Downtown Wilderness — Outdoor gear retailer has new owners, moves into town

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Given Brian Richards’ love of the outdoors, he’s a little disappointed that he and his wife’s business venture is keeping him cooped up inside so much lately. But at least it means he’s helping others get out and enjoy the outdoors.

Richards and his wife, Nikiesha, purchased outdoor gear retailer Wilderness Way in November and recently moved the business to the old Trustworthy Hardware location in downtown Soldotna.

Richards is from Utah originally, came up to Alaska for a summer four years ago and liked it so much he talked his wife into moving up permanently. He worked for an outdoor retailer in Utah before the move, and started working at Wilderness Way three years ago.

“Other than that I’m just an avid user of everything in here. I like spending as much time outside as I can,” he said. Although, with the move, “I can’t remember the last day off I’ve had.”

The process of buying the business, the new building and getting things moved has been going on for about six months, he said. The Richards bought the store from Walter Ward.

“He’s been ready to retire and move on to other things. I just approached him about it,” Richards said. “I thought it would be fun. I enjoy working here so much I thought it’d be fun to take over and run it.”

He and Nikiesha looked at other locations in their search for a new site for the store, but nothing came close to the old Trustworthy location on the Sterling Highway, which is in the same complex as Safeway and the Peninsula Center Mall. The building is tri-level, with an entryway area, an upstairs and downstairs. The space is 9,000 square feet in all. The downstairs will be used for storage for now, with the 5,000 square feet of the entry level and upstairs used for retail space. That’s as much as the old Wilderness Way location had in the entire building, including the back storage area.

“This should be a good location right in the middle of town here, a little more accessible to people,” he said. “We looked at few other places but this one I think really fits us well and it’s the right size and a good deal, really. I think it’s the right fit for it.”

It took two weeks to have a new roof put on and for the wood floors to be refinished, and packing up and moving all the merchandise took about five days. The store reopened in its new home last week, although the staff — the Richards and Diane Penland — are still unpacking and getting things set up.

The extra space means the Richards will expand the store’s inventory, with more variety in the products they already carry, and some new items.

“More hunting stuff — packs, accessories, that type of thing. We’ve carried high-end fly-fishing gear for a number of years now. We’ll probably expand that a bit, too, get back into that side of things,” Richards said.

On Saturday, Lacie Ferrar, Bleu Schachinger and Kyle McMillan, all of Soldotna, were in Wilderness Way looking over the expanded selection of North Face apparel. Ferrar said she liked that the store is now in town.

“No one wants to drive out to Sterling,” she said. “This is probably the most people I’ve ever seen in Wilderness Way at one time.”

Schachinger said she was glad the old Trustworthy Building had an occupant again. She remembered the days of the “big buckets of nails that spun around. It’s been lonely,” she said.

Richards said he’s excited for the new venture, especially moving the business in town, despite concerns over the nation’s economic crises.

“It’s an existing business. We’ve got a pretty well-established local clientele for Wilderness Way. We’ve seen sales have been pretty steady, in line with the last few years, anyway. I hope to see it stay that way. We’ll still provide the same services and products,” he said.

Hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturdays and closed Sundays. The store will have a grand opening sale Saturday.

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.”

Obama baby sitter awaits new era — Soldotna woman eager for former charge’s reign

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

On Tuesday, supporters of President-elect Barack Obama looked forward to watching him take the oath of office with a sense of excitement, pride and hope for the future. Mary Toutonghi, of Soldotna, was prepared for that and another sensation: Remembrance of the 44th president as a 7-month-old baby.

Toutonghi used to baby-sit President Obama when she was neighbors with his mother.

Toutonghi was living in Seattle at the time, in the early 1960s. Her husband was going to school at Seattle University, and she was a stay-at-home mom with their 18-month-old daughter.

They lived in a three-story house that had been converted into three inexpensive apartments. Toutonghi and her family lived in the basement apartment, and Ann Dunham — Obama’s mother — lived in the apartment directly upstairs.

Dunham attended night classes a few days a week at the University of Washington, and needed someone to take care of her son.

“The time was available and we were all struggling students. She needed a baby sitter and I said ‘Sure,’” Toutonghi said.

She watched Obama a few times a week, for about three hours at a time. Dunham paid her, but she doesn’t remember how much, Toutonghi said.

“I remember his being very large and very curious and very alert. I don’t remember him fussing, but that doesn’t mean anything. Saying he never fussed is like saying he’s not real. But I don’t remember any undue fussing at all,” she said.

Being a struggling young mother herself, in the tumultuous dawning of the 1960s, no less, Toutonghi said she doesn’t remember many specifics about Dunham.

“I was so engrossed in myself at the time,” she said.

But the circumstances of a young mother living, attending school and raising a baby alone stuck in Toutonghi’s mind.

“It was a tough situation, as far as I knew,” she said. “She was 19, she’d promised her parents that she was going to finish college, even through she’d married. I’m presuming her parents were paying for the schooling — nobody had any money at the time.”

Dunham met Barack Obama Sr., a foreign student from Nyang’oma Kogelo in Kenya, Africa, when she was a freshman at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. They married on Feb. 2, 1961, and Barack Obama II was born Aug. 4, 1961, when Dunham was 18.

Dunham left school to take care of the baby, and returned to Seattle while Obama Sr. finished college in Hawaii and left for graduate school at Harvard University.

“It was interesting, and I don’t know why she was going to school in Seattle and he was in Hawaii at the time. She had told me at one point that because of her husband’s post in the tribe he was going to have to go back to Kenya and marry a black woman, as well. It was a whole different world, so she was accepting of that and hoping she could get back to him soon,” Toutonghi said.

Later, Dunham moved back to Hawaii with her son and filed for divorce from Obama Sr. in 1964.

By that time, Toutonghi had long since moved on to the next chapter in her life. She baby-sat for Dunham for two months, then she and her husband bought a house in the Government Hill section of Seattle and moved there, before moving to Alaska in 1977. She had a long career as a speech pathologist. She’s retired from the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District and has a private clinic in Soldotna.

She didn’t have cause to think about her former charge until 2004, when she came across his first book, “Dreams from My Father.” Then she saw he was the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention in 2004.

“Since I found the book, ‘Dreams from My Father,’ when it was first published, then when I was working on the 2004 presidential campaign and realized he was the convention speaker, it blew me away. And then this,” she said.

“I keep thinking of the six degrees of separation, that thing. I’ve known some unusual people in my time, but this was different.”

Toutonghi said she went to school in California with Bob Hope’s kids.

“We were in the neighborhood, essentially. I was not one of the elite group members, by any means, but I remember getting an award once with he and Dorothy in the audience,” she said.
As famous-people stories go, that’s noteworthy. But nowhere near as much as having changed the future president’s diapers.

“It was just mind-boggling to me when he did that Democratic convention, and then was like, ‘Huh,’” she said.

Toutonghi said she often wondered what happened to Dunham, who became Ann Dunham Soetoro after a later marriage, and died of ovarian cancer in 1995.

“We talked, but I can’t say, if I had been really strong friends I would have kept up the relationship. It was interesting to me as I read that book, his first book, I was thinking of his mother, then finding out she had died I felt very badly. I had meant to try to contact her through the publisher, but I didn’t get around to it. It was one of those things,” she said.

Toutonghi said her daughter asked if she had voted for President Obama because she had once baby-sat him.

“I said no. I felt that he had a concern for people as a whole,” she said. “As I thought of the books and things I had read about him and what I knew of that period of time, I think he was very aware of ordinary people and people who were trying really hard to make it. His mother definitely had spoke in terms of concern for people, and I just had the feeling that he must have carried some of that through, and it seems to be turning out that way. I listened to some of the speeches he had made today and he has an awareness of what it’s like to struggle to achieve something.”

She was looking forward to seeing President Obama take office, and not just for the thrill of 40 years-removed fame.

“I just think we’ve been through eight years of hell,” Toutonghi said, referring to the war in Iraq, mounting national debt and the country’s downward spiral into economic recession during President Bush’s administration.

She’s hoping the alert, inquisitive boy she once took care of now takes care of the country.

“I think he’s got a horrible job ahead of him, but he seems to be taking it in stride,” she said.

Tall order — Family on the mend after son survives massive aortic aneurism rupture

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Three months ago, David Marshall was a pretty typical 23-year-old. He played a lot of video games, hung out with his friends, hoped to pursue a career as an artist, dreamed of having a big house and flashy vehicle, and basically lived day to day, until the day he had a broken heart and almost stopped living altogether.

Heartbreak is not an uncommon malady among 20-somethings. But for David, of Soldotna, who has Loeys–Dietz Syndrome, it meant he literally had a broken heart — a rupture in his aorta from his aortic valve all the way to his kidney.

Loeys–Dietz Syndrome is a genetic disorder discovered in 2005 that affects the connective tissue in the body. It’s similar to Marfan Syndrome — both afflict tall people with disproportionately long limbs — although Marfan’s usually involves other physical characteristics, like wide-set eyes or a cleft palate. Congenital heart problems are common among those with LDS, including aneurisms like the type David had Nov. 17.

“The way they described it is the glue that holds the body together is not strong,” said Julia Echeverria, David’s mother. “His heart got it first because it takes the most pounding. There was a little leak, then it blew.”

Echeverria moved to Juneau with her sons, David, now 24, and Ryan Marshall, 22, from California after visiting her uncle there 15 years ago and falling in love with the sense of community she felt in Alaska.

Both of her sons are tall — David is 6-foot-10 and Ryan is 6-6. She’s no slouch herself at 6 feet tall.

“We’re a big, tall family,” she said. “Everyone looks up to us. We clean places no one else cleans. People ask why we clean the top of the refrigerator — because we can see it.”

Both sons have the long limbs associated with Marfan’s and LDS, although Echeverria didn’t think anything of it while they were growing up, or even when the boys’ father died around age 40 after he’d already had a heart valve replacement.

David didn’t show any obvious outward signs of having the condition. He seemed to everyone, including himself, to be healthy.

In 2002, when David was 18, he was in a car accident and went to the Juneau hospital. While there, a visiting physician’s assistant from Canada noticed David’s height and limb length and figured he had Marfan’s.

“He looked at my son and said, ‘I can almost guarantee you have this disease.’ And we’re like, ‘We’re not even here for that,’” Echeverria said.

David underwent testing and the results were sent to a specialist at the University of Washington Medical Center. Even though they were concerned, they didn’t realize how precarious David’s condition was, Echeverria said.

“They knew his heart was not top-notch, but they had no idea this was going to happen,” she said.

LDS sufferers have a high risk of developing aneurisms. Medication can help alleviate the strain on arteries by reducing heart rate and blood pressure. Continued monitoring of a patient’s arteries is recommended to catch and monitor aneurisms. Beyond that, patients are told to take it easy. No competitive sports, no exercise that involves muscle strain, no activities that leave the patient winded.

“No basketball. He won’t be signing up for the NBA or anything. And he’s almost 7-feet-tall so they’d love him,” Echeverria said.

At first, Echeverria said she went into overdrive with all the energy she put into trying to keep David from expending any. It came to a head one day when he wanted to go sledding, and Echeverria tried to tell him no.

“He looked at me and said, ‘You know, Mom, I could have a long life and lie on a couch, or I can have a short life and a quality life.’ I finally said, ‘OK, but I’m going with you.’ So I grabbed a sled and we both went,” she said.

“In a way, I’m sort of glad I didn’t know earlier, because I wouldn’t have let him do anything,” she said.

Three years after the car accident, David’s diagnosis was changed to LDS, which moves more quickly than Marfan’s, Echeverria said. Doctors told Echeverria they should consider leaving Juneau and move somewhere closer to more advanced medical care because eventually, his aortic valve may rupture.

“They said, when this happens, don’t even call 911. Just hold him. He’ll go quick,” she said.

But Juneau was their home. Echeverria owns a four-bedroom house there, had worked as a social worker there for 15 years and enjoyed being part of her church community.
“I fell in love with Alaska. You know, when you go somewhere and feel like you belong. That’s how it was, so when they told us we had to go down south, we said, ‘But we want to be in Alaska,’” she said.

They knew they needed to move, but David was young and in otherwise good health. They figured they had time.

On Nov. 17, time was up. David went to bed Nov. 16 and felt progressively worse toward morning — chest pains, difficulty breathing and a feeling of increasing weight on his chest. When Echeverria went to check on David that morning, as she often did when he didn’t answer the phone, she knew something was wrong, but neither guessed the seriousness of the situation.

“I figured it was indigestion or a cold or something. I never had a concept that the valve on my heart was going out. It’s one of those things, you don’t want to think of the worst-case scenario,” David said.

They went to a doctor’s appointment, then to the emergency room. At that point it became a life-and-death imperative to get David to Seattle as quickly as possible.

“It was pretty much a death sentence for David, because it took so long to get to medical care and the hospital was inadequate. It’s just a small-town, community hospital. With the flight time, they said if we’d had weather, we’d have lost David. We were just very fortunate God was on our side,” she said.

In Seattle, David’s aortic valve was replaced and his aorta sewn up. Doctors told Echeverria if the tear had been a millimeter longer, David wouldn’t have made it.
“That whole day, I thought, ‘If one more person tells me he’s not going to make it, I’m going to snap,’” she said. “He’s got a purpose. He made it this far, so he’s going to be fine.”

They spent a month in Seattle while David recuperated. They didn’t know anyone in Washington, medical bills were piling up by the day and Echeverria wasn’t working while David was in the hospital. And now it was clear they had to move.

They didn’t want to leave Alaska, or live in Anchorage, so they settled on Soldotna. Central Peninsula Hospital is in town, and Anchorage is only a 20-minute flight away, if need be. Ryan had moved to the central peninsula, graduated from Skyview High School and made some friends here, and, as luck would have it, Echeverria’s brother and mother had moved to Sterling, giving the two an opportunity to reconnect and mend a family rift that had formed.

They stopped briefly in Juneau to pack up the house — donating or throwing out most everything she had and storing the rest, and trying to find someone to rent the house while it went on the market. So far, renters have fallen through and Echeverria’s thinking about just giving the house to the bank because no one seems interested in buying it.

They got to Soldotna on Dec. 20 with virtually nothing but suitcases of clothes. No car. No job. No furniture. No phone. No idea what they were going to do. Ryan’s friend, Joe Misner, and his family helped find them a place to stay and put word out in the community that help was needed.

It came almost overnight.

Suddenly Echeverria and her son had donated furniture, dishes, towels, food — even a brand-new bed big enough for even David to sleep on.

“I can’t even begin to say thank you enough,” Echeverria said. “I’ll be forever indebted to that whole family, and this community’s been awesome. I just cried. I didn’t know what else to do. I’ve never been treated this nice. And it’s hard times. That’s why when they were so generous it was so touching, because lots of people are having hard times.”

The hard times aren’t over, by any means, but they’re nothing compared to what they’ve already been through. Echeverria is looking for a job and hopes to be able to afford a car soon.

David is slowly recuperating, and adjusting to his new pace of life. He’s on a slew of medication, and will be on some of it for the rest of his life. He has to watch his diet carefully, can’t exert himself or raise his heart rate — even playing most video games are out — and can’t do much with his arms. He’s not even able to push himself up off the couch or lift a shirt over his head to get dressed. A gallon of milk is about the limit of what he can lift, and even a car ride leaves him exhausted.

“The hardest part of it is not being able to do what I want, when I want,” David said.

But he says he’s not angry about the turn his life has taken. Throughout the whole ordeal, David’s attitude has been a constant source of surprise among the medical community, Echeverria said.

“David’s a lovely, lovely, awesome person,” she said. “I’ve never met anyone who met David who didn’t think this, and I’m not just saying this because I’m his mom. He has a special purpose somewhere in life, because he’s still here. We feel very blessed.

“He has the best attitude. They said most people are so angry when this happens, and he’s just so happy to be alive.”

David does not see how he can’t be happy to be alive.

“I can’t complain. I’m happy to be up here. I’m just kind of focused on recovery and getting back to the other activities, like being able to shovel snow or walk the dogs, all the little things you take for granted. You wake up from the surgery and get a whole different game plan. It’s all for your health so I’m going to comply with it. All you do is to keep breathing a little longer. You really take it for granted until you don’t have the option,” he said.

After 18 years in social work, Echeverria said it’s easy to overlook how kind people can be. Not anymore.

“We’re so grateful for the Misner family, and the community had been really generous,” she said. “It really shows what kind of community Soldotna is. I think when you see the ugly all time you lose faith in the human race. This has just really renewed my faith in people.”

A donation fund has been set up in David’s name at Alaska USA, account No. 1433199.

Lucky move — Tachick family beat the odds in Alaska relocation effort

By Clark Fair
Redoubt Reporter

Most members of the large Tachick clan knew they might be pushing their luck when, in mid-October 1951, they packed up their home in Washington state and headed north to Alaska to start a new life in the Last Frontier. By Christmas, they hoped to be living in a house of their own in Soldotna.

They had no definite jobs waiting for them. They also had not yet purchased property or ordered any building materials. In order to succeed, they would need good timing and good luck.

Patriarch of the family, Paul Tachick, had chosen Soldotna — which, according to the 1950 U.S. Census, had 21 residents — because it was home to three other families headed by men he had worked with on the Hanford nuclear project in Washington: Chell Bear, Bill Stock and Jake Dubendorf. All of the men had dreamed of one day living in Alaska. Stock and Dubendorf were working for the Alaska Road Commission, and Tachick hoped to join them.

Tachick and his wife, Anna, both originally from Wisconsin, had seven children, and all but one of them made the trip north. Chuck, the eldest, was stationed with the Army in Japan, but the others — four boys and two girls — helped pack up a Ford sedan and a 2½-ton Ford truck, and hit the road.

“In the car, tucked here and there, were Mom’s houseplants. There was one birdcage, with two yellow canaries,” recounted older sister Shirley in “Once Upon the Kenai,” a book of peninsula memories published in 1984.

“In our equivalent to a covered wagon were tools to clear the wilderness and to build a house, guns and fishing gear to enable us to live off the land,” she continued. “Mom had packed her treadle sewing machine, a wood stove, a gas engine wringer washing machine, plus countless jars of home-canned goods.”

Paul drove the car, while Bob, at 19 the second oldest, drove the truck, accompanied by brother, Melvin, 17. In the car with Paul were Anna, Roger, who turned 15 on the Alaska Highway, Wayne, 12, Shirley, 7, and Arlene, 3.

On Halloween night, 10 days after beginning their journey, they pulled into Anchorage, where they had expected to have to load their vehicles onto the train for Moose Pass and Seward. Instead, they were told that they might be able to drive all the way south on the new road along Turnagain Arm.

On Nov. 1, they trundled down the rough dirt-and-gravel Seward Highway until they reached a construction zone, and the crew there allowed the Tachicks to pass through. Later that day, they arrived in Soldotna and located the Dubendorfs, who gave them a place to stay while Paul searched for work and tried to find land for sale.

It was not to be a typical month. As Bob recalled, “It was the best November I can remember. You could walk around in shirt sleeves and the sun was shining. There were still robins here.”

Within a week, Paul had been hired as a mechanic for the Alaska Road Commission, and he had convinced homesteader Lawrence “Mac” McGuire to sell him a five-acre lot just across the Kenai River bridge (the current site of The Crossing restaurant).

After Morris Coursen used his bulldozer to clear a building lot, the Tachicks erected a 16-by-32-foot canvas wall tent over a hastily constructed wooden floor. As the building project got under way Anna set up house inside the tent.

Just inside a framed door installed in the front of the tent was Anna’s kitchen, the centerpiece of which was a barrel stove that the Tachicks kept burning 24 hours a day. Toward the back were wooden bunks, lined with warm blankets, on which everyone slept. The family used kerosene lamps and Coleman lanterns as light sources, and an outhouse as a substitute for indoor plumbing.

On the building site nearby — after they had located a nearby sawmill to supply them with the lumber they would need — they drove a sand point into the ground until they struck good water, and then they built a floor on pilings around the wellhead.

With Paul working, and all of the younger children, except Arlene, in school, the bulk of the building effort fell to Bob. One obstacle he encountered early on was the accessibility of lumber. When the Tachicks had inquired about a sawmill, no one had mentioned that a large operation called the Bear Lake Lumber Company, in Seward, could have supplied all of their needs at once. Instead, without knowing it, they had settled for a small-time operation.

“I could’ve went over there (to Seward) and got a whole load. Built the whole house with one load,” Bob said. “But they said, ‘(Fred) House out in North Kenai.’ Well, he couldn’t cut it fast enough. You know, you had to go every day to get some lumber, every day to get lumber.”

Bob also had to travel to Homer for all the required hardware and accessories, such as doors and windows, boxes of nails, roofing supplies and trim materials.

Still, despite all the back-and-forth hauling necessary, the Tachick project moved along smoothly. They pounded the green-spruce boards together to frame and enclose a one-story structure with a large loft for extra bedrooms. Within a few weeks, a new front door faced the mostly quiet highway.

On Dec. 5, just as the real Alaska winter was making an appearance, the Tachicks were ready to move. “About the fifth of December, it was down to about 40, 50 below. It just changed, just like that,” Bob said.

The Tachicks, all of whom would eventually settle permanently in Alaska, moved in and continued to finish the inside as winter progressed. They heated the house with a wood stove and continued to use lanterns for lighting. According to Shirley, the water in the well inside the house contained too much iron, so they hauled most of their water from a clear spring nearby. Electricity was not available for some time, until Paul purchased a small generator that he installed in an insulated shed near the house.

Despite these inconveniences, however, the Tachicks had achieved their goal, and later went on to create Tachick Construction and Tachick Freight Lines.

As Shirley wrote, “Our first Christmas was one filled with the aroma of fresh-cut lumber, sawdust, a fragrant spruce tree decorated for Christmas, and Mom’s baking. We were home.”

Housing a wild past — Riverside House booked with stories in turbulent boom years

By Clark Fair
Redoubt Reporter

The crimes were odd, to say the least, even for the crazy mid-1960s when oil-boom activities dominated the central Kenai Peninsula.

Each victim reported returning to his first-floor room in the two-story Riverside House hotel to discover that one of his shirts was missing and to find hanging in his closet a stranger’s shirt. Later, another victim reported that his leather jacket was missing, and someone else’s shirt was in its place.

Allen and Joanne Odom, the original caretakers of the hotel, said that they and law-enforcement officers were puzzled initially.

“We couldn’t figure out how it was happening because the doors were always locked,” Joanne said. And then they realized that the culprit was entering all of the rooms via ground-floor windows that had been cracked open for better air circulation.

Someone, they realized, was aware when patrons were absent from their rooms and was slipping in through the rollout windows to do mischief.

“He seemed to really like to be able to get in your room when you weren’t there,” Allen said. “Just to know he could do it,” Joanne added. “And move things around,” continued Allen. “He must’ve been a kleptomaniac,” said Joanne.

In the end, he was apprehended, not because he got careless in his break-ins, but because he branched out in his criminal activity.

“He went peeping-tomming in the (nearby) Riverside Terrace trailer park,” said Allen. “That’s where he got caught.”

When authorities ascertained his base of operations, the Odoms learned that he was a customer of the hotel and working in the same company as his other victims.

“When (Officer) Russ Anderson caught him, they went in his room,” Allen said. “These guys could identify their shirts and their leather jacket or what-not that he had in the closet. He liked to go in your place and get away with it, and go out.”

Over the many months the Odoms ran the hotel, they saw hundreds of other patrons — some bad, some good. There were exhibitionists, who liked to leave open the doors to their rooms so they could be easily seen in their natural splendor. But there were also men such as Red Adair, the renowned oilfield firefighter from Texas, whose team in 1991 would extinguish 117 wells set on fire in Kuwait by retreating Iraqi troops. Adair stayed at the Riverside for several days while helping to shut off a blown Beaver Creek wellhead.

The clientele matched the times, and a frontier type of mentality tended to dominate an era filled with transient workers, burgeoning populations, bursting schools and big capital projects.

Usually, though, life was fairly quiet at the Riverside House — which opened in April 1966 as a hotel/restaurant, easily the largest and most luxurious on the central peninsula. Generally, the Odoms, who lived with their three young daughters in an apartment behind the front desk, were on call 24 hours a day.

“There was a lot of work to do,” said Joanne, sister to Jesse Robinson, namesake of Robinson Loop in Sterling. “We were busy all the time. Complete room changes, over and over.”

“Joanne and I had to get up out of bed if someone came in and banged on the bell at the desk,” added Allen.

Each day began with Joanne and her main housekeeper stripping beds, cleaning the hotel’s 22 rooms, and laundering all the linens and towels. Fortunately for the Odoms, the restaurant, although attached, was owned and run separately from the hotel, so they could focus solely on their own patrons.

While Burton Carver owned the hotel, the restaurant was operated by the head chef, Bud Bennington, who was known to offer some of the area’s finest dining. The restaurant had been completed first, in 1963, transformed from the Carver family home, which sat along the banks of the Kenai River on a piece of property that Carver had purchased from homesteader Howard Binkley.

Allen had begun working for Carver a few months after he and Joanne arrived from their home state of Colorado in 1960, and when Carver completed the hotel he asked the Odoms to run it. They appreciated the full-time employment.

As fate would have it, however, 1966 was to be unkind to Carver himself. His wife, Joyce, was murdered in Anchorage in July, he lost a primary election bid for the state Senate and he suffered a heart attack later in the year. He had also gotten in over his head financially on the hotel-building project and was forced to sell the business the following year.

When Carver left the business, the Odoms also left. Allen, who is now 72, went on to work for Texaco, while Joanne, now 69, began driving a school bus for Carver. But until Carver sold out, the Odoms were in charge. Although most days were perfectly normal, they experienced their share of unusual behavior.

There were the philanderers.

“One of those guys from Anchorage, I remember him coming in one time when I was out sweeping the entry,” Allen said. “He gets out of a car and comes over and starts going, ‘Hey, Mr. Odom! Mr. Odom, how you doing? Got the wife with me today.’ He introduced me to her and everything.

“He’d been down there a week or so before with this beautiful blonde about 6 foot tall.”

Joanne remembered “a fellow from out Funny River way who used to come in with a lot of (other women). And I knew his wife.”

Her knowledge didn’t halt his behavior.

Sometimes even more unseemly activities invaded the Riverside.

“Down at the far end (of the hotel), we start seeing guys coming and going. So one day this beautiful woman comes out and left with somebody in the car. We come to find out, this (one) guy was working something with her and having guys come in here. She was a prostitute.”

“Then I heard that she was dancing someplace else,” Joanne added. “And I asked him about it. And he got really smart with me, and I told him to get out.”

And then there were the hard-core drunks, who might suffer through delirium tremens if they ran out of money and couldn’t keep drinking.

“This one guy was the worst we had,” Joanne said. “And Allen thought, ‘I’ve gotta get him something (to drink).’ And I said, ‘I’ll take care of that guy.’”

“He couldn’t even get out of bed,” continued Allen. “I took him a drink,” said Joanne, who added that she was acting on orders from Carver.

Allen called long distance to the man’s son in the Lower 48. According to Allen, the son said, “I told him not to go off up there. My dad’s got a drinking problem. I said, ‘Don’t go to Alaska.’”

Back in the hotel room, the man was “in there smoking, curtains all drawn, hands shaking,” Allen said. Finally, Carver gave the man enough money for a plane ticket home.

Fortunately for the Odoms, all these odd occurrences were the exception, not the rule. Normally, life behind the front desk was fairly routine: The rooms filled with businessmen, fishermen and families on vacation, and shirt-stealing peeping-toms didn’t come along every day.

Bears visit airport — Soldotna pilots find tracks inside fence

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Two brown bears apparently took an interest in aviation Thursday night and led themselves on a tour of the Soldotna Airport.

Pilots found bear tracks around their planes Friday, and the city maintenance department was called to investigate. Doug Schoessler, maintenance manager, followed two sets of what he figures were brown bear tracks, one large and one small, but didn’t see the bears. He thinks it’s a sow and cub.

“I saw two spots where they came under the back fence. They’d kind of dug through the trees under the fence,” he said.

An Enstar crew has been working on a gas pipeline outside the fence. They also saw bear tracks but didn’t seen the bears, Schoessler said.

The smaller tracks stayed mostly out by the fence, while the larger bear was bolder.

“They definitely walked through some of the planes right by the hangers there, but were mostly in the spots that were not populated by anyone. But the bigger one definitely walked around by some the airplanes and didn’t seem too shy,” Schoessler said.

No damage was reported to planes or other equipment. There aren’t any food sources or garbage left out at the airport to attract bears, Schoessler said. They may have been looking for game.

“I saw a lot of rabbit tracks. That was what I kinda wondered, if they were coming in looking for rabbits or not. But I didn’t see any kills or any anything other than tracks,” he said.

Whatever enticed them, the bears seemed to have let themselves out the same way they got in — by making a hole under the back fence.

“They walked right by that one gate that had a big gap under it, but they didn’t even try to get under it. I think they try to find their private areas,” Schoessler said.

There’s a stand of trees in the roughly 200-acre fenced enclosure, but maintenance workers didn’t see any sign of the bears.

“We tried to make some noise over that way to drive them out, but it they were in those trees at the east end, they were just sitting tight. But I don’t think so. I think they got out.,” he said.

Moose occasionally find their way into the airport fence in the winter and have to be driven out, but bears are uncommon.

“A long, long time ago they had some issues with bears, but I’ve been there five years and I’ve never had anything since I’ve been there,” Schoessler said.

Bears could pose a threat to humans at the airport, but the larger concern with any sizeable wildlife is the hazard they pose to planes landing or taking off.

“Moose or bears or any of those things, if a plane hit them, it’s not a good thing,” Schoessler said.

Soldotna cabin gets stamp of approval — First post office placed on National Register of Historic Places

By Clark Fair
Redoubt Reporter

The elegant simplicity of the sign on the front of the building belies its complex history: “1949 Homestead Cabin — Howard Lee — First U.S. Post Office, 1949-1951 — Maxine Lee, Postmaster — Soldotna.”

The building, restored and recently designated as the first Soldotna structure on the National Register of Historic Places, has a history that is anything but simple.

In 1947, Howard and Maxine Lee read a “Saturday Evening Post” article about the homesteading opportunities for military veterans willing to move to the Kenai Peninsula. It sounded simple enough: Go to the Anchorage Land Office, file on a piece of land, build a habitable abode, live on the land at least six months and a day out of the year, and clear one-tenth of the total acreage.

Stationed with the Navy in Florida at the time, the Lees headed north in March 1948. Leaving Maxine and their 16-month-old daughter, Karen, in Seattle, Howard arrived in Anchorage only to discover that all the land abutting the new Sterling Highway had already been claimed.

Dispirited at first, Howard then learned of a couple that had gone to the area the year before, spent the winter and wanted out. The couple had hauled a 60-by-30-foot Quonset hut over the frozen highway, and Howard was told that for $1,000 they would relinquish their site and the Quonset hut to him.

Thus, when Maxine and Karen joined him at their new home in June, the Lees became residents of the fledgling community of Soldotna.

There, the Lees met the Lancashires — Larry and Rusty — and soon Howard was helping Larry to build the Lancashire homestead cabin, with the understanding that Larry would then help Howard build the Lee homestead cabin.

Using Larry’s portable sawmill, they cut and hewed spruce trees from the virgin forest in the vicinity of what is now Corral Street, and they erected a two-story cabin — for several years the largest building in Soldotna. In 1949, Howard and Maxine were able to move out of the old military Quonset and into their own home.

Just prior to this time, however, homesteader Marge Mullen approached Maxine with a proposition, and a petition signed by several prominent residents. Mullen proposed that Soldotna should have a post office, and that Maxine should be the first postmaster.

“Mail was our only line of communication (back then),” Mullen said. “We had no TV. The Anchorage radio — KFQD, I think it was — was only on five hours during the evening — 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., or something like that. You were just hungry for Outside news.”

In her application for the postmaster position, Maxine submitted the town name spelled Soldatna, and when the postal inspector approved her for the job, the spelling became official — and almost immediately a point of contention. It was not until the 1960s that the official spelling became Soldotna.
For her postal labors, Maxine was paid $14 a month.

“It wasn’t a really high-paying job,” she said in a 1998 interview. “But when you’re homesteading, 14 bucks is 14 bucks.”

Prior to the establishment of the new post office, most local residents had traveled to Kenai for their mail. Suddenly, the mail was coming to Soldotna once a week, and some people from as far away as Longmere Lake made the weekly journey to see what they’d received.

At first, the mail was delivered to the homestead cabin and then carried over to the Quonset hut, where Howard had set up a postal station for Maxine.

“When anyone came for the mail or stamps or money orders, we ran over to the Quonset, unlocked the door and took care of their business,” Maxine said. “In winter I learned to keep my ink and fountain pens in the cabin so they wouldn’t freeze.”

Soon, the homestead cabin was the full-time post office, and it remained that way until 1951, when, much to her surprise, Eleanor (“Mickey”) Faa became Soldotna’s second postmaster.

In a 1995 interview, Faa said: “Well, I took care of the post office several times for Maxine Lee when she went to town (Anchorage) and had things to do.”

Faa and her husband, Joe, were operating the Soldotna Inn (later to become the Bear Den Bar) near the Kenai River bridge at the time.

“One day Maxine asked me again if I’d take care of the post office for her. I said, ‘Sure.’ And that evening she came over with some cardboard boxes containing the whole post office. She was leaving Howard, and she wanted me to keep it — take care of it for her. And, of course, I didn’t know anything about it.

“I figured she’d just be going to town for a few days. But that wasn’t so. She left — completely.”
Maxine Lee did not return. With two children now in tow, she headed for the Lower 48, took college courses to improve her education, filed for divorce, eventually got remarried, and now lives in Palo Alto, Calif.

In Mickey Faa’s hands, the post office changed locations three times briefly, and then in 1954 the Faas bought part of the Lee homestead, including the cabin, and the post office returned to its original location.

Joe Faa added on to and remodeled the original cabin, and moved the postal operations into the addition.

“On mail days, I always had something baked,” Mickey said. “When folks came for their mail, I didn’t just let them escape with their mail. They had to come in for pie and coffee. Mail day was special.”

With the oil boom in the late 1950s came a postal boom. Mickey had to buy extra boxes for the mail, and then buy some more. Soon, the homestead cabin could no longer handle the demand, and a new post office with 500 boxes was constructed where Columbia Paints now stands.

The Faas, who installed electricity in the cabin in 1955, continued to live there until 1965, when they sold it and some of the adjoining land to Justin and Zilla Maile. The Mailes also added on to the original structure, creating “Zilla’s Yarn Shop and Bernina Center.” In 1985, Justin, who was color blind, had the building painted olive green as a surprise for his wife.

In 1989, some of the Maile land was purchased by the Kenai Peninsula Borough to ease bus congestion, and in 1991, Zilla gifted the building to the Soldotna Historical Society. Over the last 15 years, the additions have been removed, the olive-green paint has been stripped away, the building has been moved from its original location and then back again, and it has been refurbished and protected by numerous volunteers.

In 2005, Marge Mullen and Barbara Jewell began opening the building to the public during Farmer’s Market Saturdays from June through mid-September.

It was Jewell who completed and sent in the historical society’s successful petition to have the building included in the national register. She mailed her petition in Soldotna’s fully modern post office, on the opposite end of the Soldotna Elementary School grounds from where the original post office still stands.

Right at home — CES assistant fire marshal a familiar face

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Interacting with the community is a large part of the fire marshal’s job at Central Emergency Services, and therefore a major hurdle for anyone stepping into the position.

There’s a learning curve to all of it — conducting building inspections, dealing with other fire and safety agencies, doing outreach in schools, being a media contact, and even the routine facets of a new job, like learning your co-workers’ names and where to go to grab a quick lunch.

That wasn’t a problem for Brad Nelson, the new assistant fire marshal at CES. Getting to know the community is the easy part of being new to the job, as long as he remembers which station he’s going to every day — CES on Binkley Street — and doesn’t succumb to old habits and drive a few miles up the road to the Alaska State Troopers E Detachment post on Kalifornsky Beach Road.

Nelson may be new to the CES uniform, but he’s not new to the central peninsula, having been a trooper here from 2001 to the beginning of 2007, some of that time with a K-9 unit, Kazan.

“Ever since we left we always wanted to get back down here,” Nelson said of he and his wife, Rachel. “We loved being here. You name it, we loved it.”

Nelson left the troopers in February 2007 and took a job with Doyon Universal Services on the North Slope doing “you name it,” he said, including being a medic and fire technician. He and his family, which now includes 2-year-old son, Lincoln, and another baby on the way, have been living in Palmer. When the assistant fire marshal position with CES came open this summer, Nelson saw it as a chance to branch further into the fire services field, make the most of his outgoing personality and move back to the peninsula.

“Not only do I get to do the firefighting, which I love, but the fire marshal is involved in all aspects of it,” Nelson said. “It’s the best of everything. I get to go out into the public, which I love to do — I’m not shy in any way, shape or form.”

Fire Marshal Gary Hale wasn’t shy about what he thought of Nelson — he was hired a mere half hour after the job interview.

“I needed somebody who could get off the truck running,” Hale said. “He’s the man. He has a very upbeat and aggressive attitude, which comes along with his credentials. There hasn’t been a task he hasn’t been able to handle or tackle.

“Being familiar with the area is a huge plus, and knowing a lot of the people prior to leaving. People wanted to know, ‘Did you hire Brad?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ They said. ‘You won’t go wrong. He was the most upbeat individual. You won’t be sorry.’ And that’s the truth.”

After 19 years as fire marshal, Hale is looking toward retirement in a few years and wanted someone he could train to take over the position. He’s sure Nelson is the right choice. So sure, in fact, that when Nelson was wanted for another position in CES, Hale put his foot down.

“I said, basically, ‘Over my dead body. It took this long to get him and you want to steal him for me?’”

Nelson already has a background in firefighting from his time with Doyon and in the Alaska National Guard. He has fire marshal-specific training he still needs to get, like evaluating building plans, but he’s already been put to work teaching a fire extinguisher safety class and the public relations aspects of his job.

“He jumped out of frying plan and into the fire and has had no difficulty,” Hale said.

Nelson’s first week on the job included CES’ annual Fill the Boot fundraising campaign for muscular dystrophy.

“It hasn’t stopped,” Nelson said. “There’s never been a moment where I’m thinking, ‘Man, there’s nothing to do.’ It doesn’t happen. We haven’t been able to stick to a schedule yet. Not a single day.”

That’s fine for Nelson. Organized chaos is a good environment for his “adult ADD,” he said.

And the central peninsula is a good environment for Nelson and his family. He said he and Rachel were hit by that realization at the exact same time when they came down for the job interview.

“When we got out of the car, we said, ‘Yep, this feels right. We’re both home,’” he said. “I’m just so excited to be down here, it’s not even funny.”

Sign of the times? Campaign propaganda disappears from central peninsula yards, roadsides

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Political signs have it rough. In the course of one election season the red-white-and-blue signs that sprout up overnight along major roads, busy intersections and in supporters’ yards take a lot of abuse.

They’re shot, stabbed, shredded by razors, graffitied and burned. Run over by four-wheelers, dirt bikes, cars and trucks, wildlife and the occasional piece of farm equipment. This year on the central Kenai Peninsula, they’re being stolen altogether.

Several signs promoting Democratic candidates for state and national offices have gone missing this month. Mary Toutonghi, who lives on SoHi Lane in Soldotna, has had problems with her yard signs being knocked over periodically in the two months or so she’s had them out. Then on Sept. 9 she woke up to find a sign for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and one for Democratic U.S. House of Representatives candidate Ethan Berkowitz were gone altogether.

“To me it’s a cowardly act because there’s no discussion or anything, and I see it as an act of vandalism, really,” Toutonghi said.

A Soldotna resident since 1984, Toutonghi has displayed signs for candidates she’s supported for “years and years,” she said. They’ve been knocked down before but never outright stolen.

She related the act to an incident in 2003, when people participating in a peace demonstration at Soldotna Creek Park along the Sterling Highway were doused with water by a man in a truck.

“To me it’s not a democratic form, it is a cowardly form,” she said.

Toutonghi said she reported the theft to Soldotna police, but without any witnesses she doesn’t expect anyone to be held accountable.

“It’s my yard, I put up my signs and they tear them down instead of going the route of putting up their own signs. Or maybe they do have their own signs, but to me it’s a violation of what I choose to display in my yard,” she said.

Toutonghi’s political beliefs are strong enough for her to promote them visually, but she draws the line at interfering in what others believe.

“I do feel they have a right to their own opinions,” she said. “There are times when there are discussions and there is agreement, and if there is serious disagreement I let it go. I feel I don’t have any more right to push on people than they have to push on me.”

Julie Hasquet, with the Mark Begich for U.S. Senate campaign in Anchorage, said on Friday that she had heard of a rash of sign stealing on the central peninsula. Begich, a Democrat, is running against incumbent Republican Ted Stevens.

“It appears at this point this is pretty exclusive to your area. There have been reports of Begich signs taken down there, and larger numbers than normal,” Hasquet said.

She said people have reported seeing someone in a white Suburban taking signs.

“We think it’s very unfortunate people try to curb others’ right to free speech, and it’s illegal to take down those signs,” she said.

Nathan Osburn, the Alaska deputy communications director for the Obama for America campaign, said he’d also heard of signs in the Soldotna area going missing, but didn’t know if it was more than was usual in an election season.

“I think people tend to get very passionate about their candidates and sometimes express themselves in inappropriate ways,” Osburn said.

With the Berkowitz campaign, press secretary David Shurtleff hadn’t heard of sign thefts this year, but wouldn’t consider it unusual if there were.

“It’s always disappointing but never surprising to hear about it,” Shurtleff said. “Hopefully they’re taking them and putting them on eBay, but they’re probably going in a bonfire. It happens every year and it’s always disappointing. That being said, if somebody gets their sign stolen or already has and they want another one, we’ll keep giving them until we don’t have any more.”

Representatives for Begich and Berkowitz said their candidates have been treated respectfully when visiting the central peninsula.

With the Ted Stevens re-election campaign, Jane and Will Madison, of Soldotna, are co-chairs of a local steering committee responsible for putting up Stevens signs on the peninsula. As of Friday, 50 4-by-8-foot signs and another 50 yard signs supporting Stevens had been put up on the peninsula, and Jane Madison said they hope to put up another 50 signs in the coming week. She said she hasn’t heard of a single sign being stolen.

Tim Evans, a Democrat running for the state House District 34 seat, covering the northwestern Kenai Peninsula outside the Kenai, Soldotna and Kalifornsky-Beach Road areas, hasn’t been as lucky.

Six of his signs were stolen from the Sterling Highway in Sterling about a week ago.
“Across from the post office they left two other political signs, so I felt it was pretty well-targeted,” Evans said.

He said a vehicle with two men was seen taking the signs. He reported it to Alaska State Troopers, and they were nice about it, but he doesn’t expect anything to be done, he said.

“You just never know. You don’t want to point a finger at your opponent because that’s probably way beneath him. It was probably just over-exuberant kids or whatever, or even some over-exuberant adults. I don’t even want to point the finger at kids.”

Mike Chenault, a Republican, is the District 34 incumbent. He said his signs haven’t seen any more abuse than normal, although the one act of vandalism he does know of was unusual for the amount of effort put into it.

“A couple of road signs somebody took off my frames,” he said. “They actually unscrewed them. That took some time. They took the sandbags and the signs and left the frame.”

In Chenault’s experience, sign vandalism varies from year to year. Some years none of his signs are messed with, other years he’s had eight or 10 disappear. He’s had signs shot, run over and slashed with a razor knife.

“I don’t mess with other people’s signs.,” he said. “Sometimes kids will get playing around or even adults will think it’s cute to go do some things.”

The cost can add up in a hurry, he said.

David Hartman, an employee with G.F. Sherman Signs on K-Beach, said yard signs cost $350 for 25 or $540 for 100. For 4-by-4-foot signs, it’s $582 for 10 or $726 for 25. For 4-by-8-foot signs, it’s $822 for 10 or $1,134 for 25.

In the state Senate District Q race, Republican incumbent Tom Wagoner said he hasn’t had any unusual trouble with his signs. He hasn’t put many out this year, though.

“People get pretty passionate this time of the election, and sometimes people just don’t like all the signs,” he said. “I don’t like signs, but here on the peninsula they’re kind of a necessary evil when you’re running for office. It’s an inexpensive way to get your name out on the peninsula.”

Kelly Wolf, running as a nonpartisan for House District 33, covering the Kenai-Soldotna-K-Beach area, said he’s careful about where he puts his signs, because he knows what can happen if they end up in the wrong place.

“If they’re disappearing if they’re in the road right of way I don’t know if the (Department of Transportation) sign Nazis are down here or not,” he said. “They’re a real factor. Most everybody running for office is supposed to be aware of regulations from DOT sign police. If it’s in that right of way they will remove it, and they do have the ability to fine.”

Wolf said he hasn’t had any problems with his signs, other than one being knocked down. It was on a dirt path so it may have been the wind, or perhaps a dirt bike or four-wheeler, he said.

“Sometimes adults act more childish than children themselves. Sometimes you have to figure out who’s more mature,” he said.

Dick Waisanen is a first-time candidate, a Democrat running for the District 33 seat. He’s had one sign run over by a four-wheeler in a field along the Kenai Spur Highway by Sport Lake Road. His and one of Evans’ signs were flattened, but Evans’ stake didn’t break so Waisanen put it back up for him. That’s the kind of thing he expected to deal with, not outright theft.

“As far as signs go, we have freedom of speech. As a candidate, you still need to respect the property of whoever’s got the sign up there,” he said. “I’m surprised we had so much of it. You have to maintain them, the wind knocks them down or different things happen. But breaking them or cutting them up or stealing them is a step too far for what we would say for the spirit of America.”

Editor’s note: Senate District Q Democrat candidate Dr. Nels Anderson and House District 33 Republican incumbent Kurt Olson did not return a call seeking comment.

‘Mastre’ of the grill — Colorado family hopes hot business catches on after move to Soldotna

By Naomi Hagelund
For the Redoubt Reporter

There’s a new pig in town, but it’s not just the average bacon-bearing swine. The pink, pig-shaped grill has been grabbing attention for Glacier Distributing, a heater and grill vendor that recently opened in the new strip mall across from Alaska’s Auto Country in Soldotna.

Jeff Mastre, owner of the business, and his two sons, ages 14 and 17, arrived in June with a plan to sell Traeger wood pellet grills, including standard black barbecues and infrared zone heaters.

The Mastre family was lured to Alaska from Colorado with the idea of fishing and relaxing.

“We’ve been looking at Alaska for the last few years,” Mastre said. “We kind of dried out in Colorado and we were looking for something like the Northwest had to offer again, minus the population, so that kind of pointed north.”

Alaska has everything the family was looking for, Mastre said.

“We love the fishing and the outdoors, and everything Alaska has to offer,” he said. “That’s why we’re here.”

Mastre said he spent most of the summer setting up the business, so his sons hit the river as often as they could until the store was ready for them to help out with customers.

Mastre operated a flooring business in Colorado for 13 years and decided it was time for a change and looked for something a little easier on his body.

“I still had my knees and my back,” Mastre said. “I told myself I’ll be starting a new business one way or the other, so why not do the switch — one that you can do standing on your feet.”

The $1,599 pig-shaped grill is as functional as it is fashionable, and has been operating as an effective marketing tool for the family owned business.

“The public response to the pig out there has been great,” Mastre said. “It’s an attention-getter. It’s cheap advertising. I bought this one as a trial just to see what the response would be and it’s been great.”

Mastre said the pig-shaped grill is just as viable as the regular black grills in his shop, and due to public interest, he’s ordering in six more in the next few weeks.

The Traeger wood pellet grills are electric and work with wood pellets that come in a variety of flavors, such as maple, cherry and mesquite. The pellets are fed into a hopper then into the firepot, which provides the cooking heat and smoke that cooks and flavors the food. There is a heat deflector built into the grill so the flame never directly touches the food, which Mastre said can be a healthier way of cooking because charcoal doesn’t get on the food like it does with a regular barbecue grill.

Mastre said his family uses their own grill at least once a day, often using it to grill and smoke salmon he and his boys catch on the river.

The grills can also be used for baking bread, and garlic- and onion-flavored pellets are for sale to use for flavoring the bread. There are smaller models to take aboard boats or in small cabins, and a nonelectric table-top version can be used for the beach or camping.

On the heating end of the business, Glacier Distributing offers Sunheat portable infrared zone heaters that heat like the sun, and can save a heating bill about 50 percent, according to Mastre. The heaters are designed to heat up to 1,000 square feet from floor to ceiling.

“They piggyback on your existing heat system and carry your existing heat further,” Mastre said. “You can turn your thermostat down four or five degrees and it will pick up that degree drop. They’re good and efficient.”

Lost and found life in Soldotna

By Clark Fair
Redoubt Reporter

As she ambled through the immense and grassy grid of graves in Sitka this fall, 66-year-old Mary Lou Leavitt finally found one of the things she had come halfway around the world to see: the small rectangle of marble marking the final resting place of her father, Lou Leavitt.

He died in Sitka in 1979, three years after moving from Soldotna into the assisted-living quarters at the Sitka Pioneer Home. At the time, Mary Lou was living in London, having surrendered a career in teaching in the United States to engage in a career in activism abroad. The last time she had been in Alaska was 1967, when she spent her summer vacation with her dad.

Lou, who, according to the National Aviation Hall of Fame Web site, was America’s first licensed rotary-wing pilot, had been living in Soldotna for three years when his daughter arrived.

They spent the summer mostly talking and traveling, using Lou’s small wood-frame home on Lingonberry Lane as a base.

“I remember the river (out behind the house),” Mary Lou said, “and that it was way out from a very small town. But mostly I remember sitting in that (place) and talking with him and kind of catching up on his life and his friends.”

She said she felt at the time that the house “epitomized” her father. “It was simple and surrounded by wildlife, woods and river,” she said. “He was a pioneer type. (His life) was about adventure. It was about doing what he enjoyed doing.”

It was Lou’s adventurous spirit that had led him to Alaska in the first place.

A test pilot for autogiros and the fledgling helicopter industry, Lou had traveled in 1948 to Anchorage to try to interest Alaskans in the benefits of rotary-wing aircraft. A former barnstormer and crop-duster, he was well equipped for flying and enjoyed the risks involved in demonstrating the prototype machines.

But in 1967, at the age of 67, Lou was semiretired and simply delighting in life itself.

“He enjoyed his little cabin in the woods,” Mary Lou said, “but he also enjoyed Soldotna and the people he knew there.

“He was a hale fellow, well met, lots of friends, lots of acquaintances, lots of people that he could have a drink with.”

When their summer of ’67 was yellowing into autumn, Mary Lou promised to return.
“I said, ‘Well, I’ll come back. I’ll come back and see you.’ And I never did.”

It was part of a pattern of separations that characterized their relationship over the years.

Lou had gained a measure of fame for giving an autogiro flight in 1936 to young Frank Piasecki — soon to become a world-renown innovator in the business of vertical takeoffs and landings. Lou himself stayed attached to the rotary-wing industry, and by the time he arrived in Anchorage in 1948, he was well-known and respected in his field.

His family, however, was back in Philadelphia and had trepidations about coming to Alaska. Lou’s wife, Marianne, was weary of her husband’s many exploits and constantly changing plans, said Mary Lou. Reluctantly, she brought her 6-year-old daughter to Anchorage and spent her summer with Lou. Then she returned home without him in the fall.

Mary Lou said she remembers flying to Anchorage in 1948 in the belly of a cargo plane containing a helicopter for her father. She reveled in a summer of being Daddy’s little girl, but when Lou went back to work as a test pilot, she went home with her mom.
Before 1967, the father-daughter relationship had consisted of correspondence and occasional trips by Lou out to the East Coast. After 1967, the relationship reverted to more of the same.

Sometime between Mary Lou’s first two visits to Alaska, Lou left aeronautics behind and became a bartender in Anchorage. Described by his daughter as a “hard-living, hard-drinking guy,” Lou became so ill with cirrhosis in the mid-1950s that his sister had him flown out to New York for treatment.

Upon his recovery, he once again headed north. Just before the Good Friday earthquake struck in 1964, Lou sold his bar and moved to Soldotna, purchasing the small house from the Gibbs family, who had built the place on land purchased from Marge and Frank Mullen in 1954.

Meanwhile, Mary Lou was becoming a young woman with elements of adventurism and wanderlust of her own. She was studying at Oxford University, in England, when her father surprised her with a visit and inspired her trip to Soldotna in 1967.

Mary Lou taught Latin and history on the East Coast for nine years before returning to London permanently in 1976, about the same time Lou, whose health was deteriorating, made the move to Sitka.

“He kept trying to get out and come back (to Soldotna),” she said. “He didn’t like being in an old folks home. I think he minded not being able to do what he wanted to do.”

After being informed of her father’s death, Mary Lou decided that at some point she would return to Soldotna, return to the little house along the river that he had loved so much. Upon her retirement as co-director of British-based Responding To Conflict organization in 2006, she got her best opportunity to come back.

In Soldotna, she met with Marge Mullen and several others who had called Lou Leavitt a friend. She was also able to tour the old house, now occupied by another family, and to note its close proximity to other, much larger homes now inhabiting Lingonberry Lane.

She said she was pleased that the house, despite many changes, was now “lived in and loved.” And she said she felt blessed to have made the trip and discovered so many connections to her father and the place she had not seen for 41 years.

“I’m here to honor him in my life, the part of his life that was about adventure, about pioneering — about what Alaska feels like to me — as well as breaking new ground, living the way you want,” she said.

She called her Soldotna sojourn “a kind of feeling of completion or satisfaction,” but she added a caveat:

“It’s a journey, and it’s not over yet. I really believe that relationships don’t end when one party dies. So I’m still working on the relationship with my dad, and I suspect he’s still somewhere working on it with me.”

Closed for business, open for fun — Soldotna chamber event draws after-hours crowds

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Posted hours went out the window Sept. 3 at the Ischi Mall along the Sterling Highway in Soldotna, as more than 100 people showed up after 5 p.m. to see what the businesses had to offer.

Alaska DigiTel Wireless, AK Express Tags/Titles and Registrations, Dairy Queen, GCI and Edward Jones-Ryan Kapp, joined forces to host a Business After Hours event, sponsored by the Soldotna Chamber of Commerce.

The intent of the program is to get people out to businesses and facilitate networking among business owners and the community. It’s more about socializing than sales, although sales might be a result of showing off what a business has to offer.

“If you have a business in town, it’s a great way to showcase the business and location, generate traffic and get to know some people,” said Ryan Kapp, Soldotna chamber president.

“We got good feedback,” he said of the 140 or so visitors who stopped in at his store. “More than anything we got to meet some new folks. That’s what it was all about for me.”

Michelle Glaves, chamber director, said the Business After Hours program has been resurrected after it fizzled out years ago. The chamber has started a new ambassadors program, which gives local business owners an opportunity to help promote the chamber, even if they don’t necessarily have enough time to serve on the chamber board.

“They basically promote the chamber in different ways, talk to businesses who are members but haven’t taken advantage of all the things we can do for them, or aren’t members and spread the word on the different things we can do to market for them and that we can offer,” Glaves said.

In the after-hours program, a business will sign up to host an event, usually in the 5 to 7 p.m. range. The chamber promotes the event and the business provides the draw for people to attend, like food or door prizes.

At the Sept. 3 event, all the mall vendors teamed up to host an event together.

“It’s a little harder for small businesses to have 120 people in their building, so everybody decided to do it together and have a block party. So we ordered some good weather and got a tent out and did it as a little bit of a round-table kind of thing,” Glaves said.

One business provided veggies, another was in charge of drinks, one brought soup, one had cake. Dairy Queen had a barbecue going outside. And each donated items for door prizes — a Blackberry phone, 20,000 Alaska Airlines miles, some barbecue and gardening tool sets, a cell phone, Tesoro gas cards and gift cards for assorted DQ goodies.

Visitors went from store to store, getting a card punched to be eligible for the drawing, and met under the tent outside for food and socializing. Some attendants were business owners and/or chamber members, and others were just curious members of the community.

“There seemed to be a really nice cross section,” Kapp said. “Some folks saw the tent and free food and decided to stop in, which is fine.”

This is the third Business After Hours put on so far this year. One was at Wells Fargo. The other was at Central Peninsula Hospital with tours of the new wing before it opened to the public. Glaves said they plan to hold one a month, with a hiatus in midwinter.

“All the businesses that have done it really came through,” Glaves said. “There was good networking and everyone had a good time. At this rate there’s no reason why it can’t keep continuing.”