BOY SCOUT WITH POLAR PARTY

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28099, 15 October 1956, Page 11

BOY SCOUT WITH POLAR PARTY

AIDE TO SCIENTIFIC LEADER

An American Boy Scout is going to the Antarctic with the United States expedition’s scientific party. He is Richard Lee Chappell, aged 19, who comes from a suburb of Buffalo. A member of the Explorer Scouts, a senior division of the scout movement. Richard, is an Eagle scout, the highest rank in American scouting. One of the members of the selection panel which chose Richard was Dr. Paul Siple, leader of the U.S. scientific team to go to the Pole. Twenty-eight years ago, in a similar contest. Dr. Siple, who was an Eagle scout, was selected to go to the Antarctic with Admiral Byrd. He has been with Admiral Byrd on all his southern trips since that time. “I rather look on this boy as my relief after 28 years,” he said yesterday. Dr. Siple said that the National Academy of Sciences, of which the United States International Geophysical Year Committee is a part, had agreed to take down to the Antarctic a Boy Scout with scientific leanings. For about two weeks before Dr. Siple left for New Zealand Richard stayed at his home. “He holds all the attributes of a boy selected as a top,” said Dr. Siple. Richard was intending to go to Princeton under the naval reserve officer training programme. Richard is now doing scientific work in the United States before he sails in U.S.S. Curtis for the Antarctic. He will be a scientific aide to Dr. A. P. Crary, the expedition’s deputy-chief scientist, at the Little America International Geophysical Year station.