With the Seabees celebrating their 80-year anniversary, I thought it was appropriate to take a look at the story behind the former Max Kiel gym which was once a fixture at Quonset Davisville. You know, I bet that barely a soul here in our fair town took notice when the Max Kiel Gymnasium was demolished more than two decades ago. Well sure, the folks who work hard running the North Kingstown Recreation Department regretted the loss of its cavernous space and yes, its destruction most probably was viewed as a positive step by many of the folks who are in charge over at the big former military complex of Quonset/Davisville. But no one here in North Kingstown mourned its demolition like the good people of tiny Joseph, Oregon (population 800 or so). They felt every jackhammer blow hit home like a gunshot. And no one here in NK was as angry over the building’s demise as were the men and women who risk life and limb at the very bottom of the world. That’s right, down in Antarctica, the levels of righteous indignation were raised many a notch when word came of the end of the Max Kiel Gym. You see, these were the three homes of the real Max Kiel; he was born and raised in the logging town of Joseph, Oregon, trained as a proud member of the Seabees here in Davisville, and lost and forever entombed at the age of 22 in the glacial ice of Antarctica. Let’s take a look back at the remarkable life and tragic death of Max Ray Kiel.
Max Kiel was born in September of 1933 in a logging town in Oregon called Wallowa. Max’s father Oscar was a boss logger in the forests around Wallowa and his mom Roma, worked as a cook at the logging camps where the young Kiel family spent most of their days, with the exception of the harshest portion of the winter months. During those snowy winter periods each year, the Kiel clan moved in with Max’s grandmother Jennie Watson, in the little hamlet of Joseph just down out of the mountains. Logging in the 1930’s was a hard way to make a living, but hey, it was the time of the Great Depression and Oscar Kiel was glad for the work. This was the world that Max Kiel grew up in; a world of strong men and able women, the land that brought us the legends of Paul Bunyan, a place where hunting, fishing, ranching, and horseback riding were as normal as taking a long deep breathe of clear Oregon air. Max, along with his two sisters Norma and Erma, went to school in Joseph and stayed at their grandmother’s home during the school year. In the summers it was working at a local ranch or logging in the deep woods of Oregon with his father. Max Kiel too, grew up to be a strong man like his father, big as the Oregon sky over the mountains around Joseph. After graduation from High School, Max did the natural thing; he joined his dad working in the logging camps. Sadly, he was on the job that day in October of 1952 when the unthinkable occurred. Oscar Kiel was moving lumber with his massive Caterpillar log skidder in a steep canyon near Wallowa, he was thrown from the machine and run over by its steel tracks in front of his son’s eyes. Life as the Kiel family knew it changed on that day, they moved into Joseph permanently and Roma took a job six days a week at the local grocery store. Max, understandably, left the logging life behind and got work in a sawmill in town. He hated every minute of it.
By the summer of 1953, Max had had it with the life of a saw mill hand and, also fearing the loss of choice which the military draft portended, decided to join up as a Seabee. He trained in San Diego and Davisville and then was sent off to the Philippines to work on the construction of the giant Subic Bay Naval Station. Sitting atop a piece of heavy equipment (he trained as a heavy equipment operator) he felt at home again. Those days at the sawmill were behind him and Max Kiel (known by his mates as “Fat Max”) was just as happy as he was back in the logging camps outside of Wallowa. He sent money back home religiously, both to help out his family and to purchase cattle and horses to fulfill his dream of retiring from the Seabees to a cattle ranch in Oregon. After 18 months working in the Philippines, Max heard of a volunteer call for experienced Seabees to assist in the construction of a scientific community on the continent of Antarctica. Only the best would be selected and it was certainly viewed as the adventure of a lifetime. Going to Antarctica in 1955 was akin to going to the moon a few decades later. Of course, Max was one of the over three thousand that volunteered and he was one of the only one hundred that were selected.
Max was sent back to Davisville for more training and after a final 30-day leave he was off to Antarctica. They landed there on the ice shelf at Kainan Bay on Christmas Day 1955. Max Kiel along with the rest of his mates, climbed ashore that day, one of only a very small number of men to set foot on the continent up to that time, and began the arduous task of unloading hundreds upon hundreds of tons of equipment and supplies; enough stuff to house the men for the winter and to build six separate bases for the scientists to live in for one year. After the stores were off loaded it became Fat Max’s primary duty to keep the make shift road from the edge of the ice pack to the spot where they would construct “Little America” open so that equipment could be continuously hauled inland. It was, as you can imagine, an endless battle of Max and his “Cat D8” versus the Antarctica snowfall, and Max usually won.
In February, Max got a new job hauling supplies inland to set up caches for future excursions into the Marie Byrd Land, where they were to eventually build additional outposts for scientific research. It was on one such mission on March 5, 1956 that the unthinkable again occurred to the Kiel clan, as well as the greater family of Seabees across the world. Max Kiel was running lead dozer on a supply train that was hauling prefab living units inland for another scientific outpost when Max and his Cat D8 plunged into an undetected 300 ft deep crevasse. His giant machine was wedged in the crevasse some 80 foot down. His buddies “Tex the dirty bearded Texan” Gardner and Big Ed Edwards descended down on ropes to check on “Fat Max” but he was gone. Antarctica had opened up her icy maw and swallowed him up. Ironically Max, like his father before him, died at the controls of a massive Caterpillar. But unlike his Dad, Max remains there in Antarctica frozen forever at those controls. You see, it was just too dangerous a situation and the Seabees never recovered Max’s body. His grave is in Antarctica, not Oregon.
Max’s commanding officer reported back to Admiral Dufek, commander U.S. Naval Support Force Antarctica thusly, “Tractor train lost tractor in crevasse at cache number two. Max R. Kiel killed. Body not recovered. Admiral, we felt so bad about it we just sat down next to that 300 foot hole and cried.” Navy Chaplain Peter Bol was hauled out to the site later and held a memorial service. Max’s friends, his fellow Seabees set a flag there and a marker to identify the grave, but in a week or so, it was buried; swallowed up by the never ending snowfall at the bottom of the world. No one now, is certain just where Max and his Cat are buried.
But they always were certain how he was remembered. Just a few years later, the new Gymnasium at Davisville was completed and dedicated to the memory of fellow Seabee, fellow comrade, brave son and loving brother, Max Ray Kiel. It made all who saw it proud, proud to be a Seabee and proud of what Max Kiel had represented. You see, Max Kiel was not only an individual person; he was also very typical of the Seabees of his time. Max was at the same time one man and every man, every man that ever donned the uniform of a Seabee that is.
In researching this column, I had the pleasure of spending some time talking with folks who knew Max; particularly his younger sister Erma Kiel-Stanton. They all seemed at peace with Max’s passing; as at peace as anyone can be over a tragedy such as that. They all focused on the remarkable piece of living that Max had crammed into his 22 years. Knowing what Max had made of his short life made his death easier to take. But one thing that they are unanimously not at peace with is the destruction of the wonderful building dedicated to his memory. Throughout my entire conversation with Erma she was calm and composed. Until we began talking about the loss of the Gym that is. I could hear the tears in her voice through the phone lines across thousands of miles as we spoke of it. She could hardly continue as she told me how glad she was that her mother Roma had not lived to see that day. Now I don’t know everything, that’s for sure. But I do know that what was done here just wasn’t right. Max Kiel deserved better. Max’s family deserved better. And finally, the entire legion of Seabees past and present deserve better. Something ought to be done to make this right. I don’t know about you, but I think we ought to try to remember Max in some fashion if the town constructs a new recreation center don’t you think?
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March 13, 2022 at 07:00PM
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The View From Swamptown: The story behind the Max Kiel Gymnasium is one worth retelling - The Independent
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