When Wild Bill Shannon awaited the arrival of the train from Seward bearing the diphtheria anti-toxin, he didn’t need a thermometer to know that he’d be taking off from Nenana in frigid temperatures. He could feel it with every breath.
Seventy years later, to the date – January 27th of 1995, mushers waited in Nenana to depart on the Commemorative Serum Run organized by Joe Redington, Sr. Not only the date corresponded but also the temperature. The KTUU – Channel 2 reporter covering the story in Nenana held a thermometer with a very short red line that didn’t even reach the coldest reading of minus 40 degrees. History was in the process of repeating itself. Thankfully, it was only the weather and not another outbreak of diphtheria in Nome.
The 70th Anniversary Commemorative Serum Run was not a race against time as in 1925 but it was a time to remember the twenty men who carried the serum to Nome. The 1995 run would also help build awareness of health through vaccines in the trail villages. The Commemorative Run built momentum for the Shots for Tots initiative. The goal was to have every child in the villages between Nenana and Nome fully immunized by the age of two
Doctor John Bradley Beeson, who in 1925 located 300,000 units of serum at his hospital in Anchorage was no stranger to the rigors of travel by dog team. He had once made a house call to the gold boom town of Iditarod located 500 miles from Anchorage. He traveled by a relay of dog teams. Once he arrived in Iditarod, he then began the arduous task of transporting his patient back to Anchorage for care. The “house call” took a month.
Upon realizing the serum would have to travel 674 miles by dog team from Nenana to Nome, memories of the unbearably cold bone jarring journey via sled to Iditarod prompted Beeson to take special measures in packaging the serum. There were no UPS, Fed Ex or Pak Mail stores available. Beeson would have to do the best he could to keep the glass vials intact during the sled ride to Nome.
From The Cruelest Miles by Gay and Laney Salisbury – Beeson started by padding the inside of a container then he placed the vials inside. He wrapped a heavy quilt around the container and placed it in a wooden crate which he wrapped with sturdy cloth. He attached a note asking the drivers to warm the 20 pound package for 15 minutes at each stop along the trail. Thanks to Beeson’s precautions, every vial was intact when Dr. Welch opened the parcel in Nome.
If not a hard and fast rule for mushing, then the rule of the 40’s was at least sage advice. Very simply, if the temperature is above 40 degrees, it’s too warm for the dogs to run; if the temperature is below minus 40 then it’s extremely dangerous for both dogs and drivers. A small error can become a deadly mistake.
When the train chugged into Nenana late on the evening of January 27th of, 1925 it was well below that minus 40 degree redline. Wild Bill was encouraged to wait until morning when the sun would warm the day. But when the conductor handed Shannon the carefully wrapped package, Shannon secured it to his sled. Refusing to wait until morning, he took off into the bitterly cold night. The children of Nome needed the serum so the sooner he left, the better.
Seventy years later, before sunup in Nenana it was minus 64 degrees. At 11:00 am when the Commemorative Relay was set to start the temperature had risen to minus 55 degrees. The four relay teams started as planned but camped after only six miles.
As Wild Bill mushed toward Minto in the brutal cold, he realized he was becoming hypothermic. With great determination he exercised along with the dogs and made the thirty-miles to Campbell’s Roadhouse. When he looked at the thermometer, it registered minus 62 degrees. He and the serum spent four hours by the stove then he returned to the trail to complete the remaining twenty-two miles to Tolovana and passed the serum to Edgar Kallands.
The ’95 Commemorative Relay started out with four teams racing to the next serum exchange. This format continued through Ruby then with fewer dog teams available, the race became a one team relay.
There were no dog teams or drivers in Unalakleet or Shaktoolik who could continue the relay so the serum was flown from Unalakleet to Koyuk. While the planes couldn’t get off the ground in 1925, they were a part of the Commemorative Relay when there were no dog teams or drivers to carry the serum.
Redington asked longtime friend Dr. Terry Clark to join the 1995 Commemorative Run as the Medical Director. Clark provided me with the news footage from KTUU – Channel 2 and shared stories of his experiences.
The doctor likened their reception in the trail villages to the modern day equivalent of Taylor Swift arriving for a concert. Everyone knew and loved Joe Redington. It was an exciting time for the villagers to have the Commemorative Serum Runners pass through their villages. In contrast to 1925, there was tremendous publicity for the 1995 event.
Clark praised the work of the village health aides saying, “Joe set this up. We thought there’d be lots of native children that weren’t vaccinated. I actually didn’t do much medically as the health aides in each village had done such a great job. There were very few children that weren’t already vaccinated.”
The 1925 mushers delivered the serum to Nome in just 5.5 days. It took the modern day 1995 mushers nearly 7 days to bring the serum into Nome. Fourteen year old Noah Burmeister was the first relay team to arrive from White Mountain. Surviving serum runner, ninety-year-old Edgar Nollner was atop Burmeister’s sled at the finish line. It was only the second time Nollner had been in Nome and he’d not been on a dog sled for thirty years.
For the ’95 Commemorative Run, descendants of some of the original serum runners took part. Edgar (Patty) Nollner, Jr. son of Edgar Nollner, Harry Johnson, grandson of Henry Ivanoff and Francis Captain another grandson of a serum runner appreciated their nostalgic run while honoring their ancestors while taking part in the race to remember the great heroes of 1925.
Dr. Clark says he’s never known another human being who was tougher than Joe Redington. Accepting challenges and discomfort was something Joe did on an everyday basis. He was a tough human being with exceptional outdoor, mushing and survival skills. Had he been living and delivering mail along the Iditarod trail in 1925, he might well have been assigned a leg of the Serum Run.
Joe truly wanted to help the native villages with vaccinations for all the toddlers and along the way he hoped to promote the tradition of sled dogs. Through the 1995 Commemorative Run Joe was able to achieve both.
On January 27, 2025, Jonathon Hayes and his Seppala Siberians will be embarking upon the Centennial Seppala Expedition to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 1925 Serum Run. He is planning to provide daily updates from the trail as he progresses from Nenana to Nome. Read more about the Centennial Seppala Expedition.
