JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — This story was originally published by The Florida Times-Union.
Robert Johnson, who as a teenager traveled to Antarctica on a thick-hulled wooden ship with Adm. Richard Byrd, died Sunday in Jacksonville. He was 102.
He was the last survivor of any of Byrd’s pre-World War II polar journeys, which caught the public imagination and made the explorer a much-decorated national hero.
His death was confirmed by Stan Jordan, a family friend and former state representative and Duval County School Board chairman.
“What a great American,” said Jordan, who had hosted Mr. Johnson’s 102nd birthday celebration at his restaurant, Beach Diner, in Atlantic Beach. “He was a piece of Naval history.”
Robert Johnson at 100: Polar adventurer marks 100th birthday, 81 years after his first expedition to Antarctica
At 19, Mr. Johnson was the youngest member of Byrd’s 1939 expedition to Antarctica aboard the USS Bear, a 19th-century dual steam-powered and sailing ship.
He went back with Byrd in 1946 for Operation Highjump, during which he parachuted onto the polar ice, which he later said seemed to him the quietest place on Earth. In a steel-hulled icebreaker, he also joined another U.S. Navy expedition to Antarctica, Operation Windmill, in 1948.
"Everything we did in that ice down there was exciting because it was never the same thing twice, trying to explore and going in and out of these inlets," Mr. Johnson said in a 2011 Times-Union interview. "I can remember five times (in his first expedition) when I didn't know if I was going to get out of the ice."
The son of a chief warrant officer in San Diego, Mr. Johnson was a Sea Scout who trained on sailing ships as a teen. The summer he turned 16, he was one of the Sea Scouts aboard the Pacific Queen, a 300-foot square-rigger, for a 15-day cruise. After the ship was becalmed, that expedition turned into one of 67 days, with its crew living on severe rations as rescuers frantically searched for the ship.
Two years later he joined the Navy, serving on a battleship before he volunteered for Byrd’s 1939 expedition. His experience sailing helped him land one of the coveted positions.
Mr. Johnson was in the Navy from 1937 to 1956, retiring from Naval Station Mayport as a chief bosun’s mate. He then worked for the Postal Service until 1990. After 66 years of marriage, his wife Ruth Johnson died of cancer in 2003. He met his wife, Mildred, who survives him, at a cancer survivors’ group after her husband’s death.
At his home in East Arlington, there was a place of honor reserved for Polar Penguin Pete, a penguin Johnson took with him after one expedition and then had stuffed. It was a reminder of his journeys to the bottom of the Earth.
“That’s quite a place,” he said at his 100th birthday party. “It’s different from anything else, that’s for sure. It is a wonderful place down there.”
On Monday morning, Jordan said funeral arrangements were still being made.
