REAR ADMIRAL RICHARD E. BYRD - PROGRAM SIGNED CIRCA 1928 - HFSID 156629

RICHARD E. BYRD. Program signed: "RE Byrd" on front cover, 4p, 5x6½. Old Chester, Pennsylvania, 1928 June 20. Program for the Sixty-sixth Annual Commencement of the Pennsylvania Military College. Byrd received an Honorary Doctor of Aeronautical Science Degree at the ceremonies. Other honorary degrees went to Daniel Willard, President of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company (Doctor of Laws), financier William Larimer Mellon (Doctor of Laws) and Major General Douglas MacArthur (Doctor of Military Science). Pennsylvania Military College, which had been relocated to Old Chester, Pennsylvania from Wilmington, Delaware in 1862, became Widener University in 1972. This ceremony was held just two months before Byrd dispatched the first ship for his first expedition to Antarctica (1928-1930). Richard E. Byrd (1888-1957), who would himself leave for the expedition on October 10, 1928, dispatched the City of New York on August 25, 1928. During the first of his four expeditions to Antarctica, Byrd would establish the "Little America" base and became the first man to fly over both the North and South Poles. Subsequent expeditions in the 1930s were made in 1933-1935 and 1939-1941. In 1926, Byrd and Floyd Bennett had been the first to fly over the North Pole. Lightly creased with folds, light diagonal crease touches the upper loop of the "R". Nicked at lower left margin of front cover, mounting remnants at upper blank corners of back cover. Lightly soiled, stained at blank margins of third page. Overall, fine and interesting.