North Pole Promise

A Documentary by Dr. S. Allen Counter

Narrated by James Earl Jones

North Pole Promise is a timeless story of two American explorers and their secret legacy left behind at the North Pole 100 years ago. Admiral Robert E. Peary, and his associate Matthew Henson both fathered sons with Greenlandic Inuit (Eskimo) women during their attempts to reach the North Pole in 1906. Peary and Henson last saw their young sons as 3-year-olds in 1909, after they successfully reached the North Pole, and left Greenland never to return.

In 1986, while exploring Northwest Greenland, Harvard Neurology Professor Dr. S. Allen Counter, discovered the two sons – then 80-years old - living in the Northernmost inhabited settlement on earth. After getting to know the octogenarian “Amer-Eskimo” men, Anaukaq Henson and Kali Peary, Dr. Counter learned that their last wish was to visit the land of their fathers and meet their American relatives for the first time. With the help of the U.S. Air Force, he brought both men from the top of Greenland to the U.S in 1987, where they met their American relatives and placed wreaths at their respective fathers’ gravesites.

Upon learning that Admiral Peary was buried in an impressive monument in Arlington National Cemetery, while Henson was buried in a common grave in New York’s Woodlawn Cemetery, Dr. Counter petitioned the President of the United States for permission to disinter Henson’s remains in New York and reinter him next to Peary in Arlington National Cemetery. On August 6, 1988, the 79th anniversary of the discovery of the North Pole, Matthew A. Henson was reinterred with full honors in Arlington National Cemetery by order of the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan.

At Henson’s gravesite, Dr. Counter promised Anaukaq and Kali that he would have both their fathers honored at the North Pole on the 100th anniversary of its discovery in 1909. The North Pole Promise was fulfilled with a letter from President Barack Obama to the Inuit Henson and Peary descendants, and centennial celebration at the top of the earth when the U.S.S. Annapolis, a nuclear submarine, placed a capsule-case created by Dr. S. Allen Counter at the North Pole on April 6, 2009.