Earland E. Hedblom papers

In 1914, Earland Everett Hedblom was born into the family of Swedish immigrants in Loveland, Colorado. His father, Edward Emanuel Hedblom, worked in the railroad industry. He graduated from Colorado College in 1935 and the University of Colorado School of Medicine in 1939. He married Ruby Kysar Hedblom and had two children.

Hedblom joined the United States Naval Station at Tongue Point, Oregon during the second world war. The family moved to Whiting Field Naval Air Station in Santa Rosa, Florida, in 1950. In 1955, Captain Hedblom became the staff surgeon for Commander of the US Navy Support Force in Antarctica. He would help coordinate operation “Deep Freeze,” which maneuvered Navy service members to fly to the Antarctic continent to support civilian scientists doing research. He lectured to the Para-Rescue Team assigned to the Navy’s VX-6 Air Development Squadron that provided air support for studies in Antarctica. He served as the Medical Officer of Task Force 43 in the Ross Sea area for Operation Deep Freeze I from 1955 to 1956. In 1961, Hedblom authored the “Polar Manual” for the Department of Cold Weather Medicine of the US Naval Medical School as a guide those working in the most frigid of temperatures. This work situated him as an expert on Arctic medicine and the physiological effect of cold. He assisted in the 1965 revisions of his work as the medical consultant to the Arctic Institute of North America and the Cold Weather Medical Consultant to Surgeon, Alaska Naval Command.

Earland E. Hedblom died in 1982 in Brunswick, Maine. The Hedblom Glacier between Mount Creak and Tito Peak in Victoria Land, Antarctica is named after Captain E.E. Hedblom.