On Jan. 12, we officially dedicated the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. The former station, the Dome, was officially decommissioned as a federal facility, and the United States flag was raised over the elevated station we now inhabit.

This long-anticipated event was attended by many distinguished visitors who flew in for the occasion, representing the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Congress, and those involved in the construction of South Pole Station. Ceremony preparations grew into a frenzy as the week progressed, a flurry of excitement for a major historical event in Antarctic history.

For Jerry Marty, the National Science Foundation construction manager for the new station, this occasion held a special sense of accomplishment. Incredibly, this is the second South Pole station dedication he has attended; he was present at the Jan. 9, 1975, dedication of the Dome.

Sitting in his office in the newly dedicated elevated station, Marty told me about how he first came to Antarctica. He arrived in 1969 as a general assistant – the same job I myself now hold. “I quickly found,” he said, “that I was part of Antarctica – and that Antarctica was part of me.”

Weathered and exuding a powerful, lithe energy, Marty was serious as he talked about his early days in Antarctica. After a hiatus from the southernmost continent to fight in the Vietnam War, he came back to “the ice” in 1974 – this time with his wife, one of only two women hired as staff by the United States Antarctic Program at that time. Marty lived in Jamesways at the South Pole and ate his meals in the Dome galley. That spring, he had his picture taken in front of the newly constructed Dome at its official dedication.

Thirty-two year later, Marty watched the flag he saw raised in 1975 lowered and raised anew over the new station he himself helped to create.

Marty left Antarctica some years after the construction of the Dome, working in such countries as Saudi Arabia and Micronesia. “But Antarctica,” he said with a faraway gleam in his eye, “didn’t leave my blood.” He was called back in 1992 when the NSF asked him to return to the pole to run the construction of a new station. Since 1994, he has not missed a single summer season at the pole.

As the NSF construction project manager for the new station, Marty had his work cut out for him. The engineering and construction challenges of the harsh South Pole environment are many. On top of that, all construction materials had to fit into the fuselage of an LC-130 airplane. Materials were fabricated with rigid space and weight constraints and then flown south. Marty, with his experience living in Antarctica, quickly became “the boots on the ground” of the South Pole design and construction project.

While the move into the new station began five years ago and the station has been fully inhabited for three, this formal dedication gave a great sense of closure and celebration to the project. “It’s as though I’ve run a marathon,” Marty said. “Trained for hours and weeks and months, ran it at last, finished it, and now I’m turning to look back at the finish line behind me. All of the pressure, the work, and the energy that was poured into this station … and now, after the heat of the moment, at this dedication, it’s like I looked back and realized, ‘We actually did it.'”

From my point of view as a first-year general assistant, the new station is all that I know. Even so, it was impossible not to be moved at the ceremony. On the morning of the dedication, every person at South Pole Station gathered at the base of the Dome.

Four people, all of whom have been part of the construction of the new station since its inception, scaled the Dome and lowered the U.S. flag. Then each of us, from the construction workers to the galley staff to members of the station design team, created a human chain between the Dome and the new station. We passed the U.S. flag from hand to hand to commemorate how each and every person at South Pole has been part of this accomplishment. Then we raised the colors over the new station and filled the air with the muffled, celebratory sound of mitten-clad hands clapping.

Now I, too, have become part of South Pole history. And though I can’t guess at how long Antarctica will play a physical role in my life, I, like Jerry Marty, feel that the place will always be a part of me.

Meg Adams, who grew up in Holden and graduated from John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor, shares her Antarctic experiences with readers each Friday. For more about her adventure, information about Antarctica and to e-mail questions to her, go to the BDN Web site: bangordailynews.com.