with Charlotte still at the helm as production editor.