The Stowaway by Laurie Gwen Shapiro

Author:Laurie Gwen Shapiro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

SEVEN

THE STOWAWAY REPORT

There were girls in Dunedin. But Billy was told by Lieutenant Harry Adams, For godsake, go home for a year and have fun! Visit your worried parents. Do some public relations; a shrewd young man like you should capitalize on your popularity.

Adams would go with him. After eight months away, he would see his wife.

The journey, mercifully, was uneventful—the dozen men just ordinary passengers on the Union Line mail liner the SS Tahiti—but the relationships forged on this return trip would be among his closest for years to come, especially his connection with Adams. Still, there was a curious silence during this stretch, with not even a letter to his parents. Perhaps Billy was ashamed.

The twelve explorers returned stateside during the late-April week that a large scenic area in Utah was designated Arches National Monument (expedition geologist Laurence Gould having advocated for this decision earlier in the decade) and a postal worker foiled an assassination attempt on Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York. The men arrived in San Francisco to a still-booming economy now under the presidency of Herbert Hoover, who had replaced fellow Republican “Silent Cal” Coolidge a month prior—in 1929 presidents were still inaugurated on March 4, not January 20. (No one on the expedition voted, this being decades before absentee ballots came into use.) Among the returning, trumpeted the press, was “Bill Gavronski”—still misspelled and to his annoyance identified always as “the stowaway” instead of fireman or even seaman.

But the stowaway’s viewpoint was the most interesting angle! For many Americans, Billy’s narrative became the first account they heard from a true member of the expedition—not a designated reporter such as Russell Owen or Joe de Ganahl. As soon as he landed, the interviews began, and touched on matters he wouldn’t even necessarily know anything about. He had been there, so suddenly he was an expert: “Gavronksi says that Commander Byrd has already accomplished enough scientific work to justify taking the eighty-two men.”

Billy’s parents scooped him up when he returned by hitchhiking to the East Coast. His mother couldn’t stop kissing him; his babcia would not stop holding his hand. Rudy marveled at how tall he had become in his months away—maybe even two inches more a man. He was fatter, too, his father teased, and Billy confessed he had special privileges due to his friend the cook. His voice no longer cracked.

To Billy’s amazement, Byrd had made good on his promises: the eighteen-year-old was already widely advertised to appear on WOR Radio, the newly powerful radio station of the New York area, with millions of listeners for highly publicized events—and indeed millions of listeners tuned in to hear him speak on April 24. Harry Adams, Billy’s friend and mentor, joined him on the air, and joked with his pal that although higher in rank, he did not get nearly as much publicity as the reformed roustabout.

Billy gave his highly anticipated speech, prepared by Byrd’s PR team, at six forty-five in the evening, proclaiming the expedition’s (perhaps premature) success.

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