The Navy pilot who flew on a secret expedition to Antarctica

Martin E. “Gene” Litz was a Navy pilot and an Antarctic explorer — and a geologist and a photographer, a college instructor and a philanthropist, a real estate agent and an architect.

Eventually, the Baltimorean accumulated so many titles that he typed all 24 of them out in tiny red letters on a crisp white business card. He was usually a direct man of few words, family said, but if you asked him about any one of those ventures the storyteller would come to life.

“He took risks … and was able to live a pretty amazing life because of it,” said his daughter-in-law, Sarah Litz. “That business card is a testament to the risk-taker part of him — the fact that he didn’t stick to one thing, as many of us do. He was willing to keep trying new options, new things.”

If there’s anything he should be remembered for, it’s that adventurous but pragmatic spirit, loved ones said. Gene Litz died Aug. 21 of natural causes at age 100.

He was born March 11, 1926, and grew up in Baltimore’s Homeland neighborhood. He made lifelong friends with the boys who lived on his block, said his son, Leverett Litz. He especially enjoyed ice skating in the winter.

His mom died when he was still in elementary school, and he didn’t get along with his stepmother. Litz, who also had an older brother, mostly talked about his father as a disciplinarian.

After graduating from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, Gene enlisted in the Navy.

He fell into a job as a Navy aviator, a thrilling but harrowing role that gave him new appreciation for life, his son said. He twice believed he would die during flight training in Florida and Illinois — once in a near-drowning and again when a plane engine failed while he was practicing nighttime landings.

After finishing his training, Gene volunteered for the Navy’s secret expedition to Antarctica, where military officials would map uncharted parts of the continent from the air. Gene was a pilot and navigator for Operation Highjump from 1946 to 1947, federal records show.

When one of the Navy planes crashed, killing one of Gene’s close friends and two others and leaving six more stranded, he took part in the search-and-rescue efforts.

Litz Bluff on Antarctica’s Thurston Island was later named in his honor.

“He never showed emotion, so it wasn’t like he got choked up or anything, but he was just talking about it matter-of-factly,” Leverett said. “That was a huge, huge part of his life and a huge ordeal for him.”

After the expedition, Gene stopped in Trinidad before returning to the U.S. He fell in love with the beach and local culture.

Life back in the states wasn’t as cold or treacherous as it was in Antarctica, but Gene made sure it was just as interesting. As the years went on, he hopped from job to job, learned new skill after new skill. Slowly, he racked up the titles that would fill his business card.

He first studied geology at Johns Hopkins after his military service ended in 1949, then started his civilian career with a geological survey company. He worked a few odd jobs in the field “but none of it stuck,” Leverett said.

Gene loved to ski — a lifelong passion he would continue until age 87 — so he started organizing international ski trips. After moving to New York, he began working for Ski Magazine, where he covered the Winter Olympics. He then transitioned to magazine ad sales.

As he grew older, he picked up carpentry and construction work. He became a graduate teaching assistant and a college admissions interviewer.

“The common thread for his stories is friends,” Leverett said. “All of his stories — they weren’t just random. They were random meetings, but they were with people that he was close to or knew very well, and all of his crazy tales have to do with that.”

While in New York, he was set up on a blind date with the future Ann Litz. They were skiing, and Gene had a small accident that left him with gauze up his nose.

“For whatever reason, that made an impression on her,” their son said.

The couple soon married, moved to Connecticut and adopted their son in 1970. Eleven years later, the family returned to the Baltimore region. They always kept cats, which became Gene’s favorite animal, even though he was allergic to them.

Gene worked a lot and wasn’t home often, his son said. His father played the role of the strict parent while his mother was more of an enabler, Leverett said.

In 1988, Gene came downstairs one day and bluntly told his son: “Well, your mom didn’t want to tell you this because she didn’t want to upset you, but we’re getting a divorce. … I thought you should know.”

At that time, Leverett was struggling with drug addiction. When he was arrested as a teenager, Ann wanted to get him out of jail immediately, but Gene thought that leaving him there would teach him a necessary lesson.

In hindsight, Leverett said, his father was probably right. They rekindled their relationship when he got sober a few years later.

When Leverett introduced Sarah to his father for the first time, she noted how sharp Gene’s memory was and the vividness of his stories. She’d thought her husband had embellished some of the details. No one could do that many different things in one lifetime, right?

“He was just always looking for something new to learn,” Sarah said.

Even as he approached retirement age, Gene went back to school and earned a master’s degree in architecture from Morgan State University. More recently, Sarah joked that he knew more about computers at 100 than she did at half his age.

Gene also lived in New Hampshire for about a decade, but he spent his last 21 years at Cross Keys.

Leverett and Sarah live in Chicago, but they’d always go out to eat with Gene at his favorite tapas restaurant when they visited. Before he died, they FaceTimed every Sunday — a little cure for Gene’s loneliness, his son said, but his father would never admit that.

“He [said he] was doing it for us, which we always enjoyed,” Leverett said. “He was gracing us with his presence.”

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