He was born at Grand Forks, North Dakota, and trained as a civil engineer at the University of North Dakota. In the 1920s, he worked on railroad, mining and other engineering projects.

From 1933 to 1935, he served in Byrd's Second Antarctic Expedition as a civilian in charge of East Base in Little America, for which he received the U.S. Navy Special Silver Medal.

Over the next thirty years, he served in four other expeditions and was an active-duty officer planning Anarctic expeditions. While working for the U.S. Interior Department he was based in Hawii and was in charge of preparing Howland Island for the arrival of Emilia Earhart in her attempt to fly around the world in 1937. He monitored her last message before she vanished over the Pacific Ocean. As a member of the Naval Reserve, he was called to active duty in August 1941 and was stationed at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 when the Japanese attacked U.S. bases there.

During World War II, he fought in the battles of Tarawa and Saipan and was awarded the Bronze Star. After the war, he worked as a Federal aeronautics official in Hawaii, then did research at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He was a civilian aide in South Korea during the war there and was later appointed an operations analyst for the Office of Naval Research. 

He retired from the Naval Reserve in 1962 and from government work in 1967. His first wife, the former Ruth Slayberg, died in 1932. He was survived by his wife of 55 years, the former Aviza Johnson and three children. He is buried in Section 30 of Arlington National Cemetery.

His second wife, Aziza Johnson Black, died in Washington, D.C. on May 7, 1997 and is buried with him.

Photo By Michael Robert Patterson, 1999