Wallet lost in Antarctica 50 years ago returned to California

Paul Grisham’s wallet was so long lost at the bottom of the world that he forgot about it.

Fifty-three years later, the 91-year-old San Diego man has the wallet back along with memories of his 13-month assignment as a Navy meteorologist in Antarctica in the 1960s.

“I was impressed,” Grisham told the San Diego Union-Tribune after his wallet was returned to him on Saturday.

“There was a long series of people involved who located me and took me to the ground.”

The wallet contained his Navy identification card, driver’s license, a pocket reference card on what to do during an atomic, biological and chemical attack, a punch beer ration card, a withholding tax statement, and receipts for money orders sent to his wife.

Grisham, who grew up in Douglas, Arizona, enlisted in the Navy in 1948. He became a meteorological technician and later a meteorologist.

He was assigned to Antarctica as part of Operation Deep Freeze, which supported civilian scientists, and was sent to the frozen continent in October 1967. At the time, he was 30 years old and married with two young children.

“I came down kicking and screaming,” he told the Union-Tribune.

At some point, while on “The Ice,” Grisham lost his wallet, something he later forgot about.

It was found behind a locker in 2014 during the demolition of a building at McMurdo Station on Ross Island in Antarctica. But finding its owner took emails, Facebook messages and letters exchanged between a group of amateur detectives.

Stephen Decato and his daughter Sarah Lindbergh, both from New Hampshire, and Bruce McKee of the nonprofit Indiana Spirit of ’45 Foundation had previously worked to return a Navy service identification bracelet to its owner. Decato saw the bracelet in a store and bought it. His daughter later located the McKee Veterans Tribute organization and her online notice about it led to the original owner.

Decato had worked for an agency that conducts research in Antarctica. His former boss, George Blaisdell, found out about the bracelet episode and decided to send Decato two wallets found during the McMurdo demolition. Lindbergh contacted McKee again, who in turn contacted Gary Cox of the Naval Weather Services Association, a group that includes Grisham.

The second wallet was returned to the family of a man who died in 2016.

Grisham told the Union-Tribune that it is difficult to understand the vastness and remoteness of Antarctica. A treat was a daily martini after work, and once a week he communicated with his wife, Wilma, by voice transmission through shortwave radio operators.

Grisham retired from the Navy in 1977 and lived in Monterey, California, where Wilma died in 2000. He remarried, to Carole Salazar of San Diego, in 2003.