(The following article by John Myers was distributed by the Associated Press on August 23. A.K. Gregson is a member of BLE Division 435 in Hamlet, N.C.)
ROCKINGHAM, N.C. — A.K. Gregson of Hamlet has been happily married for 57 years, but for 45 years he’s had a second love.
His wife, Mary Boggs Gregson, has known about his second love since it became part of their lives and she gently chides her husband about it whenever she signs a note to him. “She signs notes to me ‘Number Two’, but she’s really number one,” A.K. explains.
His second love is the Grand Canyon, which A.K. and Mary first laid eyes upon on a trip to see her parents in San Diego, Calif., in 1958.
“I fell in love with it then and from there on we’d make it a point to go by there whenever we’re going out West or coming back home,” A.K. said.
Arthur Knott Gregson, known by all as A.K., is 80 now and the love affair continues.
He met his wife when he was assigned to San Diego while serving with the U.S. Navy in World War II.
He survived some of the biggest naval battles of the war, including Okinawa, where he operated a landing craft that ferried Marines ashore to assault that Japanese island.
His WWII service in the Pacific from 1944-46 also includes some of the other sites of the biggest battles of that conflict, Iwo Jima, the Philippines and the Caroline Islands.
But when he was discharged from the Navy, his first stop was Laguna Beach, Calif., where he and Mary Boggs were married in July 1946.
The couple came home to Hamlet, where A.K. resumed work for the railroad, then known as the Seaboard Airline. He started work for the railroad in December 1941, and picked up where he left off, working as an engineer on freight trains and Amtrak from 1948.
“Since that first year we stopped at the Grand Canyon, we’ve gone at least once a year and for the last 19 years, we’ve been twice,” A.K. said.
Not content to stand on the rim and look, A.K. has hiked into the canyon at least 50 times.
About 1960 he began hiking the canyon with his children, two sons and a daughter.
Meg, the oldest, is now a teacher in Fayetteville. Son Johnny is, like his father, a railroad engineer for Southern Railway in Cary and son Glenn is a minor league pitching coach for the Boston Red Sox in Helena, Montana.
Wife and mother Mary made two-trips-in-one down into the canyon, her first and her last.
“Mary rode a mule down to the bottom once,” A.K. said.
“She said she wanted to find out what was so attractive to us down there. She said a little prayer going down, ‘Lord, if I get out alive I’ll never come back.’ And she never did.”
A.K. said the guides of treks down into the canyon all give the same humorous warning.
“They say, ‘It’s a little dangerous. There’s several drop-offs of two or three thousand feet. If you happen to fall, keep your eyes wide open because the scenery will be beautiful.'”
A.K. has become an expert on the Grand Canyon over the years, having hiked virtually all of it.
“The canyon is 277 miles long, eight to 16 miles wide and a mile deep. The main trail is eight miles long and there’s dozens more trails. I’ve been down them all.”
When he was a youthful 55, A.K. hiked from the south rim to the north rim, 24 miles, in two days, while Mary drove the hundreds of miles around the canyon to pick him up.
He spent the night camped out beside the Colorado River at the bottom of the canyon.
When his son Johnny was 51, he hiked the same route in 11 hours, topping his father.
With all his personal knowledge of the canyon, A.K. has been a teacher and lecturer to hundreds of visitors to the canyon over the years, sharing his knowledge of the trails.
“Repetition is the best teacher,” he said. “It’s become an obsession with me.”
And his reputation has also come home with him. For decades, A.K. has been called by a local travel agent when someone wants advice about what to see at the Grand Canyon.
For the past two or three years, A.K. has slowed down a bit, staying on the rim and enjoying the view instead of hiking down into the canyon.
But he said there’s nothing like the experience or the view from the bottom of the canyon.
“If you can get down into the canyon and look up … it’s a feeling you can’t get without being there.”
And though he’s traveled over most of the world, A.K. said he’s seen nothing to top the natural scenic beauty of the American West and the Grand Canyon.
“There’s nothing to compare to this country for pure beauty.”
A.K. has already made his spring trek to the canyon this year in May with some friends.
And he’s planning a solitary journey in October to his favorite lodge on the canyon rim.
“I’m going to spend six days just looking down into the canyon,” he said.