By Dr. Alex McFarland for TOWNHALL
Please! Not another Op-Ed about campaign promises of the 47th presidency. No, we will leave that to the political analysts who will be writing for years about how Trump won after being indicted in three states, impugned by every main squeeze media outlet, and outspent by nearly a billion dollars. Someday, when they finish looking down at stats and inward at their own bias, maybe they will look up and see the answer. This piece isn’t about that either; it’s about a dog.
Last week marked the 100th anniversary of the Great Serum Run, aka the Great Race of Mercy. The legendary race immortalized a dog named Balto, who pulled a sled into Nome, Alaska, saving a town from diphtheria and certain death. Balto only pulled the last 55 miles, crossing a river and mountains to finish the run into Nome. Twenty mushers and over 150 dogs ran the entire trip.
The longest and most arduous leg was anchored by a lesser-known dog named Togo, whose team pulled over 260 miles through blinding snow and wind chills to 85 below zero! At one crucial interval, Togo led the team across the frozen Norton Sound just three hours before the ice broke up and made it uncrossable.
When Musher Gunnar Kaasen and Balto arrived at the hospital, they fulfilled a promise to save Nome and the surrounding villages, running in under six days a trip that usually took a sled team nearly a month. Nome’s only doctor’s telegram had begged: “An epidemic of diphtheria is almost inevitable here. I am in urgent need of one million units of diphtheria antitoxin.” The nearest train tracks ended in Nenana, 674 miles from Nome. Sea travel was impossible in January, and only open-cockpit airplanes existed in 1925, no match for Alaska’s howling winds and winter cold.
