MANITOWOC (NBC 26) — A Manitowoc Public Utilities employee has lived a life few of us can imagine, including spending a year at the South Pole before finding his way to Wisconsin's lakeshore.
William Lindman, now a water production maintenance foreman for Manitowoc Public Utilities, says his adventures started with a babysitter who sparked his imagination.
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"It didn't just start with, I'm going to Antarctica," Lindman said.
His babysitter had served in the Peace Corps, and he eventually joined, serving as a water sanitation volunteer in Uganda.
Years later, back home in Missouri, he was working at a water plant when more inspiration struck.
"There was a documentary on Netflix about a year on ice… And I got to thinking, if there's 1,200 people at this station, they're gonna need water," Lindman said.
With his life packed into a single bag, he was on his way to the South Pole. Lindman became the 1,472nd person to spend a winter there.
"It's dark the whole time… One sunset and one sunrise the whole year... The warmest was about negative 36... The coldest was negative 107 with a negative 170 to 180 wind chill," Lindman said.
He helped clean water from under the ice for drinking and other daily use. His crew called it "Jesus water," believed to be 2,000 years old.
"We were cleaning probably the most pure water in the world," Lindman said.
Even with the isolation, there were challenges.
"There would be days I didn't talk to another human," Lindman said.
But while there, he did meet a woman from Wisconsin on a dating site. He thought Manitowoc, on the water, looked like a nice place to live.
"We truly have the greatest resource on Earth right next to us," Lindman said.
Now, nine years later, he's a water production maintenance foreman, a husband and a father.
"Manitowoc has really become my home—our home," Lindman said.
You can hear more of Lindman's story at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum's "Think and Drink" on December 4, where he'll be sharing even more about his time at the South Pole and his journey to Manitowoc.
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