First flown at the South Pole, decades-old flag unveiled in Marysville once again

When Marysville native Gary Brougham spent 15 months at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in the early 1970s, he brought more than just memories of the deep cold.

He brought back a flag.

For a time, that flag that had flown on the bottom of the Earth — where harsh conditions largely kept a team of Americans isolated indoors for extended bouts of time — before it was later dedicated to then-Marysville Mayor Harry Stark, City Council, and residents in 1972 and displayed at the old city museum until it closed in 2000.

Since then, it’s been in storage. But with a boost from the Dream City Preservation Group, it’s on display once again.

“It has two meanings to me,” Brougham said of the flag Monday night. The flag, showing signs of its age and wear, was unveiled newly framed and mounted in the meeting chambers of City Hall, 1255 Delaware Ave., during City Council’s regular meeting.

“It’s for my family and the city of Marysville. My grandfather immigrated from Canada in 1922 and moved to Marysville. Despite the language barrier he got a job as a watchman at the old Morton Salt plant,” Brougham recalled. “Despite my travels, I’ve always felt Marysville was my home city. That’s why I presented the flag 50 years ago, and that’s why I’m here tonight to tell you this means a great deal to me personally. … We’ve been a part of Marysville for so long.”

John Decatur, a Dream City member, recounted the life of the flag, appearing with other group members. Officials thanked them, presenting them each with a Marysville hat and the group with a gavel to honor their work with the flag, as well as other city artifacts once housed in the old museum.

And Brougham presented Mayor Kathy Hayman with a pictorial of his time at the South Pole.

Recalling the other half of the personal meaning of the flag, he directed remarks to Councilman David Barber, who’d also helped arrange Monday’s dedication.

Motioning to the flag nearby from the council dais, Barber said he thought it symbolized two things: Resilience and teamwork.

And it’s a combination, he said, that carried special meaning, especially as the city celebrates its centennial this year, when compared to the experience of Americans at the South Pole.

They’re two things the city needs to move forward.

“Can you imagine that you’re with a group of people you probably didn’t know when you walked in there? They were from (multiple) cultures, different religious backgrounds, different beliefs, different political backgrounds,” Barber said. “These people were cooped up in a small area and couldn’t go anywhere.”

“(Brougham) told me the only way this worked was teamwork, and it didn’t matter what they were, who they were, who they believed in,” he added. “They had to gel as a team to survive. And this flag, I think it shows resilience. If you look at this thing, it’s not had an easy life. ... It’s tattered. It’s torn. It’s stained. It’s faded. But yet, it flies tonight.”

So, what was it like at the South Pole?

According to an Associated Press story about the team at the time of Brougham’s stay, he was one 22 Americans at the station, including eight scientists and 14 Naval servicemen, studying its conditions on a frigid 10,000-foot-high plateau — he with a focus on seismology and its geophysics, which he’d studied at Michigan Technological University.

Soon after, Brougham said he toured the country for survey work, working for government agencies on location in Alaska. He retired in the mid-1990s, and now at age 77, resides part time in Fort Gratiot.

Asked about the experience on Monday, Brougham’s recollection was straightforward.

“People often ask me what it was like to be at the South Pole, and I tell them, ‘It was really cold,’” he said, summoning a few laughs from meeting attendees. “And they ask me again, ‘Well, what was it really, really like?’ And I tell them, ‘It was really, really cold!’”

Brougham said temperatures had ranged as warm as minus 10 degrees in the summer, of which he spent two at the South Pole station, to minus 103 at the coldest.

“It’s so cold that if you should spit, it’ll freeze before it hits the snow. The other thing is it’s incredibly bright in the summertime. It’s so bright that if you don’t have double-graded sunglasses on, you’ll get snow blind in just a very few minutes,” he said.

“It’s a unique experience from February until November, you can’t get out, you’re trapped there, and it’s an incredible experience because I learned more about people and how to get along with people there than I have in my 50 years since then. … It was an incredible experience. It was just really, really cold.”

In the early 1970s, station members were candid on the impacts of the isolation.

With a month to go before his departure, Brougham told the Associated Press that he made friendships and enjoyed his time overall, through there were always periods of depression.

“And your imagination can start going wild, you have spells of paranoia,” he said at the time. “I still don’t sleep well down here. Ninety percent of the people on the station don’t sleep well. Your mind wanders and you find yourself thinking all the time of something else. I don’t know why.”

Contact Jackie Smith at (810) 989-6270 or jssmith@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Port Huron Times Herald: Marysville puts flag once flown at South Pole back on display