Arkansas Farm Boy on Road to High Adventure

Rogers, Ark., Dec. 9 — (AP) — Sailing southward to the bleak Antarctic, a red-headed Arkansas farm boy is well on the road to high adventure with Admiral Richard E. Byrd.

The young explorer is seaman Rack Christopher Keck, U. S. N. 24-year-old son of Mr. and Mrs. George Washington Russell Keck of Rogers.  He was chosen by naval authorities as one of the two sailors to represent the San Diego, Calif., station on the Byrd expedition to the south pole.

Mrs Keck describes the youngest of her eleven children as “different” from his brothers and sisters.  She recalled an incident when Jack was five.

A group of older boys and young men, with whom the youngster had been playing, “dared” him to crawl through a 12-inch pipe that ran 160 feet along a drainage ditch.

Without more ado, Jack wiggled and squirmed his way through the narrow conduit and then, when the taunters said he couldn’t repeat the performance, went right back through the pipe.

Immediately after graduating from high school in 1935 Jack enlisted in the navy.  He served four years and had re-enlisted only a few weeks before he was chosen to join the Byrd expedition.