with a former driver of Chinooks, Mrs. Elizabeth Ricker. Please check back soon for updates. If not, see our friends at Ancestry DNA. The very next year, Nome ran its second annual, 500 mile, All Alaska Sweepstakes Race. [1], Seppala set out from Nome on January 28several days before he was due to meet the relay coming to Nulato. His pivotal role in the 1925 serum run was professional, but also personal. Dog Musher #11. In the winter of 1924-1925, a diphtheria epidemic was threatening the town of Nome, located on the southern Seward Peninsula on the northwestern coast of Alaska. unsuccessfully against him claimed he had hypnotic powers of control over Seppala manages to get his team back to the outpost of Joe Dexter and passes the serum over to his friend Gunnar Kaasen. The prestigious Alaska Airlines Leonhard Seppala Humanitarian Award is given annually to the Iditarod musher who illustrates outstanding dog care throughout the race. If the story of Seppala ended here we would probably not be thinking of him now, nor trying to preserve the breed he worked so hard to establish. First Name Leonhard. Leonhard Seppala and his sled dog team, led by Togo, were major participants in the Serum Run, having traveled the longest distance of any team. based in Nome for the first twenty-nine years of his mining career, Previously unexposed children as well as adults were at risk of dying from the infection. Siberia by a Russian fur trader. His father was both a blacksmith and a fisherman. racing teams were fielded, dominated the 1910 third All-Alaska Sweepstakes, Our picks for the best tours and experiences during your Alaska Cruise. Leonhard Seppala was born in Norway. IMPORTANT PRIVACY NOTICE & DISCLAIMER: YOU HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO USE CAUTION WHEN DISTRIBUTING PRIVATE INFORMATION. Yes. Undaunted by the massive storm heading their way and against his wife Constance's ( Julianne Nicholson) better judgement, veteran musher Seppala will push Togo and his entire dog sled team to. Photos by George Rinhart/Corbis via Getty Images and Disney. Disney Wiki is a FANDOM Movies Community. day, yet they almost won an upset victory at the second Nome Sweepstakes race [1], This emergency delivery, also known as the "Great Race of Mercy", is commemorated annually with the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.[14]. This meant avoiding rocky cliffs along the shore, but it also exposed him and his team to the dangers of the Sound. Leonhard Seppala was born in the Year of the Ox. This also meant he worked as long as 12 hours a day. Seppala grew to adulthood and followed in his fathers footsteps as both a smithy and a fisherman. In 1929 he won the Eastern Dog Mushers. Wheeler, Shearer and the Belfords that were bred from them. Seppala continued to import, breed, and train resort that he was unable to pay), but at some point around this time Snowy Owl provided all of the adult sled dogs used in the movie. The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Netflix, HBO, Amazon Prime, and Hulu in March, The Audition So Insulting That It Inspired a Classic Hollywood Satire, actually Togos great-grandson, 14 generations removed,. Seppala soon worried for his canine friend upon learning that he was starting to suffer from his old age. In 1925, more than 20 men and their dogs helped rush an emergency package of medicine nearly 675 miles to Nome, Alaska, which faced a deadly outbreak of diphtheria. returned each spring to Alaska to continue his employment there, leaving Sinopse: A histria de um homem (Willem Dafoe) e sua equipe de ces puxadores de tren que transportaram remdios para a populao do Alasca, a fim de combater uma epidemia, durante a dcada de 20. Home considered the hero of the run. Sled dog racing was a demonstration event at the Lake Placid Winter Olympic Games in 1932, where Seppala earned a silver in the event. A Dog-Puncher on the Yukon. Within the year, after the dust had cleared, Seppala and Togo began to be recognized for their accomplishments. They asked him to begin traveling toward Nenana. Togo IN 1913 SEPPALA'S EMPLOYER Jafet Lindeberg, a mining company operator, As for Leonhard Seppala, famous as a dog sledder (), I think I knew him well because I was taken for a ride with his white dog team one Sunday. The safer alternative was twice as far. Leonhard did farm work, keeping the family homestead going while Photo illustration by Slate. Seppala and his team are crossing the sound when they find themselves stranded on an ice floe, separated from shore by a narrow but formidable strip of sea. While only black and white photos exist of Togo when he was alive, Leonhard Seppala had him custom mounted after his death at age 16. By that time, he had already been a lead sled dog for seven years. The Winter of 2018, the City of Nome earmarked some buildings in Nome for destruction because of their abandonment . While none of the mushers lost their lives, several of them succumbed to frostbite, including Charlie Olson and Gunnar Kaasen, who completed the final two legs of the journey. father's fishing boat the "Leviathan" at the age of twelve, and Car, train, or group tour. SEPPALA'S EXPLOITS and the Poland Spring kennel breeding gave Genealogy for Constance M Seppala (Van der Straeten) (1884 - 1969) family tree on Geni, with over 230 million profiles of ancestors and living relatives. driver bribed by gamblings interests; at such odds, had the team won the race According to the Salisburys, this is also true to life. [4][9] When Seppala was two years old, his family moved within Troms county to nearby Skjervy municipality on the island of Skjervya. It was unusual at that time to keep sled dogs working when the snow thawed, or to spend as much time with them as he did. At age 20, Seppala entered the family trade, and it was around this time that his childhood sweetheart, Margit, died unexpectedly before they reached the altar. The mutual trust between Seppala and Togo was also as depicted. (a hand-forged vise) that would demonstrate his competence at the Craving an escape from his grief,. In reality, the winds were in a rare state of calm, and Seppala had a crowd to cheer on the beginning of his journey to Nulatohalfway to Nome, but still a six-day journey encompassing a total of 630 miles. Character information By January 1927, Seppala had opened a kennel with a socialite named Elizabeth Ricker in Poland Springs, Maine, and he was traveling between Alaska and Maine. The Disney+ movie Togo is about the heroic run of the titular Siberian husky, who led a team of sled dogs across hundreds of miles to deliver diphtheria antitoxin to the town of Nome, Alaska, during an outbreak of the disease in 1925. The true story behind Togo confirms that as a result of his relatively small size, illness, and bad behavior as a young puppy, Leonhard Seppala decided that Togo was not sled dog material and gave him away to be a house pet when he was six months old. Togo was the true champion of the Serum Run. Was Togo really such a good boy as the movie suggests? seventy Siberian dogs bought at the Siberian trading village of Markovo on the The following year a team of ten sleddogs was brought to Nome from eastern Claim at Anvil Creek. in a blizzard and nearly going over a two-hundred-foot precipice along the In the movie, Leonhard Seppala is depicted as a stoic, hardscrabble Norwegian whose demeanor is in direct contrast to that of his softhearted Belgian wife. His career took off when he won the Sweepstakes the following year, beating experienced musher Scotty Allan by two hours. Seppala became the crucial figure in the delivery by dogsled of a 2004). [7] His father's family name is of Finnish origin. I have always felt that great men need great challenges in order to shine. In 1931 the SeppalaRicker partnership ended. Roald Amundsen. His telegram is pictured below. 12.5K subscribers This clip features famed Alaska dog musher Leonhard Seppala and his wife Constance Seppala sitting on the porch in front of a house and playing with a litter of puppies.. The only way in, then and now, after the snow flies, is by plane. In 1900 Sepp succumbed to the lure of gold; on the 14th June he arrived He had learnt to wrestle as a boy, virtually as a matter Mumbet protected her sister and took the blow instead. https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MPZG-Z2K, https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XHBL-18T, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Leonhard_Seppala&oldid=931924516, Nome City Cemetery, Nome, Nome Census Area, Alaska, "United States Census, 1910," database with images, FamilySearch (, "United States Census, 1930," database with images, FamilySearch (. 1946. Seppala was not yet ready to participate in this, the longest of races. While in Skjervy, his father worked as a blacksmith and fisherman, building up a relatively large estate. Regardless, Seppala could tell that Togo wanted to press on. Overwhelmed by choices? Sled dog breeder Leonhard Seppala is part of G.I. Half of the meeting is logistics: Welch explains that the serum they need for the diphtheria has been found at the Fairbanks Railroad Hospital (more than 500 miles away) and that it could be put on a train to Nenana (still 483 miles away). Big ship or small ship? Balto became famous, but the unsung hero was Leonhard Seppala's Siberian Husky, Togo. [1], When the serum passed to Seppala, night was falling and a powerful low-pressure system was moving towards the trail from the Gulf of Alaska. The serum! Poland Spring stock, marked the founding of the second historic Seppala Ivanoff had to run after Seppala as he raced past, shouting, "The serum! His skeleton is in the Peabody Museum of Natural History's collection at Yale University. tough and self-reliant. Wikipedia contributors, "Leonhard Seppala," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 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