(Source: MIRS.news, Published 12/22/2022) Since the Mackinac Bridge Authority began replacing the bridge’s original deck grating and selling the historic pieces along the way, one piece has made it all the way to the South Pole for the holiday season.
Brendan Fisher, a heavy equipment mechanic for the United States Antarctic Program (USAP), is on a 13-month assignment as part of the international scientific investigation at the South Pole.
His assignment is already unusual. Fisher works nine hours per day, six days per week welding and working on tracked vehicles at the station and will remain through both the South Pole’s “summer,” with -25 degree temperatures and 24 hours of sun, and the “winter,” where a -80 degrees is fairly average and there can be months of darkness.
But Fisher’s packing list was also an anomaly. The 51-year-old South Bend, Indiana native brought with him a sign he built from a 38-foot piece of original Mackinac grating.
The sign, which he bought through an auction in November 2020, proclaims the distance from the South Pole to the Mackinac Bridge: 9,394 miles.
Fisher said he purchased the piece of grating to make gifts for his family, including a lamp for his father, a civil engineer who “designed half of South Bend” and has proclaimed Mackinac as his favorite bridge.
When at home, Fisher is a heavy haul truck driver, and is quite the traveler for both business and pleasure. He has been through 43 of 63 national parks and traveled globally while in the U.S. Marine Corps, but it was an October 2021 trip starting the Great Loop, a system of interconnected East Coast waterways, that set him on the track for the South Pole.
"I left St. Joseph, Michigan, on an old trawler and started the Great Loop, and I knew that when I got back and crossed my wake that I wanted to do something different," Fisher said. "So halfway through the Great Loop, a friend referred me to the Antarctic program, and after passing many physical requirements and background checks, I was approved to work down here."
Fisher said “any northerner can work just fine here. Plenty of snow and just a little bit colder.” That statement holds true, as he’s joined by six other Michiganders out of the 135 total stationed there. The list includes Troy LEIGHTON from Traverse City, Hans SUEDHOFF from Gaylord and Paul GUERRESO from Farmington Hills.
Though Fisher’s own piece of Michigan would become buried in the snow if placed at the South Pole itself, he obtained permission to place the sign on permanent display at the USAP facility.
He brought more pieces of the bridge with him in hopes of working with the outpost’s machinist to create next year’s official South Pole marker.
Photo Credit: Brendan Fisher, Troy Leighton in Antarctica - Hans Suedhoff photo.jpg – Brendan Fisher, left, and Troy Leighton pose at the South Pole with a sign Fisher made with steel from the Mackinac Bridge deck grating, listing the distance to the Mackinac Bridge from Antarctica.
