Leonhard Seppala and Togo: The 1925 Serum Run's Overlooked Heroes

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In the winter of 1924 to 1925, Dr. Curtis Welch in Nome, Alaska, recognized the gray throat coating of diphtheria in sick children and found his antitoxin had expired, with the port frozen in and the next shipment stranded. Aging biplanes with water cooled engines could not fly in 50 below, so about 300,000 units found in Anchorage went by train to Nenana and then by a relay of 20 mushers and about 150 dogs, many of the drivers Athabaskan and Inupiat mail carriers, across 674 miles. Norwegian musher Leonhard Seppala, a three time All Alaska Sweepstakes winner, set out from Nome with his 12 year old Siberian husky Togo to meet the serum.

Unaware the relay had been sped up, Seppala ran into Henry Ivanoff near Shaktoolik, took the serum, and turned straight back into a storm with a wind chill of 85 below. Togo led the team across 20 miles of breaking sea ice on Norton Sound in the dark, ice that blew out to sea hours later, and over Little McKinley. Seppala and Togo covered 261 miles in all, against an average leg of about 30. Gunnar Kaasen, driving Seppala's discarded freight dog Balto, skipped the planned handoff to Ed Rohn at Point Safety and reached Nome himself, and Balto got the fame, the vaudeville tour and the Central Park statue.

• Charlie Olson's frostbitten hands and Kaasen digging the serum cylinder out of a snowbank by hand
• Sculptor F.G. Roth putting Togo's racing collars and awards on the Balto statue
• Seppala's team filling Madison Square Garden for 10 days and Roald Amundsen giving Togo a gold medal
• The kennel in Poland Spring, Maine, with Elizabeth Ricker that shaped the Siberian husky in North America
• The Air Mail Act of 1925 and the Iditarod's Leonhard Seppala Humanitarian Award