AK@50 » Forget-Me-Nots

Arliss Sturgulewski

pyack — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 23:46:51 +0000

Arliss Sturgulewski came to the territory of Alaska in 1952.

Six years later her family attended the bonfire on the park strip in Anchorage – though her late husband, an engineer, did not support statehood.

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Chuck Hawley

pyack — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 23:42:57 +0000

Chuck Hawley says miners opposed giving land to Natives.

But in the ’70s, there was a shift in the politics of the Alaska Miners’ Association. Bigger mining companies were again seriously looking at mineral development in the state.

And, like the oil companies, they needed clear land titles.

There was also a leadership change in the miners’ association.

Chuck Hawley became head of the Anchorage branch and later its executive director.

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Connie Bacon

pyack — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 23:41:17 +0000

Connie Bacon was a teenager in Texas when she heard about Alaska’s attempt to become a state.

Like many Texans she was not too keen on the idea.

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Dan O’Neill

pyack — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 23:37:37 +0000

Dan O’Neill wrote “The Firecracker Boys” — a book about Project Chariot, a plan to use H-bombs to carve a harbor in the Arctic.

Many of the same business leaders who had supported statehood also backed this project near Point Hope.

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Ed Crittenden

pyack — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 23:30:00 +0000

Ed Crittenden came to Alaska as part of the Coast Guard during World War II.

He stayed and built an architectural firm. He was here during the Good Friday earthquake.

He and his wife Kit remember one of the projects Ed designed – the first Tower of the Hotel Captain Cook. Wally Hickel built right near where land had liquefied and sunk into Cook Inlet in the quake.

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Eldon Galier

pyack — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 23:09:08 +0000

Eldon Galier jumped ship in 1946 to make a home in Anchorage.

The town was mostly wilderness then.

He made his mark on the state doing a variety of things including building the first public power system for the village of Dillingham 50 years ago – the same summer congress voted to allow Alaska to become a state.

But his favorite memory is getting his first moose.

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Jack Roderick

pyack — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 01:48:51 +0000

Jack Roderick came to Anchorage in 1954 and wrote “Crude Dreams” about finding oil on the Kenai Peninsula.

He remembers how some local business men who bought leases there, got rich despite themselves.

These oil investors met across the street from the old Federal building.

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Ed & Kit Crittenden

pyack — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 01:24:24 +0000

Kit Crittenden remembers the celebrations in Anchorage 50 years ago when Congress finally gave the go ahead for Alaska’s statehood. She and her husband, Ed, were both active supporters.

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Jim Blasingame

pyack — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 01:21:03 +0000

That route he’s talking about was the Alaska Railroad.

And he ought to know. Jim Blasingame is called the “unofficial historian of the Alaska Railroad.”

And when it came time to build a headquarters – Anchorage was not the first choice.

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John Basler

pyack — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 01:18:52 +0000

John Basler came to Alaska in 1947 to work at remote federal aviation stations.

His first assignment was Middleton Island.

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John Jack de Yonge

pyack — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 01:15:49 +0000

John Jack de Yonge remembers meeting Mucktuk Marsden during the Constitutional Convention in Fairbanks.

De Yonge , a senior at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, was covering the convention for the Anchorage Times when in the first draft of the Alaska Constitution was presented.

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Laurel Downing Bill

pyack — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 01:15:15 +0000

Laurel Downing Bill sits atop a treasure trove of stories inherited from her aunt Phyllis Downing Carlson.

Her aunt came to Alaska as a young girl in the early 1900’s when her father, Laurel’s grandfather, moved to Cordova to help build a railroad to Kennecott.

Aunt Phyllis grew up in Cordova.

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Lee Jordan

pyack — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 01:05:23 +0000

In 1958, Lee Jordan was a service man stationed in Anchorage and making a little money setting type for the Anchorage Times when news came through that the Senate had finally passed the statehood bill.

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John Whitehead

pyack — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 01:02:51 +0000

John Whitehead is a historian who spent two decades researching and writing the book – “Completing the Union: Alaska, Hawaii and the Battle for Statehood.”

He remembers the efforts of a New Orlean’s business man who spent his on funds to help turn the territory of Alaska into a state.

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Marge Mullen

pyack — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:59:09 +0000

Marge Mullen and her husband, a bomber pilot during the Second World War, flew a small plane to Alaska – looking for a frontier life.

When the federal government opened up homesteading to vets, she and her husband walked 60 miles, endured some wet nights camping till they got to the stream they had seen drawn on the map.

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Walt Parker

pyack — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:51:47 +0000

Walt Parker has been on the frontlines of the battle to safely develop Alaskan oil.

He traveled up and down the Alaska pipeline route trying to make sure it was built right.

A watchdog was needed from the very beginning.

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Kit Crittenden

pyack — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:36:23 +0000

Kit Crittenden lived in Anchorage before Alaska became a state.

After spending a year living in Finland, she was convinced the need town needed more trails.

One of her first projects was the Chester Creek Park.

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Mia Basler

pyack — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:22:32 +0000

Mia Basler ‘s husband John, brought her over from Holland to live at several remote federal aviation stations.

They remember a difficult birth at Moses Point, about 100 miles from Nome.

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Neva Eagan

pyack — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:19:13 +0000

Neva Eagan was a young mother in 1958 when the senate approved statehood for Alaska.

Married to the man that would become Alaska’s first governor, she was in Washington watching the senate as the vote neared.

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Willie Hensley

pyack — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 23:54:26 +0000

Willie Hensley wasn’t even in the state just before statehood.

An Inupiat from Kotzebue, he was at a private prep school on the East Coast.

During his four years there he could only afford one trip home.

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Edward Itta

pyack — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 23:52:18 +0000

Edward Itta was 13 when Alaska became a state.

He had just left Barrow for the first time to attend boarding school.

Fifty years later he is Mayor of the North Slope Borough.

He reflects back on what it was like being an Inupiat Eskimo living in the territory of Alaska.

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Emil Notti

pyack — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 23:50:53 +0000

Emil Notti was a young man when he wrote a letter to a few Natives group suggesting that they get together to Native rights to lands in Alaska.

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Ingrid Peterson

pyack — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 23:48:27 +0000

In 1963 Ingrid Peterson became the first person to fly a single-engine plane over the North Pole.

She took off from Fairbanks with her husband, Ayna, navigating.

Her Cessna 205 was loaded with 200 gallons of extra fuel.

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Johanna Bouker

pyack — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 23:41:57 +0000

Johanna Bouker grew up in Dillingham the daughter of the man who developed the Brooks Camp in what would become the Katmai National Park and Preserve.

The old Malatka Air Service was a family affair with Johanna’s mother running the office.

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