The SCAR Songbook and Marching Song

by Guy Guthridge

A slim booklet, 6½ inches tall and 4 inches wide with a glossy white cover, has been in my desk drawer for years. The only identifying mark is the word “Songbook,” printed in black on the front. Someone gave it to me years ago when I still worked at the National Science Foundation. He had picked it up at a meeting of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), the nongovernmental outfit that helps to coordinate Antarctic research internationally. The table of contents lists 65 songs in alphabetical order, from “America The Beautiful” to “You Are My Sunshine.” Words (no music) are in the 48 pages that follow. The SCAR Marching Song, occupying more than three pages, is by far the longest in the book. It’s the only hint of a date of publication:

And soon we’ll meet in Jackson Hole,

In nineteen seventy-four.

The responsible party was Dr. James H. Zumberge, who lugged his full-size 120-bass accordion to SCAR meetings in the 1970s and 1980s and led singing sessions at many of them. Dr. Zumberge was chancellor of the University of Nebraska Lincoln 1972-1975, president of Southern Methodist University 1975-1980, president of University of Southern California 1980-1991, and president of SCAR 1982-1986. He died in1992 of a brain tumor, age 68.

In the Society’s newsletter, he was Gentleman Jim. Gentleman Jim got a lot of ink over the years. In the September 1979 issue editor Paul Dalrymple writes that when Gentleman Jim showed up at Little America V in 1957, “even before he took off his backpack, he had opened a bottle of Scotch to help ward off any infectioudiseases that might be running rampant at Little America. It was obvious that he was a health nut.” Next morning at the station chapel Gentleman Jim “played the Wurlitzer and sang hymns like he was right out of the Mormon Tabernacle.”

In the October 1981 newsletter, Gentleman Jim is recruited for the 25th IGY anniversary “to play the piano and to lead us singing ribald tunes of old.” The SCAR Marching Song as it appears in the Songbook, though politically incorrect, is not ribald. In the July 1992 newsletter, Robert H. Rutford explains that Gentleman Jim wrote the original (probably in the early 1970s) and in 1985 was involved “in the cleansing of the then-existing verses, much to the dismay of some of the old Antarctic crew!” Here is the “cleansed” first verse, sung to the tune of Happy Wanderer:

We are the men of SCAR we are

Antarctic is fraternity

We leave our homes for many months,

‘Way from women’s liberty.

The sixth verse explains:

Our meetings are away from home:

There’s a reason, don’t you see?

At home, we’re just a bunch of blokes.

But here – we’re company.

The science disciplines get their due in five of the verses. Here’s one:

Geophysicists do a job,

They measure sound through ice.

And when you see the results they get,

It’s the same as shaking dice.

The world was younger then, perhaps more willing to have fun, maybe simpler. SCAR certainly was less complex. Today the organization has 46 member countries, whereas for its first twenty years the number was twelve. From the song:

There’s hardly room for any more,

Let’s keep it all that way.

The Songbook and the SCAR Marching Song seem anachronistic, but they held sway with delegates of an earlier era. Bob Rutford wrote, “Jim was a musician of international reputation, at least among the SCAR nations.” I’ve held on to the booklet as an old friend. Now, like the song on page 15, I’m looking over a four leaf clover that I overlooked before. Thank you, Gentleman Jim.

To see the songbook, click HERE.