Resurrecting history — Church in need of long-awaited repairs

By Clark Fair
Redoubt Reporter

When parishioner Dorothy Gray stands in the nave of Kenai’s Russian Orthodox Church and narrates for a group of tourists the story of the church, she usually keeps to a set chronology that begins with visiting missionaries in the late 1700s and progresses to the resident priest of the present day.

Gray highlights her narrative with tales of the sometimes “despicable” Russian fur traders, with the spiritual and practical benefits brought to the area by the priests, and with the costs of construction and many of the sacred icons inside the church. When she finishes with her story and answers questions, she hopes tourists will be inspired to drop off donations as they head out the door.

Although the church sits in Old Town Kenai and is one of the city’s primary tourist attractions, it still functions as an active place of worship, and the money is crucial to keeping it going and in good shape. Donations alone, however, are not going to be enough for the work that is now necessary to keep the church intact.

The building has serious structural problems that will require $255,000 to repair, a figure that dwarfs any of the previous price tags attached to its history: the original cost of the church, the purchase of its icons, the construction of the nearby chapel and rectory, the addition of the bell tower, and the many repairs along the way.

The history of the Holy Assumption of the Virgin Mary Orthodox Church in Kenai dates back more than a century.

In April 1894, when word arrived that their petition had been approved, the Russian Orthodox parishioners in Kenai were pleased. The Holy Ruling Synod in Russia had agreed to allow them to build the new church for which they had been hoping, replacing the deteriorating original church that the revered Father Igumen Nicholai had established in the 1840s.

And to help fund the project, the Alaskan Ecclesiastical Administration had sent along $400.

In their petition, the parishioners had detailed their expected expenses and the materials they would need to complete the project, so they wasted little time celebrating and got right to work.

Under the guidance of Father Alexander Yaroshevich, the work began on a site just south of the rectory on property that once had housed Nikolaevskii Redoubt, or Fort St. Nicholas, the first area Russian fur-trading outpost, established in 1795 by the Lebedev-Lastochin Company.

Each church family was required to donate five hand-hewn logs to the process. The plan called for 6-by-6-inch logs, bladed flat on each side (to form smooth walls and allow for easier stacking), and for dovetails where the logs met to form perpendicular adjoining walls.

Construction supervisor Alexander Demidov’s inventory of expenses included $49.50 for 16,500 shingles, $57 for several kegs of nails, $8 for two wide-headed axes and a new hand-drill, and $50 for paint. Also included in the budget was $420 for four months of labor at $3.50 a day.

The grand total was expected to be $916.31 — more than $21,000 in today’s money.

The project proceeded as planned, and, in an October 1895 letter, Father Yaroshevich announced that the church was complete. In the spring of 1896, under the guidance of a new priest, Father Ionn Bortnovsky, Kenai’s shiny new church was consecrated to God.

In 1900, at a cost of another $300, the church was expanded westward and a belfry was erected over the new addition. At the same time, a white picket fence was constructed around the perimeter of the church grounds. After those renovations, the Kenai church remained virtually unchanged —except for repairs, repainting and the installation of a concrete-block foundation — for the next century.

In 1970, however, one crucial change did occur: The church was named a National Historic Landmark, one of only two in the Kenai Peninsula Borough — the other is the Yukon Island Main Site in Kachemak Bay — and of only 48 across the entire state. The National Park Service, which oversees the maintenance and protection of national landmarks, termed it “the principal and most enduring representative of Russian culture in southcentral Alaska.”

In addition to bringing Christianity to the Kenai Peninsula, Russian Orthodox priests had also brought medical supplies, taught agriculture and new home-building skills to the Natives, acted as law enforcement when the “piratelike” fur traders got out of hand, and provided the area’s first school.

In fact, for the first 40 years after Alaska was purchased in 1867 by the United States, it was the Russian government, through the church, that provided the only education on the Kenai. The funding was halted only when the communists began their takeover and secularization of Russia.Now this important symbol of Kenai’s past requires new attention. The problem lies in the heart of the structure, in the middle (and largest) section of the church — the nave, the high-domed room in which services are held each Sunday.

Parishioners who enter the nave via the west-facing front door of the church can easily see that the north and south walls are seriously out of plumb. The top of each wall leans outward, as the weight of the overhead dome and its one-ton brass chandelier push the walls sideways under the constant influence of gravity.
There is, however, more to the story: Many of the original wall logs — enclosed now between exterior lap siding and interior Sheetrock — are deteriorating.

When builders created the bell tower addition, they cut away the original west wall; although they set load-bearing columns in place of the wall, the adjoining walls to the north and south were suddenly without the interlocking piece that gave them integrity. As the wall logs deteriorated, then, the walls themselves became seriously compromised.

An effort is under way between the NPS and a nonprofit historical-preservation group called ROSSIA (Russian Orthodox Sacred Sites in Alaska) to see that the church gets what it needs — and the funding to pay for it.

Just a few months ago, ROSSIA was informed that it had received from the Save America’s Treasures coalition a $125,000 matching-funds grant to help with the restoration, and it was in the process of securing another $110,000 from the Rasmuson Foundation when the national economic crisis hit. The foundation has suspended the issuance of its larger grants, and now the church finds itself in need of more creative financing.

Consequently, a group of concerned experts congregated last week at the church to examine its structure and to discuss options and funding. On hand were ROSSIA treasurer Grant Crosby of the NPS; ROSSIA board member and Anchorage architect, Carroll Stockard; Doug Gasek of the State Historic Preservation Office; BBFM structural engineer, Troy Feller; ROSSIA secretary and lifelong member of the Russian Orthodox Church, Gray; and ROSSIA chair Sheri Buretta, who is also the chairman of the board of the Chugach Alaska Corporation. Later, they met up with Kenai city planner Marilyn Kebschull to further discuss funding.

After she unlocked the church and invited the group inside, Gray, whose Orthodox grandparents emigrated from Czechoslovakia, performed her church-history narration and answered questions. Then Crosby coordinated an examination of the premises, while Gasek, Stockard and Feller took measurements and offered suggestions and observations. Buretta and Kebschull proposed a wide variety of funding possibilities and listened to the suggestions for keeping the church together.

The restoration solution at the top of the list will involve temporarily closing and at least partially emptying the church during the repairs. The northern and southern interior and exterior walls will be stripped down to the wall logs, and deteriorating logs will be replaced. Two thick steel plates will then be bolted into the logs to “tie” them together and get them to work in unison against the roof thrust. Finally, a steel cable with a turnbuckle will be passed through the attic and attached to each wall, reconnecting the two walls and allowing them to better resist the outward force.

Also on the repair list is replacing the entire foundation. The concrete blocks now beneath the church have been settling at different rates and causing the church floors to slope slightly. Because the space beneath the church is narrow, much of the excavation for this portion of the project will have to be done by hand.

During the summer tourist season, the church pulls in about $6,000 in donations, but Gray said that ROSSIA must look to additional sources to raise the necessary funds. The Rasmuson money is still a possibility next year, she said, but even if it comes through eventually, it will not be enough to fully meet the requirements of matching funding.

This time, Gray knows, it will take more than a check from the church’s home office to do the job.

Towering memories — Mystery plaque shakes up story of ’64 quake

By Clark Fair
Redoubt Reporter

In the early 1980s, friends of Jean McMaster were tearing down the lean-to attached to the back of her log-cabin dance studio near Kenai when they came across an old brass plaque hanging on the wall in a room that had been used for radio-dispatch calls to the Kenai volunteer fire department. The rectangular plaque had grind marks on each corner, as if bolts holding it in place had been sheared off to remove it.

Stamped into the metal was the name of the manufacturer: the Pittsburgh-Des Moines Steel Co. And below that were four lines of data: Whatever the plaque had been attached to had been erected in 1952 and had a capacity of 150,000 gallons. Its “upper capacity level” was 147 feet, 6 inches, while its “lower capacity level” was 120 feet, 2 inches.

Longtime area educator, Gene Morin, whose daughter and son-in-law, Chris and Britton Cook, had been helping tear down the lean-to, realized what the plaque was, and Morin thought he knew who might like to have it.

Back on Good Friday, March 27, 1964, Clayton Brockel, the 37-year-old director of adult education and recently appointed director of the new Kenai Peninsula Community College, had just finished another day of work and was planning to wind down. He climbed into his 1960 white, two-door Chevy Corvair and headed west out of Kenai toward the Wildwood Army Station, where he was a civilian regular at the Friday evening social hour.

He arrived in front of the Officers Club at approximately 5:30 p.m., parked in front of a 4-by-4 post supporting an electrical plug-in, and strolled inside. The Officers Club consisted of three stories —upstairs quarters, a downstairs mess hall and a basement bar and social area. Brockel walked in through the front door and headed down.

“I walked in, and I recall that someone said he wanted me to meet this new officer,” said Brockel, now 82. “So we shook hands, and, about the same time that we shook hands, the earthquake started.”

It was 5:36 p.m.

The epicenter of the quake, which would become known as the most powerful ever recorded in North America, was about 80 miles east of Anchorage. From its focus deep inside the earth, surface waves were generated that rippled through communities, fracturing foundations and warping the ground so that trees tipped wildly in the undulations.

At Wildwood Station, the Army’s red-and-white water tower was easily the tallest structure, rising nearly 14 stories above the low buildings and gridlike network of roads on the base. It stood directly across a narrow road from the Officers Club, about 200 feet away.

When the surface waves reached the base, they caused the tower’s huge reservoir, containing more than a million pounds of water, to rock back and forth like the more-limber trees. The waves destabilized the tower, and the entire structure came crashing to the ground.

The concussive force of water and air shot outward from the point of impact, driving the back window of Brockel’s car through the vehicle, smashing out the front windshield as it exited. The driver’s-side door bulged and bowed under the pressure as glass fragments littered the Corvair’s interior and embedded themselves in the back of the front seat. The car itself was slammed through the 4-by-4 post and shoved up onto the snow-covered lawn of the Officers Club.
Inside, no one was sure at first what was going on.

“We couldn’t move in the basement,” Brockel said. “It was shaking that bad. We had to wait until it was over. We were hanging on to anything we could hang on to.” And then the tower fell.

A huge booming sound could be heard inside, and the impact of the tower striking the ground could be felt throughout the building. The high windows on the tower-side wall of the basement were blown inward, and water began surging in through the vacant window frames.

“The lights went out in the club, and the emergency lights came on,” Brockel said. “And someone said, ‘My God, it must be a bomb!’ Because we couldn’t see anything. We couldn’t see outside.”

Outside, across Alaska, devastation was being wrought. Parts of downtown Anchorage were being reduced to rubble. Ocean waves were being generated that would kill dozens of people in Southcentral coastal communities, and the death toll statewide would rise above 100. Vibrations from the quake would be felt over a land area of more than a million square miles, and quake-generated ocean waves would affect communities as far away as northern California.

In the Officers Club, one young officer had left his room and headed downstairs for social hour just before the quake struck, Brockel said. In the violent shaking in the stairwell, he lost his balance, toppled downward and broke his arm. It was the only serious injury to anyone on the base.

“As soon as the ground stopped shaking, we evacuated the building, and when we walked out, we were walking in water,” Brockel said. “I was scared.”

Outside, the evacuating officers and civilians immediately noticed the fallen tower and realized that no bomb had struck the base. Brockel just stood there with the others, stunned by the destruction, and astonished at the fate of his car.

The first human voice that he said he remembers hearing after leaving the Officers Club contained a message of doom. A terrified civilian, who had been on duty at the power plant just down the road, raced around a corner and into view.

“It’s all over!” he screamed. “Wildwood is gone!” Fortunately, he was incorrect.

Brockel eyeballed his vehicle and wondered whether it would even start. He tried his luck, pulling open the damaged door and climbing in. He inserted the key, and the engine turned over. Lacking both a front and back window, he drove to his home on Walker Lane in Kenai.

“It was cold,” he said. “It was awful cold.”

The Corvair wound up in a lot behind Ingram’s Garage in Soldotna. “I parked it back there. I believe it was totaled,” Brockel said.

As a consolation, he purchased a 1963 Chevy Biscayne, named it “Old Blue,” and drove it for many years while he was the director of the college.

But the aftereffects of the Good Friday earthquake didn’t end with his car.

“I was teaching then, as well as being the adult education director,” Brockel said. “I was teaching at the Kenai School, on the second floor of that building, and when I went to school Monday morning, I noticed that one of my students was missing.”

The missing student was Larry Damon, son of Frances Damon, who was the daughter of Clarence and Anna Goodrich, who would later make a generous land contribution to the community college. Both Larry and Frances Damon had been in Whittier at the time of the quake, and both were killed by an ocean wave.
The quake also affected Brockel psychologically.

“I was pretty well shaken up by that,” he said. “I recall that I did not like to go into any building that was over two stories high. Like, if I were to go into Anchorage on business, I was going to stay in a motel. I would never stay in a high-rise. And I wouldn’t stay above the second floor.”

For months after March 27, he also suffered momentary dizzy spells if he experienced any vibrations akin to those in the quake. At school, when kids would walk in front of his desk, the trembling sometimes would upset him.

“The damn floor would vibrate,” he said. “And it was the same vibration as the earthquake, and I would momentarily have a dizzy spell.”

Certain elevators in Anchorage had the same effect, and Brockel began to wonder if he was going crazy, until he overheard someone else describing the same phenomenon.

Eventually, Brockel resumed his attendance at social hour in the Officers Club, but things were never the same. Parking his Biscayne might remind him of how close he had been to still being inside the Corvair when the quake hit. “I don’t know what damage would have been done to my neck and head,” he said. “I’ve often wondered about that. I’m glad I’ll never find out.”

And he remembers the next time he saw the officer to whom he’d just been introduced that day. “I said, ‘Remind me not to shake hands with you again.’ And we both laughed,” Brockel said.

During the cleanup effort that followed the tower’s collapse, one of the civilian contractors hired to help was Carl Haller, who was then married to Jean McMaster. Brockel suspects that Haller came across the section of tower containing the plaque and decided to keep it, so he detached it and took it home.
Nearly 20 years later, long after Haller and McMaster had divorced, the plaque, along with a scattered assortment of other mementos and old papers, was still hanging on the wall of the radio-dispatch room when demolition time arrived.
Gene Morin, who had retired and was visiting that summer from his home Outside, looked at the plaque and thought of Brockel, who was pleased to receive it.

“I thought that was pretty neat,” he said. “That water tower became a pretty important factor to me after the earthquake.”

Brockel’s friend, Martin Breitenfeld, made a wooden frame and used brass screws to affix the plaque to the backing. Beneath the plaque he attached a label: “GOOD FRIDAY EARTHQUAKE 1964, Wildwood Station, Alaska.”

That’s all the reminder Clayton Brockel needs these days.

Smoldering concerns — Smoking ban sparks clean air vs. city control conflagration

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Lines are being drawn in the battle over expanding smoking bans in Kenai and Soldotna to cover all places of employment and public entrances to them.

Except those lines are different in this smoking battle.

Smokers who support increasing restrictions, nonsmokers and owners of nonsmoking business establishments who oppose a more stringent ban — it’s not smokers vs. nonsmokers anymore. The crux of the argument isn’t even over whether smoking is harmful.

It’s become more a question of limits — how far should government go in protecting health and quality-of-life issues for some by restricting the rights of others. It’s either a question of when is it going to start? Or, for others — where is it going to end?

It’ll snuff out itself

Cyndi Day has been the manager of the Maverick Saloon in Soldotna for about 20 years, she said. She smokes at the bar and is a firm believer that people shouldn’t even start — especially her two teenage sons, which is why she doesn’t smoke at home or around them.

“It’s a nasty habit. I’m addicted, and I would rather people didn’t smoke,” she said. “I’ve been smoking since I was a teenager, despite numerous attempts to quit. I fully support teens against smoking. I think if they can convince their friends not to start, that would be great.”

But she is just as firmly opposed to expanding the smoking ban to include businesses like bars.

“We all realize smoking is bad for us and we don’t want people smoking, but the way you go about it is really important. You don’t make a law to make people stop. That’s not how you go about it. Prohibition didn’t make people stop drinking,” Day said.
This isn’t an area where government needs to be involved, she said — it’s a situation that will work itself out.

“It should be up to business owners. If the customer base won’t tolerate smoking, then businesses need to be nonsmoking,” she said.

Day posted a message on the Maverick’s reader board out front along the Sterling Highway that the bar is a smoking establishment. Anyone who doesn’t want to be in a smoky environment can go somewhere else, she said. And if her customer base dwindles due to people wanting to avoid smoke, she’ll change the bar’s rule on her own. But for now, the majority of her customers want to smoke.

“It’s not what the customer base is looking for right now,” she said. “I have a very firm customer base and most smoke, or don’t mind smoking.”

If the rule were to change, that doesn’t mean people will, she said.

“They’ll just start frequenting places out of town. It doesn’t change people’s habits — they just find places they’re comfortable,” she said. “I think it’s going to be very bad for my business, and a lot of my customers will go out of town. They won’t be here. I think it will be good for the J-Bar-B and the Duck and Parker’s.”

Katie Hager, who’s been going to the Maverick since 1995, despite the J-Bar-B being closer to her home, said she’d probably think about finding a different bar if she couldn’t smoke at the Maverick anymore. She said she already doesn’t spend time in Anchorage bars when she’s in the city, because of Anchorage’s no-smoking ordinance.

“It’s not illegal but they’re making it like it’s something illegal,” she said.

Part of the reasoning behind the ordinances is to protect employees from second-hand smoke. But Day said they can protect themselves by choosing where they work.

“They can work in a nonsmoking establishment, that’s a choice that they make. Nobody works here because they have to, they work here because they want to,” she said.

There are risks inherent in some jobs, and people accept them if they choose to work in those fields, she said. Policemen don’t get to say they’ll go on patrol only if no one shoots at them, and electrical linemen don’t get to declare they’re afraid of heights and have poles brought down to ground level. It’s the same with bartenders and servers — they know bars are smoky, and if they don’t want to be around that, they don’t have to work at a smoking establishment, Day said.

“If people are against smoking, this isn’t the bar to come to,” Hager said.

Health implications aside, a smoking ban isn’t something government should be involved in, Day said. Capitalism works through free market enterprise, and government interference mucks up the system, she said. The city councils should also consider that a loss of business at bars and other current smoking establishments means a loss of sales tax revenue, people being laid off and all the spiraling problems that causes — like people not being able to pay their mortgages and an increase in the need for social services, Day said.

“It’s important for everyone to think about once you start letting government infringe on you rights and the free market economy, where do you stop? It isn’t that many steps until socialism,” Day said.

Legislating manners

Tiffany Grimm, 26, of Kenai, used to smoke, but quit when she had her two kids.

“I’ve been a smoker, I’m not against smokers. I’m the daughter of a smoker and I’ve known plenty of smokers. It’s not like I’m this person that has no idea about smokers and their behavior and the way they think and things like that,” she said.

She may not be against smokers, but she is against them doing it around her kids. She’d like to see a smoking ban expand even further than the ones being proposed for businesses and the entrances to businesses and public buildings, to cover outdoor public spaces like parks, playgrounds, parades and other community events.

“A person sitting right in front of the playground smoking, so everybody’s children in the park are having to deal with it, and there’s nothing we can do about it except ask them, and they can be rude. There’s nothing to stop them from smoking right next to the swing set,” Grimm said.

She doesn’t take her kids into smoking establishments, but in public places, like parks or in front of stores, she thinks smokers should avoid her, not the other way around. When she or her husband have asked people not to smoke next to their kids, they get rude responses, she said.

“We’ve encountered almost assaulting behavior when we’ve asked people if they could step away from where our children were,” she said. “We were getting people that would just start yelling at you and lighting up right next to the stroller or lighting up right at the entrance to the store when I’m standing there with a newborn and being rude when I’ve asked them to kind of move away, and blowing smoke right at us. It’s appalling.”

Even outside, second-hand smoke doesn’t dissipate enough when it’s right next to you, she said. Since not all smokers have the courtesy to consider others when they light up, Grimm thinks it is government’s place to enforce the matter, she said.

“There are all kinds of laws in place. People are allowed to operate ATVs but there are guidelines to regulate how they can do that, so it doesn’t interrupt the lifestyle of people in general,” Grimm said. “I personally don’t mind if people drive four-wheelers up and down my road, but other people do. It doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to do that, you just have to do that in a way that’s right for everybody as a whole. You can’t get drunk and belligerent in public, either. They can’t drink on a park bench and leave their bottles there. Why can they smoke and leave their butts there?”

For the past few months Grimm has been advocating for increasing Kenai’s smoking ban. She’s talked to teachers and parents at school, neighbors, community members and teenagers — a couple hundred people in all, she estimates. She’s also written letters on the issue and consulted with the Peninsula Smokefree Alliance.

“I know other smokers who are really in support of this, too,” she said. “… It’s amazing how 95 percent of the teenagers I’ve talked to are just totally in support of this. They’re really surprised. I think that our city really does need to listen to those young voices.”

Employing clean air

Kenai Councilman Hal Smalley said he’ll introduce an ordinance that would ban smoking in all places of employment — bars, pull-tab parlors, bingo halls, etc. — and institute a buffer zone around building entrances, at the council’s March 4 meeting. It will be up for a public hearing at the March 18 meeting. Depending on the response, it may have another public hearing April 1, or the council could act on it March 18.

He said he’s bringing the ordinance forward partly based on requests of constituents.

“Over the years a number of people talked to me about smoking going on and just patrons of businesses and employees visited with me, and in fact some owners of establishments talked to me about it. It’s not really about smoking, it’s a right to a clean, safe working environment. It’s a right to clean air. The ordinance doesn’t say you can’t smoke, it just says you need to take it outside away from people,” Smalley said.

In Soldotna, Councilman Shane Horan plans to introduce an identical ordinance at the Feb. 25 meeting, with a public hearing March 11.

“I thought, ‘Great. What an opportunity to act in concert with the city of Kenai, at least timewise, and maybe potentially adopting expanding the ordinance concurrently, and in that way you kind of avoid pitting one community against another,” Horan said.

The issue is one that’s within the council’s purview, Horan said, especially since the Kenai and Soldotna councils already passed ordinances in recent years banning smoking in restaurants. But he said he has been surprised by the uproar the ordinance has caused. He’d rank it up there in controversy with the debate over a cemetery site and an ordinance restricting sign heights a few years ago.

“I didn’t realize it would spark this much emotional fervor, but I think it’s a worthy discussion with our town and our community, because I love Soldotna for the health and well-being of all our community members and the quality of life we have here, and I just see it as an opportunity to put it on the table to see if we’re ready for such a ban,” Horan said.

Smalley said mounting evidence of the health impacts of second-hand smoke also prompted him to act, especially considering second-hand smoke isn’t filtered, and ventilation systems just remove the smell from the air, not the carcinogen components of the smoke, he said. Patrons can choose to avoid smoking establishments, as he and his wife do, but employees can’t, he said.

“When it gets into your clothes, we hang our coats out on the deck or garage because it gets so bad. I could make the choice not to go there, that’s a choice. But employees don’t have that choice. The job market the way it is, they’re just glad to have a job,” he said.

Smalley said he has heard from about an equal number of people who oppose the ban as well as those who support it. Business owners are concerned it’ll hurt business, he said, but he doesn’t think it will drive patrons out of town to establishments that still allow smoking. It’ll just send them outside for a cigarette, he said.

“I imagine there will be some that will migrate there, but as a nonsmoker I find it hard to believe that someone would go to a bar (just) because they wanted to smoke,” he said.

“There’s no doubt this is going to be a hardship on some folks initially, and I think if it passes there needs to be some patience and there may be some adjusting — not adjustment in the ordinance, but adjustments made in businesses — that hopefully won’t be to the detriment of businesses,” Smalley said.

Following a trend

Smalley pointed to Juneau and Anchorage, both of which have similar smoking bans, and said he’s talked to business owners there who said business wasn’t harmed. Some, like Moose and veterans clubs, even praised the ban because it brought families back to the establishments, he said.

At Humpy’s in downtown Anchorage, manager Shawn Standley said he didn’t see any negative effects of the ban when it went into effect last year. Humpy’s actually switched to nonsmoking a month before the ban was instituted, since the bar and restaurant was remodeling and painting anyway.

“I would say it improved things. We got customer compliments that it was a more enjoyable dining environment,” Standley said. “It was the fist time they commented that they could smell the food.”

He said he thinks the clientele has been the same, and other than some griping from smokers having to take it outside, the ban wasn’t harmful.

“People were upset because they think that should be a bar to bar issue. They don’t think the state or city should be able to make that decision, but people just kind of deal with it. We got some initial grumbling, but a lot just accept it,” he said.

It would be a slightly different situation on the central peninsula if the bans pass, however. In Kenai and Soldotna, patrons who want to smoke wouldn’t have to go far to find an establishment outside of city limits that would still allow smoking. In Anchorage, a smoker would have to go out toward the Matanuska-Susitna area to escape the municipality’s limits.

Billie Milstead, manager at Polar Bar in downtown Anchorage, said the bar has lost customers due to the smoking ban. She doesn’t think they’re driving to Wasilla or somewhere that allows smoking, but she said patrons are choosing bars that offer covered, heating areas for smoking over ones that don’t.

“In the summer it’s not that big a deal, but in the wintertime it’s cold. We definitely see a drop in business,” she said.

Her advice for smoking establishments in Kenai and Soldotna: “Just fight it. Of course they’re (businesses) not going to be in favor of it. I know what’s going to happen to their business.”

Building on history — Kenai historical site gets new look as old cabins are dusted off

By Clark Fair
Redoubt Reporter

Swedish sailor Victor Sanders was about 40 years old when he came to Alaska in 1921, married a Native woman, built a one-room log home and proceeded to raise a family. The couple fished for a living, tended a sled dog team, raised a garden and produced 13 children, just seven of whom survived past infancy.

One of those children, the fifth born, they named Elsie, and several decades later she donated her family’s original cabin to the city of Kenai when it was collecting old structures to place on the lot behind the Fort Kenay building. At the time, Fort Kenay — a representative re-creation of the original fort built after the United States purchased Alaska from Russia — housed an upstairs museum, and the cabins were seen as part of the display.

Somehow, however, the history of the Sanders cabin got lost, and for many years a sign at the cabin identified it merely as Cabin No. 3, and added that “little is known” of its origins.

That changed in 2007. In the midst of a large-scale cabin restoration and preservation effort by the Kenai Historical Society, the Sanders cabin history was unearthed by Mary Ford. Then Ford, who publishes the historical society’s monthly newsletter, unfolded more of that history for her readers in the September 2007 issue.

When the restoration project is complete, the cabin will sit on a new lot and will bear a new sign — “Sanders Cabin” — with a more detailed explanation of its history and the lives of its inhabitants.

But the Sanders Cabin is not the only historically significant object being repaired and moved. Also included in the project are four other cabins and a 75 mm howitzer. The cannon and four of the five cabins currently reside within the enclosure behind Fort Kenay, but that residence will change early this summer.

The Fort Kenay building was erected in 1967, 100 years after the Alaska purchase, on land leased by the city from the Russian Orthodox Church. When the city built its visitors and cultural center in 1991, the museum articles were moved to the new facility and the lease on the church-owned lot was allowed to lapse. The cabins and the howitzer also became property of the church.

Finally, in 2007, ownership of the cannon and the structures was transferred back to the city, with the understanding that the cabins would be repaired and relocated. A new lot by the Kenai Art Guild, between Peninsula and Cook avenues, was provided by the city, and when the ground thaws in spring, work will begin on the preparation of gravel pads and concrete pier blocks upon which the cabins will be placed.

When the entire project is complete, the lot will be fenced, and visitor traffic will be directed through the old Civic League building. The project, which is being directed by George Ford, with help from engineer Joe Harris, work foreman Ivan Sjodin and his crew of volunteers, is budgeted at about $287,000, including the $150,000 value of the city land.

“The project has turned out to be more complicated than first thought,” said Ford, who in 2005 started the process of moving the structures back to city hands, with the idea of opening them up once again to viewing by the public.

The moving process has been complicated by a greater need for repair work than first anticipated. Several of the cabins need lower logs replaced, and all but one will have to have new floors put in. Additionally, the structures will need cross-bracing as reinforcement to hold them together during the move.

In one of the cabins, the volunteers were faced with the daunting task of moving a heavy old Emerson grand piano. Even after removing the piano’s legs and placing the instrument on edge, they worried about how to get it through the door without damaging it. The solution turned out to be snow-covered pieces of discarded carpeting, upon which the piano slid successfully.

The move itself will be complicated. Each cabin will have to be jacked up, and then a sling will be placed beneath the structure to allow it to be lifted by a crane onto a lowboy truck. At the new site, the crane will lift each cabin from the lowboy onto the prepared pads.

Besides the Sanders Cabin, the other exhibits include:

The Arness Cabin, built in 1925 on the bluff east of Riverview Road in Kenai. In 1948, Peggy and James Arness bought it to use as their home. They modified and added on to the original structure, and at one time the cabin was used as Kenai’s first kindergarten, and briefly to house services for the Mormon Church.

The Miller Cabin. Pioneer Emil Ness built this structure in Kasilof in 1910. In 1930, its logs were numbered and it was disassembled and barged to Kenai, where it was pieced back together again. In 1937, the family of Emil’s brother, Gust Ness, sold the cabin to Ward Showalter, who sold it to George Miller in the 1940s. After the death of the next owner, Rex Williams, his widow donated the cabin to the city in 1975.

The Dolchok/Juliussen Cabin. This cabin, which is the only structure not currently part of the Fort Kenay complex, was built in Kenai in 1922 by Mike Dolchok. He sold it in the late 1940s to Julius Juliussen, who moved it near the present site of the Peninsula Oilers ballpark and lived in it with his family for many years.

The Three Scandinavians Cabin. This cabin may have been built in the 1920s, but no one is certain. The Kenai Historical Society believes that Swede Foss may have lived in the cabin at one time, but KHS members are seeking confirmation of his occupation, and any other information anyone might have.

The 75 mm howitzer. The date stamped on the combat cannon is 1917. It was given to the city of Kenai by the Wildwood military base.

Ford said that the historical society is looking for volunteers interested in helping to restore and prepare the cabins between now and early May. The KHS crew works Thursday through Monday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Anyone wishing to help can just stop by. For more information, call Joe Harris at 283-1946 or George Ford at 283-7700.

Winding road — Life’s twists hold many surprises for Kenai resident

By Clark Fair
Redoubt Reporter

The year was about 1950 and Fiocla Wilson and her husband, Philip, were driving south of Soldotna on a recently opened section of the Sterling Highway. Suddenly, Wilson spotted something puzzling.

“We were going for a ride toward Kasilof, and I said, ‘What’s a horse doing back there in the woods?’ I only saw the back end, you know,” she said. “He said, ‘That’s not a horse. That’s a moose.’”
For Fiocla, that sighting was a first.

“I never saw a live moose until the highway was built to Homer,” said Fiocla, who was born in Kenai in 1916. “I never knew what a moose looked like.”

This may seem like a strange proclamation from someone who began life in Alaska 92 years ago and who subsisted, in part, on a diet of moose meat, along with salmon and wild berries, and some store-bought goods. Philip regularly hunted moose during open season, but Fiocla said that she never accompanied her husband on his hunts and never saw a moose wander into town prior to that drive to Kasilof.

Of course, Wilson knows that life can be full of surprises.

Born Fiocla Sacolof to a part-Russian father and a half-Russian, half-Athabascan mother, she found herself an orphan at the age of 9. Because of her young age then, Wilson said, she was unsure what caused her parents’ death, but she did realize that her life was about to change.

Her older sister took in her younger siblings, but could not afford to take in Fiocla, too. Since there was no road yet to Kenai, Fiocla was sent by boat to Anchorage to live with a relative. She attended school in Anchorage until she turned 12, at which point she decided to receive vocational training at the Eklutna Industrial School for Natives.

She arrived by train in Eklutna and stayed at the school until she was 16, attending regular classes in the mornings and training sessions in the afternoons. Wilson said she learned to work in a kitchen and a laundry, learned to sew and learned how to be a waitress, among other skills.

At the school, she was surrounded by more than a 100 other Natives from villages scattered throughout Alaska. Despite the many different cultures and languages represented there, only English was allowed to be spoken. If they were caught speaking Russian or any Native tongue, they were punished.

“There was another girl from Kenai, and I said something to her in Russian and the matron heard it,” Wilson said in a 1985 interview, recorded in a book called Our Stories, Our Lives. “We both had to wash our mouth out with soap! I don’t remember what I said. Wasn’t anything bad or anything.

“That’s how strict they were. And that’s why I can’t understand now why everything’s getting back so that they want us to talk our Native language.

“At that time the government wouldn’t allow us to talk in those languages. And now, they’re giving funds to get back to our heritage.”

Despite the strictness, however, Wilson — who was called “Fanny” by the matrons — said she was pleased that she had the opportunity to attend the school, and she fondly recalled one particular home-economics teacher who taught her an important lesson.

“I had a teacher that always told me, ‘Never be ashamed of your nationality.’ And it wasn’t your nationality that counted as much as your character and your personality. And she always told me that I would go a long ways if I would just be the way I was with my personality and character. Because she said I had an awful sweet personality.”

When Wilson left the school in 1933, she had a surprise waiting for her. A man she had always known as “Uncle Dan” met her at the train station in Eklutna, where he handed her $25 and an envelope containing a photograph of himself. He said he had written something on the photo, but he did not want her to read it until she had boarded the train.

On board, she learned that “Uncle Dan” was her biological father, who had run off to Anchorage with another woman when Fiocla was too young to remember. The man she had believed was her father had actually been a stepfather.

On the eve of her first steps into adulthood, “Uncle Dan” had reached out in his own way to let her know the truth.

A few days after leaving the boat in Kenai, Fiocla turned 17. Before the year was out, she was married to her first boyfriend, Philip, in a ceremony officiated by the Rev. Paul Shadura at the Russian Orthodox Church.

Philip, the son of a Caucasian father and a half-Russian, half-Athabascan mother, had been born in Kenai in 1912. He fished commercially in the summers and trapped in the winters. By the time the Wilson family had grown to six children in 1949, he also had an airplane, a single-engine Piper PA-12 Super Cruiser, which he used occasionally to fly out men on hunting trips.

One of Fiocla’s favorite times of year occurred when the family ventured down to their setnet site below Wildwood.

“I enjoyed that, taking the kids out on the beach,” she said. “Living in tents. It was just like a vacation for my children. They really enjoyed that.”

Fiocla smiled as she remembered the work involved in commercial fishing. “I liked picking fish. I used to think that was fun. I used to see how many I could carry. I could have 10 fish, you know — you put your fingers in their mouth and carry ’em like that.”

As she explained, she held out both hands, palms up, fingers and thumbs curled like hooks.
“And I used to run to (Philip’s) dory to put the fish in.”

From the dory, the fish went to a scow, and then on to a tender that carried them to the Libby, McNeil and Libby cannery across the wide river mouth. She said that when they began fishing in 1934, a single sockeye salmon fetched 7 cents, while a single chinook fetched a dollar. At the Kenai Commercial store at the same time, a pound of butter cost 25 cents.

Fiocla and her family fished the site until the early 1960s, when Philip decided to sell the place and buy a drift boat, which he named the Kenai. In her home today, Fiocla has a Jim Evenson painting of Philip’s plane on skis in the winter, and another painting, by one of her daughters, depicting Philip’s boat on choppy water, with the Kenai bluffs stark in the background.

Philip, who suffered from diabetes, died in 1975. Several years later, Fiocla moved into the home that she still maintains by herself, although one of her daughters lives right next door. She keeps busy with her large family — including 16 grandchildren, 16 great-grandchildren, and several great-great-grandchildren — and as a member of both the Kenaitze tribe and the Kenai Bible Chapel.

These days, the moose are more plentiful in Kenai. Some of them even wander into the neighborhood.

Billiards design racks up accolades — Owner brings pool hall to life after 19 years of planning

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

An unassuming strip mall with a pockmarked parking lot in Kenai is home to one of the top-10, best-designed new pool halls in the world.

Any surprise that statement may evoke disappears after opening the tinted-glass doors of Sharps Billiards and seeing the meticulously designed, mahogany- and nickel-themed interior that was three months of remodeling work, four buildings and 19 years in the making.

Sharps was named one of the Top Ten New Rooms in the 2008 Architecture and Design Awards by Billiard’s Digest magazine. It shares the honor with the likes of a multimillion-dollar, 20,000-square-foot hall in Australia. Sharps is 3,500 square feet and cost about $80,000 to renovate.

What it lacks in size or opulence it makes up for in attention to detail, craftsmanship and nearly two decades of dreaming.

Owner Philip Brower said he’s wanted to build a pool hall since he was 15 and lying about his age so he could get into the 16-and-up pool hall in Grand Rapids, Mich., to shoot pool with his grandfather. He spent five years in that hall, learning a game that takes a lifetime to master, and crafting a vision in his head for how he’d want his own billiards room to look someday.

“I decided about 19 years ago I was going to do this, and basically the way people see it today is how I envisioned it,” he said. “I really wanted to help change the general opinion that pool halls are a place of ill repute. People think they’re dark and dingy and smoky, or there’s drug deals going on. I wanted to prove it could be a family environment and kind of spread my love and appreciation for the game.

“You’re not going to see dogs playing pool on the wall. It’s just not going to happen.”

What patrons are going to see is the design Brower envisioned 19 years ago and has refined since then. It all comes down to the tables — six, 19-foot Brunswick mahogany tables with nickel fixtures. That theme is echoed throughout the hall. The pine wainscoting on all the walls and back counter is stained a mahogany color, as is the facing on the structural posts, the counters around the room and the dividing rail in the center of the space splitting one row of tables from the other. The wood ceiling, structural beams and chairs are stained an even redder color.

The only wood in Sharps that doesn’t carry the mahogany theme is the pool cues, which add a structural element on the walls that look more like art than sports equipment.

Accenting the auburn wood are nickel fixtures, including the electrical outlet coverings and lighting, and a splash of gold wall paint.

Brower and Sharps manager, Tim Adams, spent three months renovating the space in between shifts working on the North Slope. Brower and Adams worked at a billiards room in Anchorage in 1994. Adams saw the promise of Brower’s dream to open his own billiards hall someday, and Brower knew that employees work better if they’ve got a vested interest in what they do, so he wanted to bring Adams in as an investor as well as manager. They did the renovation work themselves — removing the paneling and peg-board walls, hanging Sheetrock, building the workstation in the back, swapping out all the lighting fixtures.

But before they could pick up a hammer, they had to find a space. That alone took four tries.

The first space Brower considered was the old Trustworthy Hardware store in the Peninsula Center Mall parking lot in Soldotna. The design in his head looked like it was ready to become reality — the architectural plans were drawn up, building permit obtained, parking spaces counted, pool tables ordered, and Adams was on his way back to Alaska from Bozeman, Mont., when the deal fell through.

“Phil called and said he was building the pool hall. I sold everything, hit the road and the rug got pulled out from under me,” Adams said.

Brower then investigated the old Gottschalks building next to Beemun’s on the Kenai Spur Highway in Soldotna. The owners seemed amenable to Brower’s intentions for the space, but he couldn’t compete with the price Liquidation World was willing to pay.

His third trip back to square one took him to the old Carr’s store in the Kenai Mall. Things looked promising once again, until the remodeling estimate came in at $350,000.

“Every place I tried to go it looked good until the last minute,” Brower said.

Meanwhile, Adams worked at IGA Country Foods for a while, then took a job on the North Slope. During one of Brower’s weeks home from his Slope job, he pulled up to the strip mall that houses Katina’s Restaurant on the Kenai Spur Highway heading north out of town and peered in one of the windows.

“In my head I saw the pool room. I said, ‘That’ll work. That’ll work.’”

Next thing Adams knew, he was getting a call from Brower asking if he wanted to be part of it.

“He was a little more demanding then asking,” Adams said. “He said, I need to go to the bank and sign the loan paperwork. I said, ‘Hey, I thought this was on the back burner again.’”

After 19 years, Brower was tired of simmering.

“You can’t give up on your dreams. People just lie down and die if you give up your dreams,” he said. “I’m just fortunate I’m one of those people who has dreams that are attainable. It’s not like I want to go to the moon.”

Maybe not, but business is taking off. Sharps has been open for five months, its clientele is increasing and Brower said business is right in line with his expectations. He hopes in the future to get more involved in the community by hosting nonprofit tournaments, and has already donated some pool cues to the Boys and Girls Club.

“I knew that this was a pool-playing community, and I knew there was this gaping void of anything nonalcoholic, as well,” he said.

Sharps doesn’t serve alcohol and it’s a no-smoking establishment. Kids under 16 need to have adult supervision. A recent Saturday night saw a middle-aged married couple at one table, a group of teenagers at another and a group of industrial workers at a third.

“It’s a good mix. And it stays clean. People police themselves, pick up their cups. People don’t even write on the bathroom walls — except this one,” Brower said, indicating his 5-year-old daughter, Jaden Hope, who seems to have inherited dad’s penchant for design and likes to express it wherever she can, whether it’s on paper, her clothes or the bathroom wall.

Brower said he went all out with the tables, with $250 pool racks that are accurate to within one-thousandth of an inch, and Sharp’s has the only regulation billiards table around. A pool league recently decided to start meeting there — although Brower said they won’t allocate more than two-thirds of the tables to league play, so other patrons can still shoot pool.

Tables rent for $10 an hour. Hours are 2 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. (or however long people stay there playing) Mondays through Fridays, and noon to 2:30 a.m. Saturdays and Sundays.
“Where else can six people go for a couple hours of entertainment and spend two to three dollars each?” Brower said.

Adam Kosydar is a regular from North Kenai. He comes in about three times a week, and will probably play even more with his winter schedule, he said.

“I don’t like going to bars, so this is a good place to play. I think they did a good job building up the establishment. It’s got a clean environment — no alcohol or drugs. It’s a good place for young kids to hang out,” he said.

Brower said the design award came about after a representative from Brunswick encouraged him to apply for it. He procrastinated at first, then decided he had a shot and paid to overnight a CD of photos just before the deadline.

“When I got the news I was elated, obviously. I hoped, and I kind of felt; no, I knew we were going to win,” Brower said.

He also sent photos to the owner of the pool hall in Michigan he grew up playing in. That hall is now remodeling on Brower’s design theme.

“The pool hall that inspired me to build a pool hall is now inspired to remodel with décor after this pool hall,” Brower said.

“I wanted to make a first-class establishment, and do it right the first time,” he said.

And it only took four tries to get to that first time.

Learning experience — Teaching in Alaska is whole new class of education

By Clark Fair
Redoubt Reporter

Mary France was pleased when she received the telegram from Juneau offering her a teaching position in the only school in Kenai. She had applied for a job teaching first grade, and she made the assumption she would be teaching first grade.

The truth was one of several surprises in store for the 26-year-old when she came to the Last Frontier in 1954.

Mary France, now 80, was accompanying her husband, Dan, to the Kenai Peninsula, where he had been appointed protection officer for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She had left behind five years of elementary school teaching — two in Washington state and three in Idaho — and was grateful for the opportunity to continue.

“Since I had applied for a first-grade position, I assumed that I had a first-grade teaching job,” she said. “Well, I didn’t realize that that wasn’t so, and when school started in the fall I discovered I wasn’t the first-grade teacher; I was the fifth-grade teacher. It was a huge difference.”

Since Kenai principal George Fabricius had been out of the area for the entire summer, France didn’t discover her actual appointment until the day before school began, barely enough time to get used to the idea, let alone prepare to teach.

Still, she dutifully took her new class and began getting to know them and figuring out how to instruct them.

Meanwhile, things were not going as planned in the first grade.

The school had estimated that it would receive approximately 25 first-graders. Instead — due in part to the 1953 establishment of the Wildwood Army Station just outside of town and the burgeoning growth of young homesteading families — opening day saw 50 first-year students cramming into Joyce Carver’s southeast-corner basement classroom.

Consequently, at a faculty meeting at the end of the first day, France was made an offer.
“That’s when they asked me if I would switch to first grade,” she said. “Mr. Fabricius thought there was someone else in the area that had applied for a job that he was going to see if he could get to come in.”

By day two, Mrs. Biggar was in charge of the fifth grade, and Mary France was a first-grade teacher, sharing a single classroom with Carver and 50 students.

“We had to hunt for desks,” she said. “It was a struggle to come up with enough desks and equipment.”
Another struggle was basic classroom operation, especially since no kindergartens existed in the area and most of their students had never been in any kind of school before. Many of the students did not know their colors or numbers, let alone the alphabet, and some were unsure of where they lived and even their last names.

For practical purposes, France and Carver sometimes split the class in half. “I took my group of students and went into the hall for beginning reading,” France said. “But many things were taught together. We could do math together. One of us would do the teaching, and the other one would supervise and keep things going.”

The cramped conditions continued until Nov. 11, when the upstairs addition to the school was complete and Carver took half of the students to a new classroom.

The problems, however, were not over. And neither was France’s introduction to the intricacies of teaching in a remote location.

Most of the town, according to the Frances, received electricity from a diesel-powered generator operated by Frank Rowley. In the mornings and evenings, when the natural light was low or nonexistent, Rowley’s generator couldn’t keep up with the demand. At those times, Fabricius would go outside and start up the school’s own “light plant.”

The principal expected energy conservation from his faculty.

“Mr. Fabricius was pretty iron-handed, I guess,” France said. “You had to keep the temperature at 68 degrees, and you never turned on three banks of lights at a time. You turned on the two inside banks, but you never turned on the third bank because of the electricity problem.”

Another occasional problem centered around recess. “Kids went outside to play, regardless of the weather,” France said. “Everybody went out to recess (at the same time), and somebody always checked the playground to see if there were moose because if there were moose on the playground we couldn’t take the kids out for recess.

“And many times the moose would come and lie just by the windows at the back of the school. And the kids couldn’t go outside to play because (the moose) wintered there.”

Another difficulty came at the end of each day, especially early in the year.

“One of the hardest things to do was to get (the first-graders) on the right bus. The military kids had their own bus, but to go out to North Kenai, it was all Greek to me,” said France, who was unfamiliar with the area herself. “I didn’t know where any of those roads were out there.

“We did the best we could to put the kids on the right bus. Then it was kind of up to the bus driver.
“One kid — the bus driver came back (to the school) with one that was left over. And he didn’t know where he lived, so we just had to stay there until his parents came.”

The teachers and students at the Kenai school made it through the year, although France said the experience was an education for everyone. The area was growing, oil was about to be discovered on the Swanson River field, and things would never be the same.

“That was the first year that they had to have two teachers (for one grade), and after that year the second grade had to have two, and then the third, and so forth,” France said. The earliest grades also stayed large, and so for many years in a row at least one teacher was added to the faculty.

France’s first first-graders would not be her last, but — including such familiar area surnames as Reger, Segura, Ames, Juliussen and Ivanoff — they would be among her most memorable. Except for a two-year foray (1957 to 1959) into high school home economics, France continued in elementary education until she retired in the 1970s.

Over the years, the area got telephones, radio, television, natural gas and paved roads, but progress was rarely easy. Mary France got better and better at teaching elementary school in rural Alaska, but it was that first year that helped prepare her for the many to follow.

State of remembrance — Readings offer perspectives on last 50 years

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

The backgrounds of those reflecting on Alaska statehood at the Kenai Municipal Library on Thursday were as diverse as those who were here to witness the historic event nearly 50 years ago: A Kenaitze Native elder, a commercial fisherman, a teacher, an oil patch worker, a Russian Orthodox priest.

Some were here at the time, and shared their firsthand recollections of the events surrounding statehood and interpretations of what it meant to their existence at the time.
Clare Swan, a Kenaitze elder, spoke about being born in Kenai and watching her community change, seemingly overnight.

“When I think about statehood, it seems to me that it just kind of snuck up on us,” she said.

Influences from the outside world — notably, the concept of doing business on credit — had drastic and lasting impacts on her culture.

“The Kenaitzes moved from being stewards of the land and water to being consumers of it,” she said. “You know, sometimes I think it’s a new definition of the word ‘charge.’”
Joan Bennett Schrader was in Fairbanks when the Constitutional Convention was in session.

“I remember the winter in Fairbanks. I wasn’t able to get up to the school and listen to them very much, but that’s probably a good thing, because I probably wouldn’t have understood a lot of it. But I’m pleased with what they came up with,” she said.

In choosing a selection to present at the library’s Reflections on Statehood readings, she found herself drifting back to 1959 in Fairbanks.

“I couldn’t find what I thought was appropriate. I went back to the Constitution of the state of Alaska and thought, ‘What was the most important part of the Constitution?’ To my mind, it’s the Declaration of Rights. … Today, a lot of us are really gung-ho on what our rights are, but we forget what our obligations are.”

Nedra Evenson remembered living in frontier Alaska, on her family’s homestead in Nikiski, when statehood was announced. Her family’s path to that point started three years before in Mt. Vernon, Iowa, where she and her husband, Jim, were teaching at Cornell College.

Evenson read Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken,” and reflected on what it was like for her family to take the path less traveled by.

“The road the other young families took, more trodden, was paved to large universities,” she said. “… But we took the road less trodden. We took the Alaska Highway to an unknown future. It was an adventure. We were young and had a boundless belief that if others had succeeded, we could also, and we agreed that we would take whatever employment was available on this frontier to earn our way.”

The diversity in presenters was matched in the diversity of material presented. Some was funny, some more poignant. There were poems, memoirs and even some Alaska ghost stories. Some shared personal memories of their time in Alaska, while others found sentiments worth sharing already expressed by authors.

The Rev. Fr. Thomas Andrew, priest at Holy Assumption of the Virgin Mary Russian Orthodox Church in Kenai, had intended to find someone else’s words to share at the event. He thought about presenting a sermon, or finding a poem to read. But nothing seemed quite right, so Andrew became a poet himself.

“I just couldn’t find anything, so, why don’t you just make something yourself?” he said.
Andrew had never written a poem before, and doesn’t even read much poetry.

“My children, I used to read to them every night, and there were some poems in there. I think that’s where it came from,” he said.

Andrew and his wife, Theresa, moved to Kenai about five years ago with their five children. He has an education degree from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and taught for 10 years, everything from third grade up to 12th. But none of that involved being a poetry teacher.

Even without a background in poetry, Andrew said he found the form familiar, since many Orthodox prayers and songs have a poetic feel to them. He doesn’t plan to add poet to his title anytime soon, however.

“You know how they say one-hit wonder? I’m just a one-hit wonder,” he said.

Nevertheless, in about a half an hour Andrew found the words to express what he wanted to say. “They Came Into My House” documents the march toward statehood from the Native perspective, starting with Russians coming to Alaska in the early 1700s, the fur trade, missionaries, the sale of Alaska from Russia to the United States, and Andrew’s hope for the future, that people love each other and live together in harmony.

The state has come a long way toward that goal in 50 years, but it’s not there yet, Andrew said.

“Even today there’s subtle racism going on, subtle discrimination. It happens all the time,” he said. “… I hope it’s getting better. It’s not written about, it’s not said about in history or anything like that.”

Bringing out those different perspectives was exactly what the Reflections on Statehood event was supposed to achieve, said Julie Niederhauser, with the library.

“It really felt like that happened, there was a dialogue on a different level that occurred,” she said.

Other readers at the event were Michael Gustkey, Robert Peterson, Virginia Walters, Sister Joyce Ross, Matthew Peters and Brent Johnson. Bunny Swan-Gease sang the “Alaska Flag” and Rep. Kurt Olson presented the library with a 49-star flag.

New InCARnation

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

After sitting idle for more than a year, the Chrysler dealership in Kenai is revving up again.

Although someone new holds the keys, there’s a familiar face at the wheel. Mel and Tony Stanley, based in Anchorage, also own Stanley Ford in Soldotna and have the local Budget Rent-A-Car franchise. Elsewhere in the state, they own Mitsubishi and Kia dealerships in Anchorage, a Nissan dealership in Fairbanks, and most Budget franchises in the state.

When word got out the Stanleys were planning to reopen the Chrysler dealership in Kenai, a former employee of the dealership made it clear he wanted to be part of it.

“I knew that they were interested in becoming the franchise dealer and wanted everyone to know how badly I wanted to get back to Kenai, so I started making phone calls,” said Duane Bannock, general manager of Stanley Chrysler.

Bannock grew up on the Kenai Peninsula and lived here most of his life, serving nine years on the Kenai City Council and working as vice president of Kenai Chrysler when Bob Favretto owned it. He and his family moved to Anchorage in February 2003 when he was appointed head of the state Division of Motor Vehicles by Gov. Frank Murkowski. Gov. Sarah Palin removed Bannock from that post in November 2007.

Bannock was ready to make good on his promise that his Anchorage residency would be temporary.

“When we left Kenai approximately five years ago, our goal was to return to Kenai,” he said. “It’s the only home I’ve ever had, it’s the only home I’ve ever loved. It’s just so exciting to be able to come back here.”

Bannock was a regular participant in community and civic events, often stationing himself in front of a grill for community cookouts.

“I can’t wait to do my first free barbecue here,” he said.

It hasn’t been determined yet whether the Chrysler dealership will continue the community events it participated in before, like hosting the ceremonial start of the Tustumena 200 Sled Dog Race. And Bannock wouldn’t say definitively whether he planned to run for public office again, but left the door open for politics.

“We’ll be full-fledged members of society,” he said. “You never can tell. I have not given up on all of my future ambitions.”
Stanley Chrysler opened its doors Sept. 15. The service department is open Monday through Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., and is honoring warranty service contracts.

“We are happy to be back in business, to be able to take care of those customers,” Bannock said.

The dealership portion is still gearing up. Bannock said he hopes to have new inventory on the lot in 60 days. In the meantime, he’s planning on purchasing 2008 model, like-new used cars complete with warranties direct from Chrysler Corp.

“I’m into big inventory. We want to have a great selection of ultimately new and used cars and trucks to choose from,” Bannock said.

Fuel efficiency will drive some inventory choices, but it’s still Alaska, so even smaller vehicles need four-wheel and all-wheel drive, Bannock said.

“With fuel prices the way they are, you need something other than just a big pickup truck,” he said.

Rising gas prices have an impact on budgets, but Bannock said he didn’t think they would make people stop driving or buying vehicles.

“I think fuel prices certainly do affect us, what I’m not sure of is if they’ve affected our driving habits,” he said.

“We haven’t altered driving habits, but we might have altered other spending habits because of the price of fuel,” he said. “Driving a more fuel-efficient vehicle will just free up some money to go somewhere else, I think. People still have to drive to work; they drive to their kids’ sporting events and activities. Those things don’t change.”

Bannock said the Stanleys are familiar with the central Kenai Peninsula and the economic conditions here.

“I know they are up on the Kenai Peninsula. They’ve been extremely successful with Stanley Ford, and they like what they see in the community,” Bannock said. “They’ve been in business in the community before with Budget Rent-A-Car, and they own several parcels of property down here. They’re big on the place, so this has become another opportunity.”

Bannock is confident the dealership can succeed.

“I believe that Kenai’s best days are still in front of it. Obviously I’m not the only one who thinks that. Wal-Mart thinks that, Lowe’s thinks that. When you look at the explosion of retail estate, you look at new houses being built in the area; those are all indications of a good economy.

“Chrysler Corporation has always done well in Alaska, and in the Kenai Peninsula, and I’m just pleased to be a part of that.”

Name ‘redoubt’ has long history, different meanings in Kenai area

The Redoubt Reporter is a great name for the Kenai Peninsula’s newest newspaper. The term “redoubt” has a long history here in Cook Inlet.

The word derives from the Latin “reductus” meaning “secret place.” In French it became “redoubte,” or a temporary fort. Both the Russian and English versions (redoubt and redutskaya) mean a fort with a palisade or walled enclosure. Today the term applies to Mount Redoubt, but originally was used as the name of the third Russian fort to be built on the Kenai Peninsula, called Nikolaevsk Redoubt or Redoubt St. Nicholas.

Russians of the Lebedev Company started the post in 1791, hauling their ship, St. George the Victorious, up the small creek the Dena’ina called Shqit Tsatnu (Sloping Flat Cliff River), below what is today called Old Town. There, Grigor Konovalov and Amos Balushin and about 60 Russians built three walls and a roof using their ship as the fourth wall.

A year or so later the permanent Redoubt St. Nicholas was built at the top of the bluff in the vicinity of the present Russian Orthodox Church.

The redoubt was about 120 yards in its longest dimension and consisted of a large barracks, a foreman’s house and numerous smaller buildings, including a blacksmith shop and gunpowder storage. In addition, there were small dwellings where Dena’ina women taken as concubines of the Russians lived.

The post was surrounded by a double row of 12-foot-high spruce poles sharpened at the top. At either end of the parallelogram-shaped palisade was a blockhouse — each with a small cannon and number of loopholes for musket fire.

The Dena’ina called Redoubt St. Nicholas “uch’daltin,” derived from a traditional Dena’ina word for a spiritually induced protective shield the Dena’ina created around themselves in warfare. The Dena’ina uch’daltin was apparently more powerful than the muskets and cannons of the Russians, since they defeated their Russian occupiers at Redoubt St. Nicholas in a 1797 battle, and the Lebedev contingent left Alaska.

The fort site was taken over by agents of the Russian America Company, who operated a small trading post until the American purchase in 1867. During the whole of Russian America there were seldom more than about 10 Russians at Kenai, while the Dena’ina village of Shk’ituk’t in the vicinity of the senior citizen housing along the bluff behind the present Arby’s was populated by about a hundred Dena’ina. During that time, the Dena’ina population of the Kenai and Kasilof areas was several thousand.

When Battery F of the Second Artillary of the U.S. Army arrived in 1869, they found the Russian buildings mostly dilapidated. Some were used by the post, along with a number of newly built structures scattered between the bluff and the present Kenai Spur Highway.

The American fort, called Fort Kenay, itself was abandoned only two years later and Battery F was sent to the American West to fight in the Indian Wars.

Apparently the term “redoubt” was first applied to the volcano across the inlet in the mid-19th century. Captain James Cook had sighted the mountain (or possibly he was seeing Iliamna, it’s hard to tell) in his 1778 exploration of Cook Inlet but did not name it. His third in command, John Gore, named it Mount Vulcan in his journal because it was steaming at the time, but the name did not stick. Mikhail Tebenkov’s 1852 map calls the volcano Sopka Redutskaya, sopka meaning mount or mound and redutskaya a Russian version of redoubt named, of course, for Redoubt St. Nicholas. Before that the Russian mapmaker Constantine Grewink had called the mountain Gora Vysokaya, which means, “high mountain.”

My personal favorite name for the mountain is the Dena’ina name Bentuggezh K’enulgheli, which means, “One that has a notched forehead.” Redoubt has a volcanic blowout on its southeast side dating to sometime in the prehistoric era when magma migrating to the surface was blocked from going up the vent. Pressure built up and an eruption blew out the side, creating a “notched forehead.”

So this newspaper could be called the Notched Forehead Reporter. Or, if you wanted a complete Dena’ina name, “reporter” could be iqech’ dghini\u — literally “it is said.” So, the masthead would read Bentuggezh K’enulgheli Iqech’ Dghini\u. On second thought, maybe that would take too much explanation — Redoubt Reporter is just fine. But we should remember words and names carry on a long and important tradition at this place and are part of our heritage — as is the news.

Dr. Alan Boraas is a professor of anthropology at Kenai Peninsula College.

Quake memory provides window to the past

By Clark Fair
Redoubt Reporter

When the ground jolted beneath the feet of 18-year-old Dave Hutchings, his gut instinct told him it was an earthquake, but his mind told him it might be a bomb.

Living just north of the military base at Wildwood and immersed in Cold War propaganda throughout his childhood, Hutchings knew the thought wasn’t all that far-fetched. The country had nervously watched the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis unfold only a year and a half earlier, and no state was closer to the Soviet Union than Alaska.

Despite the Communist threat, however, Hutchings decided at the time — 5:36 p.m., Friday, March 27, 1964 — to treat the sudden shaking as a temblor.

Hutchings had stopped at a Chevron station, near Wildwood, after a day of high school in Kenai. After working there part-time, he had been about to head back into town for his second part-time job — cleaning up at a construction site — when the ground began bucking and heaving.

He raced from the garage into the station office and told Stan Bartell what was happening. But Stan had already figured it out, and so had his brother, Danny, and his father, Dan, owner of the station.

“The old man (Dan Bartell), he told us to get out of the building and run out into the open,” Hutchings remembered. “‘Get out in the middle of the highway!’ Because you’re in a service station, and any sparks or whatever and this thing would blow sky-high.”

Then Bartell noted the swaying trees and power lines, and he countermanded his orders: “We need to get away from the telephone poles! Head for the woods!”

“He’s shouting orders left and right,” Hutchings said. “And we’d take two steps and go back one, or you’d fall and gather yourself up and run some more.

“I jumped onto the hood of a car, grabbed hold of the windshield wipers — the blades — and rode it out most of the time right there. And then it bucked me off of there. One of the blades broke off, and I ended up on the ground.”

After nearly five minutes of shaking, the motion of the earth quieted and allowed Hutchings and the Bartells to take stock of their situation.

“It went so fast, but took forever,” Hutchings said.

Back inside the station — where earlier, Hutchings said, “things just started jumping off the shelves” — the garage was a mess, but since no one was injured, their thoughts turned toward town.

Hutchings knew his family was in Kenai already, so he and Stan drove in that direction over the cracked and steaming asphalt that connected the military base to the city. They headed first to the construction site where Hutchings was employed.

Hutchings had spent the previous summer working for a well-known area contractor named Leroy “The Roofer” Knab, described by many as about 5-foot-4, nearly as wide as he was tall, and always seen with three things: a fat stogie around which he carried on conversations, a wide-brimmed red hat with a large golden safety pin in the front, and an English bulldog that could climb a ladder and looked eerily like Knab himself.

Leroy the Roofer had hired Hutchings to help lay the foundation and later put on the roof of George Navarre’s new grocery: Kenai Food Center. At the time the quake struck, the building appeared nearly done on the outside but was largely unfinished on the inside.

In fact, Hutchings said, the electricians were paying him a dollar an hour more than Knab had to clean up each day after they finished pulling wires, so the interior was mostly without Sheetrock. The two large rows of front windows on the highway side of the building had been hefted into their frames and only toenailed temporarily into place.

When Hutchings and Bartell arrived on the scene, one of the first things they noticed was the left window casing — about 25 feet long and containing five vertical thermal-pane windows — had been jarred from its perch and toppled off its sill onto the ground. Fortunately for Navarre, the ground was covered with snow a foot or two thick, and not a single pane of glass had been broken.

The Cheechako News the following week ran numerous earthquake-aftermath photos, and among them was a picture of Hutchings, Bartell and three other men pushing the window casing back into place. Beneath the photo, taken by freelancer Art Sanders, ran this caption: “This glass panel from the front of the new Kenai Food Center miraculously escaped breakage when it toppled over.”

Damage elsewhere in the Kenai-Soldotna area was not as extensive as in Anchorage and several coastal communities. Although many Kenai residents feared that a tsunami might crash into their shores, the big wave never arrived.

For Hutchings, the frenetic activity at the Chevron and the fact that he later reunited with his family and discovered they were safe stood out most about that day.

In fact, he said, he probably would not even recall the incident of the window if it weren’t for two things: first, the appearance of his photo in the newspaper, and second, the fact that today, 44 years later, those five windows are still intact and can be seen by customers who glance to the left as they enter Paradisos Restaurant.