It was during this time that he met his future wife, Anne Udry (shown with Kevin, above right, holding US flag). One of the first times he saw her, he says, she was standing on the nose ramp of a C-5 Galaxy, monitoring cargo shipments. He proposed to her on Castle Rock, and the rest is history. (Anne has logged various years at Mac Town, South Pole, Palmer and even a stint in the Dry Valleys—all in all about 70 months of ice time.) They then spent their honeymoon working a full year over-wintering at South Pole, where Kevin worked on the new station and Anne operated the HF radio in Comms. (Kevin says she has good stories of mid-winter contacts with Vostok and other “lonely” male-only stations.)
Bjella now works in permafrost and ice engineering research at the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) in Fairbanks, Alaska as a Research Civil Engineer. He is involved with projects that span from Alaska to Greenland, to Antarctica. He holds an M.S. in Arctic Engineering from the University of Alaska-Anchorage, and is a registered professional engineer in the state of Alaska.
He describes himself as a “card carrying polar nut.” He possesses a small library of Arctic and Antarctic exploration texts and tries to stay abreast of all the current projects with most of the related journals. He and Anne plan to travel in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago someday. Bjella would also like to spend another winter at South Pole and hopes to winter in the polar north as well.
Bjella has been the Secretary for APS since 2004 and enjoys the interaction with those who have spent time at or are simply interested in the Arctic and Antarctic. “The poles are very special places,” he says, “and those of us who have logged extended time and winters at these latitudes can consider ourselves to be extremely lucky.” |
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