ROCHESTER, Minn. - A quarter century after Nick Majerus first went to Antarctica as a construction worker and ended up getting three family members to follow, a mountain on the continent bears their name.
Mount Majerus juts out of a ridge about 80 miles from Ross Island, the location of McMurdo Station, where the Rochester man worked as a metal foreman for scientists in the U.S. Antarctic Program of the National Science Foundation.
"It had a nice ring to it," Majerus said.
He asked the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names to designate a Mount Majerus about a year ago. In July, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names approved the moniker for a peak at the south end of Kuivinen Ridge in St. John's Range in Victoria Land.
In 1980, Majerus answered a want ad and started working for private contractors in Antarctica - dubbed "The Ice" by those who brave the frigid weather to work there.
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In 1991, his brother, Gregory "John" Majerus, followed him to McMurdo as a welder. Nick's daughter, Michelle, joined the work force there in 1994, and Gregory's daughter, Nicole, went to work there in 1996.
