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Helen Schreider
Frank and Helen Schreider were an intrepid husband-and-wife explorer team who circumnavigated the globe retracing the routes of ancient seamen.
Frank was born in Denver, Colorado,...view moreFrank and Helen Schreider were an intrepid husband-and-wife explorer team who circumnavigated the globe retracing the routes of ancient seamen.
Frank was born in Denver, Colorado, raised in Boston, Massachusetts, and served in the Navy in the Pacific in World War II. He met his wife and lifelong fellow traveller, Helen, at the University of California whilst he studied engineering and she studies painting. The couple married in 1947, and Frank graduated in 1950.
The couple began freelancing for the National Geographic in 1957 and joined the magazine full-time in 1965 as a writing and photographic team. Their assignments took them on numerous journeys: from sailing from the Arctic Circle to the tip of Tierra del Fuego, to emulating the conquering journeys of Alexander the Great and traversing the length of the Indonesian Archipelago. They also walked, sailed, canoed, rafted and motored down the entire 4,000 miles of the Amazon from its source in Peru.
Their travels inspired three books: 20,000 Miles South (1957); Drums of the Tonkin (1963); and Exploring the Amazon (1970), as well as countless articles in National Geographic, Saturday Evening Post, and many other American and international publications.
The Schreiders resided in Washington, D.C. during their travelling years, but eventually settled in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1990. Frank died of a heart attack aboard his sloop Sassafras off Crete on January 21, 1994, aged 70, whilst midway through a three-year voyage sailing the Aegean and Crete seas on his 40-foot boat.
Since Frank’s death, Helen has continued exploring the world, visiting the Great Wall of China for the first time in 2011, and (as of 2015) she still planned on making a trip to Tahiti. She was inducted into the Explorers Club in October 2015 at the age of 89. Past club members included Robert Peary, Sir Edmund Hillary and President Theodore Roosevelt. Frank had been inducted in 1956.view less