Balto and the Great Race (6 page)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Around the Country

Balto was the most famous dog in America. He was given a special medal. People all over the country sent requests for appearances and ceremonies.

When Leonhard Seppala got back to Nome with Togo and his team, he had mixed feelings about Balto’s newfound fame. Togo had pulled Seppala’s sled over 250 miles round-trip in the course of the relay. Seppala felt Togo should
also
be given some credit.

It was a difficult situation for the famous musher. He felt as if one of his children had been rewarded over another. He was extremely proud of Balto, but for the rest of his life he felt a pang of regret when he remembered how Togo’s achievements had not been recognized.

On February 9, 1925, the
New York Times
ran a story that caused hearts to sink across the country. The headline read
BALTO, DOG HERO OF THE DASH TO NOME, IS DEAD
.

In fact, Balto was very much alive and in extremely good health. The newspaper had made an enormous mistake, reporting the death of Balto and most of the team from lung damage caused by the blizzard. The report was quickly corrected.

In Nome, Leonhard Seppala received an offer from a filmmaker who wanted to
make a movie about Balto and the team. With Seppala’s permission, Gunnar Kaasen took Balto and the dogs to Washington state, where the movie was filmed. There was a good deal more to come.

It seemed almost every town in America wanted Balto to pay a visit. In New York City, the unveiling of Balto’s statue was scheduled for December 15, 1925. Balto and the musher traveled there for the ceremony, and Balto spent a curious moment staring at his bronze image,
which towered over the crowd.

Over the next year, Balto and the team crossed the country twice, making appearances at lecture halls and vaudeville houses alongside their musher. There was rarely an empty seat to be had when the famous dogs were onstage.

Demand was still high a year later, but it was decided the dogs needed a rest. Traveling from state to state and visiting the eager crowds was hard for the animals. It was nothing like the life they had led in Alaska. In Los Angeles, the dogs were sold
to a small museum. Reluctantly, Gunnar Kaasen returned to Alaska alone.

The dogs did not do well in Los Angeles. Balto was bewildered. The crowds were gone, and so was Kaasen. For the first time in his life, Balto did not know what was expected of him. Unhappy and uncomfortable in Los Angeles’s warm climate, the dogs grew thin and sickly. They had been in the museum for over a month when a man named George Kimble, a vacationer from Cleveland, Ohio, stopped in for a visit.

Like most Americans, Kimble knew all about the heroic deeds of Balto and his team. He was horrified to see the dogs looking so unhappy. Kimble leaped into action.

Through an exchange of telegrams with friends in Cleveland, he organized a
committee to raise funds to buy the dogs. They would need over $2,000. This was an enormous amount of money in 1927.

An appeal was made to the children of Cleveland. If each child donated all of his or her pennies to the fund, it might be possible to reach the goal. Across Cleveland, children emptied their piggy banks and sent their pennies in.

There wasn’t much time.

Kimble needed to come up with the money within several weeks. He wasn’t sure that Balto and his team’s health would even hold up for that long. On the date Balto’s owner said the money was due, as the last handfuls of pennies were coming in, the fund was counted.

It totaled $2,342.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Cleveland, Ohio

On March 27, 1927, Balto and the team arrived in Cleveland.

A new home was built for the dogs in the Brookside Zoo, which was then part of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. There, Balto and his team were treated like royalty. Amid crowds of loving children, the dogs quickly grew fat and healthy. They got plenty of attention and food. They were also much happier in Cleveland’s cooler weather.

Although they were still Alaskan sled dogs at heart; they were now seven or eight years old—middle age for a dog. They enjoyed the retirement that they had so courageously earned.

In 1933, at the age of fourteen, Balto died. It is said that one year of a dog’s life is equal to seven years of a human life. This would have made Balto ninety-eight years old at the time of his death!.

A stuffed mount of Balto was made. It can be seen in the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Well over seventy years after Balto led his team and their musher into Nome, he is still captivating children and adults alike.

When Balto came to his final home in Cleveland, he completed a circle he had begun in Alaska in 1925. Then, it was the children of Nome who turned to Balto and
the sled dogs for help. Two years later, when it was Balto’s turn to need help, the children of Cleveland came through for the lead dog and his team.

Balto, Togo, and the hundreds of other dogs on the relay teams whose names have been forgotten are now honored. Today, visitors to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and New York City’s Central Park may come just to see Balto, or they may stumble upon him accidentally.

However they come upon the story, it is sure to stick with them—the story of dogs and children, and how they helped each other when help was needed the very most.

AFTERWORD

Every year, on the first Saturday in March, the famous Iditarod race is held. The world watches as the best dogs in Alaska retrace the route along which Balto and the relay teams pulled the antitoxin serum in 1925.

Until 1999, each Iditarod musher was greeted by Edgar Nollner, one of the original mushers of the 1925 relay, as the teams passed through the town of Galena. Nollner was twenty years old when his
dogs pulled the antitoxin twenty-four miles from Whiskey Point to Galena.

Each year; he stood quietly near the Iditarod trail as the racing teams sped by. When he died in January 1999, the last participant in the great dash to Nome was gone.

Now the story is truly in the land of legends.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

It was both great fun and very frustrating to research this book on Balto. Not much has been written about this relay race to Nome, so I depended on newspaper reports that were written as the story unfolded. However, these reports were full of inconsistencies and sometimes mistakes! The sources didn’t agree on exact dates and times. Even the names of towns and mushers changed from story to story. From these articles, I put together the facts as best I could.

I also read books about men and women who have raced the Iditarod with their teams. These books helped me imagine the conditions the teams would have encountered in 1925. I also learned how a dog team works and how difficult it is to be a lead dog!

Equally important were the Balto experts at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Some of them have spent years collecting information about the race and its aftermath. They gave me the very important story of what happened to Balto after all the excitement died down.

The story of Balto is a great one, and I hope I have done it justice.