The meeting was in New York City, Doctor Thorington was the president, and the Board had just admitted me to membership. I talked briefly about the first ascent of the foot volcano on Kiska, which I had trudged across the tundra to make in October of , with Harley Fetzer and the late Carl Fiebelkorn, who went AWOL with meβafter all, we were mountain troopers, and building a pier out into Kiska Harbor was just not our thing.
Indeed, I suspect a good many of them would surely have felt that making my youthful acquaintance was NOT a pleasure. After all I did organize the only proxy fight against Club management, in an effort to get our annual meeting rotated around the country to exotic locales such as Berzerkeley, Las Vegas, and Bend, in doing which I was joined by one past president and two subsequent honorary members. However, I did share an office with Professor Fay, our first, second and sixth president, albeit there was a gap of 18 years between his death and my arrival in Barnum Museum at Tufts University.
It is fitting that we assemble in Flagstaff for this brief history lesson on The American Alpine Club. For it was here, in that a founding member of this Club, Andrew Ellicott Douglas, the father of the science of dendrochronology, selected the site for Dr. Click the pic to see the other photos from this speech.
Heilprin was associated with the learned folk in the City of Brotherly Love, as were many of our founding membersβwhich is the reason this Club was incorporated in that Commonwealth. Heilprin was also the heroic scientist who descended into the caldera of Mont Pelee on Martinique to investigate the basaltic monolith that was extruded after the massive explosion of He had been born in Hungary, of parents who fled from persecution in Russia to Poland and finally to America.
Heilprin mailed a notice for two cents apiece in postage of a meeting to be held on 9 May in the rooms of the Geographical Society of Philadelphia, to consider the formation of an alpine society. On that fateful Thursday afternoon, twelve men, including our first President, our first two Vice-presidents, our first Secretary and our first Treasurer, along with our first four Counselors, constituted themselves as the Committee of Organization and proceeded to elect a bunch of members.
