Author Gay Salisbury

I went to an educators' presentation at the Millennium Hotel featuring Gay Salisbury, author of The Cruelest Miles, the book I have previously mentioned in an earlier post. Ms. Salisbury is a dynamic speaker, who brought the Serum Run story of 1925 to life. She laughed when I gave her my hard cover copy to autograph. My book is stuffed full of sticky notes, marking pages that I read to my third graders. She was obviously pleased that her book was well-used and well-worn. The author told us that due to her recent research, people all over the country have been finding newspaper articles and other memorabilia stashed away in their houses, bringing new facts to light about this fascinating piece of history.

I learned some cool facts about Togo, Leonhard Seppala's heroic dog that ran the longest relay stretch to get the diphtheria medicine closer to Nome. Togo was a "loose leader." He ran ahead of the team and guided them without being hitched to the other dogs. I also found out that one of the reasons Togo did not become as famous as Balto was that when Togo's run was over, he took off after a reindeer herd, was missing for over eight days, and completely missed all the hubbub and publicity surrounding the hero dog teams.

Togo is preserved in Wasilla, Alaska, at the Iditarod Headquarters and Museum. We visited this location on the afternoon of March 3. They also had on display the Red Lantern Award, which is given to the last Iditarod musher that makes it into Nome. Our next stop was the Dorothy Page Museum. She was a major supporter of Joe Redington, Sr., who got the Iditarod started in 1973. In this museum, there is an old freight/mail-carrying sled that was used during the diphtheria relay. It looks so heavy and bulky compared to the sleek sleds used by mushers today.