Press Release of The Founding of
The Greater Piedmont Chapter of the Explorers Club
For Release After 12:00 Noon
Friday, October 29, 1976The Greater Piedmont Chapter of The Explorers Club will be formally inaugurated this weekend by Members meeting in the Georgetown (S.C.) area. The new Chapter includes all active Members of The Explorers Club in New York resident in the States of North or South Carolina, Georgia or Tennessee. Currently, there are about forty Members. The Club, founded in 1904, has included on its roster such famous names as Amundsen, Byrd, Peary, Roosevelt and Stefansson. Today, there are Anders, Balchen, Ewing, Hilary, Leakey and Lowell Thomas, the Honorary President.
The aims of the new Chapter are:
To encourage exploration, research and education in the natural sciences, wherever the challenge may lead...on land, on or under the sea and in the air and in space...
To bring together explorers, scientists and others interested in the objectives of the Club...
To assist the Explorers Club in New York to carry out better the objectives of the Club by participation in its activities and by bringing the benefits of the Club more directly to this region.
The decision to form a new Chapter was based on a poll of the Members in the four-state area, which produced over thirty signed petitions favoring a new Chapter. Dr. George P. Fulton, Assistant Director, SC Commission on Higher Education, and Mr. Joseph W. Hudson, Chairman, SC Department of Wildlife and Marine Resources, initiated the action, which was approved by the Board of Directors at its June meeting in New York. The weekend program includes a cocktail party Friday given by Colonel and Mrs. Ben W. Covington, Jr. (Ret.), at their home in Myrtle Beach, lectures, films and tours of the Baruch estate at Hobcaw and Blakes Reserve in the Santee Gun Club property and the inaugural dinner Saturday evening at the Sea Gull Inn near Georgetown.
The Club's principal officers will attend. Included are Mr. Virgil Kauffman, President, Dr. Charles F. Brush, 1st Vice President, and Dr. George van B. Cochran, 2nd Vice President. The primary aim of the Club, exploration of unknown or little known places on earth, is admirably exemplified in the personal experiences of these top officers. Mr. Kauffman, 25th President of The Explorers, is founder and board chairman of Aero Services Corporation, one of the oldest such corporations; he has organized and directed the search for minerals and petroleum in many countries of the world, using for the first time an airborne magnetometer with extraordinary success. As a military adviser in World War I, he pioneered air photography. In 1968, he led the Great Barrier Reef expedition, under the auspices of the Academy of Natural Sciences and, in so doing, discovered the wreck site of Captain Cook's vessel, HMS ENDEAVOR. Dr. Brush is a well known anthropologist and a world traveler and explorer. As a mountaineer, he has made climbs in many countries, including "first ever" ascents in South America. Dr. Cochran, a practicing orthopedist, has organized and led several ascents, reaching the summits of mountains in Alaska and the Arctic for the first time. He is presently organizing his third expedition to Baffinland.
The aims of the Club will be furthered through the programs of the Greater Piedmont Chapter. Exploration, per se, will be encouraged; however, the main thrust will be bringing together people with broad experience in travel and research for lectures and symposia and, through funds raised by the Club, assisting and promoting educational and research projects among students and young faculty in this region. The first such awards have already been made. Through the New York Club, Dr. John Vernberg, a Member of the Club and Director of Belle W. Baruch Institute for Marine Biology and Coastal Research at the University of South Carolina, has received grants for the last three years to assist in the work at Hobcaw. A second grant was awarded to Spence Wise, III, a student at Clemson University, who conducted some original research under the supervision of Mr. Rudy Manke of the S.C. Museum Commission. Similar initiatives are to be sought in all the States comprising the Greater Piedmont Chapter's region.
Officers during the formative stages of the Greater Piedmont Chapter are:
Horace F. Byrne, Acting Chairman
(US Foreign Service Officer (Ret.) now Planning Coordinator SC Commission on Higher Education)
John M. Culler, Acting Vice Chairman
(Dir. of Information, SC Dept. of Wildlife and Marine Resources)
Joseph W. Hudson, Chairman, Arrangements Committee
Alan Albright, Chairman, Education Committee
(Dir. of Underwater Archaeology, USC Inst. of Archeology and Anthropology, Columbia, SC)
State Coordinators:
North Carolina: Mr. Voit Gilmore, Southern Pines
Georgia: Mr. Robert W. Fuller, Atlanta
Tennessee: (To be named)
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©1997 by The Greater Piedmont Chapter of The Explorers Club
