On May 1, 1931, Mount Aniakchak, situated on Alaska’s Aleutian Peninsula, erupted. A menacing, black mushroom cloud rose nearly four miles into the air. Earthquakes rocked the surrounding area. In nearby Meshik, egg-sized pumice barraged the houses in which frightened families hid. Shafts of lightning lit the dark clouds, producing a “truly fear-inspiring sight.” Ash blanketed the whole Aleutian region, reaching distances of over 350 miles. Chignik, only sixty miles south of the volcano, was covered in a thick layer of silt. Radio communication in southwestern Alaska was hampered by the atmospheric pollution. Harbors and waterways were choked with pumice. Wildlife throughout the region was decimated. Explosions, earthquakes, and ash clouds continued throughout the spring.
Into this devastation, Jesuit priest and explorer, Father Bernard R. Hubbard, led a team of young college students. As the first humans on the scene, Hubbard and his team captured the eyes and ears of the nation. Americans were spellbound by stories of the young men bravely following their leader-priest into danger. The public were entertained by Hubbard’s humorous encounters with bears, his vivid descriptions and photographs of the desolated landscape, and his team’s near-death experiences with lava pits, earthquakes, and poisonous gas. The Aniakchak exploration secured Hubbard’s fame as the “Glacier Priest,” and solidified his connection to Alaska for a whole generation of Americans. As National Parks historian Katherine Ringsmuth has contended, “…the Glacier Priest put the [Aniakchak] Caldera and the entire central Alaska Peninsula on the American map.”
From the late 1920’s through the 1950’s, Father Bernard R. Hubbard was arguably the most well-known promoter of Alaska in the world and one of the most recognizable Catholic priests to the general American public. In the 1930’s, the Glacier Priest lectured to a quarter of a million people a year. In 1937, Literary Digest named him the highest paid lecturer in the world. The Glacier Priest name appeared on marquees alongside famous adventurers such as Admiral Byrd and Amelia Earhart. His exploits and opinions frequently appeared in national publications such as The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Post, and The Atlanta Constitution. As the San Jose Mercury Herald claimed, “When [Hubbard] takes a trip, Its News!” His arctic exhibit at the 1939-40 World’s Fair in San Francisco was visited by eight-and- a-half-million people and received the award for outstanding exhibition. Throughout his career he wrote three books, took over 200,000 photographs, produced a full-length movie with Fox, developed hundreds of short films, published in scientific journals, and was featured on both radio and television programs. A 1959 publication argued that the Glacier Priest’s “name has spelled adventure to a generation of Americans.”
The Glacier Priest was one of the most well-known and recognized Catholic priests to the American public for over three decades. Hubbard was not a reformer or theologian or leader in the Roman Catholic Church. He was neither interested in ecumenicism nor reform. The Glacier Priest was interested in promoting Alaska. And he was willing to promote it to anyone who would listen—Protestant and Catholic alike. He was also an unabashed endorser of American democracy and military power. Much of the anti-Catholicism in America centered on fears of Rome’s supposed authoritarianism and threat to democratic culture. The importance of a non-threatening, popular priest for the American Protestant majority should not be ignored. Anthony B. Smith has argued this same case for Bing Crosby’s fictional Father O’Malley in the popular films, Going My Way (1944) and The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945). Smith contends that the movies served as a “popular counter to anxious skeptics who believed Catholicism had no place in American democracy.” Unlike O’Malley, Father Hubbard was a flesh-and-blood priest who entertained and educated over a quarter of a million Americans a year through his lectures. That number increases when we take Hubbard’s films, books, and articles into account. As Raymond Schroth has argued in The American Jesuits: “In the 1940s the one priest, other than the Hollywood film priests, known to most American grammar school students was the one with the airplane who wore furs and had all those dogs.”
Father Hubbard crafted a Glacier Priest persona that was larger than life. It is no wonder that adventure novelists wanted to interview and befriend him. After meeting Father Hubbard, the popular adventure writer Rex Beach wrote, “Of all the picturesque Alaskans I have met, not excluding those legendary fellows of the glamorous gold-rush, none was as arresting, as vital and as colorful as this modern Marquette.” Alaskan novelist Barrett Willoughby was also enamored by Father Hubbard and became a lifelong friend. She published a series of Glacier Priest adventures in The Saturday Evening Post throughout the early 1930’s. She described him as “one of the most fearless trailsmen in the North. There was a radiant vitality about his lean, bronzed face, and a spiritual clarity in his brown eyes.” The American Magazine declared the Glacier Priest “the world’s most daring explorer.” The Catholic Book Club claimed he “was built of steel and concrete, dauntless and stoic, a rugged, honest man without fear of any kind.” The Young Catholic Messenger produced several comic books of the Glacier Priest so Catholic children could read the exploits of this priest turned superhero.
(excerpted from the Introduction)
