Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd

Richard Evelyn Byrd, a Winchester native, attended the Virginia Military Institute and the University of Virginia before graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1912. He became a pioneer aviator and polar explorer, flying over the North Pole in 1926 and receiving the U.S. Congressional Medal of Honor. In 1927, he and three companions flew across the Atlantic in a forty-two-hour flight. Byrd commanded five expeditions to the Antarctic to explore unknown regions from the air, and in 1929, serving as navigator with three companions, he became the first to fly to the South Pole and return to his base, Little America, on the face of the Ross Ice Shelf, in a nineteen-hour flight. A second expedition in 1933 extended the exploration of Antarctica and continued scientific observations. During the Antarctic winter of 1934, Byrd spent five months alone in a hut at a weather station named Bolling Advance Base, which was named for his mother, who lived at 326 Amherst Street in Winchester, where he was born. He later commanded three more expeditions and discovered and mapped 537,000 miles of Antarctic territory. He was officially cited twenty-two times for bravery or conspicuous conduct and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Winchester, Virginia · United States