Richard Byrd Jr.; Son of Famed Explorer

Richard Byrd Jr., 68, son of polar explorer Adm. Richard Byrd. Byrd, a Harvard graduate, Boston resident and father of four sons, was last seen alive by his family Sept. 13 when he left Boston on the way to Washington for a National Geographic Society ceremony to unveil a stamp in honor of his father. His body was found Oct. 3 in a vacant Baltimore warehouse and police said he was a victim of malnutrition and dehydration. “I put him on a train and my wife was supposed to meet him,” Leverett Byrd, one of Byrd’s sons, told the Baltimore Sun. “What happened in between, I don’t know.” In 1926, Byrd’s famous father was the first man to fly over the North Pole and three years later led an expedition to the South Pole. The younger Byrd’s dream, his family said, was to establish a Boston museum for the admiral in the family’s Beacon Hill home.