HATS OFF TO KIM HEACOX: WRITER, PHOTOGRAPHER, MUSICIAN, ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST

HATS OFF TO KIM HEACOX:  WRITER, PHOTOGRAPHER, MUSICIAN, ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST

  If you could rub Aladdin’s lamp, what would you wish for?  There is a man in Gustavus who might wish for an avalanche of understanding that would end  our destructive ways and uncover the knowledge we need to protect and preserve our natural world.  His name is Kim Heacox.

Kim is a man whose loves are deep and lasting:  His wife, Melanie; his close friends; his celebration of nature, and his passion for Glacier Bay.  He asks that we be hyper aware, and that we do our best to protect our planet whenever possible.  Kim’s motto in all his writing is “Change Everything Now.”  He feels we’d best change things for the better and wake up while we still can, because, given the grave issues facing us, such as climate change and its evil cousin, ocean acidification, “we are sleepwalking into the future.”

Kim told me a story about a trip he made in 1979, after his first year as an interpretive ranger/naturalist in Glacier Bay.  At the end of his summer season, he had saved about $5,000.  He took a Greyhound across America, visited friends in Florida, and flew to Europe.  He first visited Spain, where he volunteered for the World Wildlife Fund at Coto de Doñana National Park, one of Europe’s most important wetland preserves.  A major site for migrating birds, the park is home to five threatened bird species.  Kim worked on habitat restoration.

In November of 1979, he went to Istanbul.  He was scheduled to go to the Soviet Union, and had all his tickets; however, on Christmas day the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, and all U.S. tours were cancelled.  So, in early 1980 he went to Bulgaria.  There he met a dissident who had been thrown into a Siberian gulag for three years of hard labor because he’d distributed dissident pamphlets.  When Kim said, “Really?”, the dissident took off his shirt and showed the scars on his back from being whipped.

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INTRODUCING DON BRYANT: FRIENDLY, KIND, WORLD TRAVELER, A “QUIET REBEL”

Don Bryant was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Margerie and Vaughn Bryant.  His father was a news correspondent for the Associated Press.  Don has one full brother, Vaughn, older than he, who is now a professor of anthropology at Texas A & M, and one half-brother, Jim, who presently flies for UPS.  When Don was still an infant, the family moved from Rio to Santiago, Chile.  Because his nanny in Chile spoke only Spanish, it became his first language as a toddler.  Then they moved to New Orleans when he was about three years old.  He lived in New Orleans for about five years.  Their completely different accent influenced his English speech.  Then, as the family followed his father when work took him to a new location, they moved to Texas.  Here, his dad worked in public relations.

His parents divorced in 1956.  In Austin, his mother, Marge, met and married Jim Woodworth, an Alaskan, who was a professional hunter/guide in Kodiak.  Don went to Alaska with them.  Marge and Jim homesteaded on the Kenai River, near Sterling, Alaska.  Jim wrote a book titled “The Kodiak Bear.”  In his book, he used “Monarch of Dead Man’s Bay” as one chapter title.  Later, another author used the same title for his book about a Kodiak bear.  Jim also wrote articles for the pre-Alaskan magazine called “The Alaska Sportsman.”

In 1959, Don went back to Texas.  After about a year, he went to live with his brother, Vaughn, who was in college.  In 1961, Vaughn and Don went to Europe by ship, where they were supposed to go to school.  His brother studied in Germany and Don went to school in France.  The school was for foreigners, to teach them French.  Don says he lasted about a week.  He knew no French when he started his classes, and the teachers spoke only French.  So, Don started hanging out at the beach with the Swedes, who all spoke English.

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THERE’S A BOAT AT THE FOUR CORNERS BY KATE BOESSER

Fritz (short for Frederick) has a tee-shirt that reads “Bundin er batlaus madur –bound is boatless man.”  He subscribes to Wooden Boat magazine and Messing About in Boats.  His grandparents on his mother’s side came from the fjords of Norway, so he is l/2 Norwegian.   He loves to build, repair, fish from, and journey in boats.  He spent the first thirteen years of his life in Sitka, living on Sheldon Jackson campus across the street from the beach, rowing with his neighborhood friend in a small wooden rowboat.

FRITZ AS A TEENAGER

SV Red Sea

When Fritz moved to Juneau as a teenager, his dad bought him a 16-foot wooden skiff and an 18-horse engine.  He began to teach himself how to repair and replace boat engines; how to wire and repair boat electronics; how to build wooden boats.

LEARNING TO SAIL

Fritz and I crewed on a 56-foot ketch, named the Red Witch, out of Juneau when we were 20.  We were running before a storm outside of Baranof Warm Springs when 19-year-old deckhand friend John raised the sail but over-stretched the winch’s reach.  Screw-bolted into the wood, it actually ripped out of the mast and hit John in the chest.  It could have killed him, but he was unhurt.  We made it back into the protection of the cove, where we all took hot tubs and hiked the hills of natural hot springs to avoid the raging captain carefully re-mantling the winch so we could continue on our journey.  A few days later we hit an unseen iceberg south of Juneau in Taku Inlet, heard the screaming blame of the captain one too many times and decided to leave the ship for good once back in Juneau. This was not the captain for us, but we certainly had sailing in our blood from then on.  Two things remain to this day – I am willing and capable of going out in any weather to deal with lines, then coil them carefully for the next person. The second is that I can tie a fast bowline knot, which I use to this day for tying up everything.

FIRST GUSTAVUS BOATS

SV Soleglad

In 1977, at the age of 23, we moved to Gustavus with our klepper kayak.  For the first three years or so, Fritz traveled in the kayak either alone or with a friend up into Glacier Bay for two weeks each spring.  About this time we found ourselves moving up in the boat world.  We first rescued a small plywood skiff from a Juneau beach.  After two years, we acquired the 22-foot Soleglad, meaning sunset in Norwegian.  This scow sloop with lee-boards had been built by Manual from Haines in 1952, the year of Fritz’s birth. Fritz and my brother-in-law Jim  sailed it down Lynn Canal and Icy Strait to Gustavus.  We spent the summer when our oldest daughter Lena was two years old sailing and motoring all over Glacier Bay.

As a mother, then 28 years old, I found myself losing confidence in myself when afraid for the safety of my child.  I was no longer the 20-year-old sailing off on the ocean among men deck mates.  Now I felt responsible for others.  It surprised me as much as Fritz that I worried so much on the sea.  Though I never got seasick, living on a small sailboat in Glacier Bay I had to deal with my fear to enjoy life on the water.  I kept a small journal.

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MEET BOB LUDERS: A MAN WHO IS KIND, LOYAL, AND FAMILY-ORIENTED

Robert Ernest Luders entered the world on June 20, 1923, in Berkeley, CA.

Bob’s mother, Alma Vass,  had graduated from art school in San Francisco.  She was an entrepreneur and owned a design shop with two other women in the city.  She had been invited to study art in France.  Bob says, “Fortunately for us, that’s right when she met my father, so that was the end of her art career and the beginning of a family.”  It was not an easy choice, but one she thought about carefully.

Bob’s grandparents came from a well-to-do family in Lübeck, Germany.  They moved to London in the mid-1800s.  As tensions between the English and Germans grew, Bob’s grandparents were urged to go back to Germany, but they opted to stay in London instead.  The family was extremely wealthy.  They had become interested in gas lighting, put a significant amount of their money into it and lost their fortune.  So, “disgraced,” they packed everything up, including the grand piano, and shipped it to Texas, then overland to California.  Bob’s uncle had purchased land in Bakersfield, California, sight unseen. They lost two European manor houses and ended up in a tar paper shack.  Bob’s uncle disappeared and his grandfather took one look at the place and folded; he died shortly after that. Bob’s father, Ernest, was now responsible for his mother, his two sisters and himself. Bob says, “In those days, in wealthier families, as soon as you were born you were given a silver spoon with your name engraved on it.”  The highly educated wealthy class didn’t “work;” they managed their estates and businesses.  For Ernest, however, when things got tough, you did anything you could to provide for your family.

In Bakersfield,  they started a farm, raising strawberries and produce.  They even planted an orchard. Unfortunately, the water they had been promised wasn’t always available.  At one point, the little irrigation water they received simply ran into a hole in the sand.  Their solution was to plug the hole by “planting” Bob’s Aunt Anna. That hole was so large that Anna stood in it and they shoveled sand around her.  They added sand until Anna was covered up to her hips.  With the area now covered with sand, the water was forced to the plants.

Eventually, they had to abandon the farm.  The land was worthless.  Although oil had been found in Bakersfield, none came from their property.  The good news was that because of the land boom, they were able to get jobs at the land office in town.  Then, an old acquaintance from Germany suggested they go to San Francisco where Ernest could get a job with Schwabacker-Frey, a large company selling stationery, photographic supplies and various printed items.  Then came the earthquake of  1906.  The business was destroyed, so Bob’s father worked during the clean-up and reconstruction.

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A SELECTION OF WEIRD ALASKAN LAWS

  1.  It is illegal to push a live moose out of a moving airplane.  I’d like to know what the moose was doing there in the first place.
  2. You are breaking a law if you tie your pet dog to the roof of your car.
  3. You cannot live in your trailer as it is being hauled across the city.
  4. You can’t slip an alcoholic beverage to the moose in your yard.  Apparently, he does not handle his liquor well.
  5. Though it is legal to shoot a bear with a gun (in season and with the proper permit, of course!) waking a sleeping bear to shoot a photograph is prohibited.
  6. Owners of flamingos are not permitted to take the bird into the barber shop.  If the bird really wants a haircut and shave, you will have to fulfill its wishes yourself.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

About Me
Original article by Fran Kelso

Hunting with Jim
Warren, Marshall Kim. Personal Interview

Meet Roger and Mary dba Alaskan Metalsmiths
Williams, Roger and Mary. Personal Interview

Mountain Ash: The Tree With an Alias
Kelso, Fran. Plant Lore of an Alaskan Island. Indiana: Author House, 2011.

The Truth about Alaskan Ivory
General information researched from several online sources; written by Fran Kelso.
Information on Schreger lines from an "ivory ethics" page at www.Zealandia.com

Mammoth Ivory Bear Pendant
Information from Zealandia Designs, Boise, Idaho

New Twist to Bear-Baiting
Thiessen, Mark. Associated Press. Toronto Star, August 14,2015.

What are Alaskan Attitudes?
Kelso, Fran. Alaskan Attitudes. North Carolina: Create Space, 2015.

Overrun with Dandelions? Make Wine!
Kelso, Fran. Plant Lore of an Alaskan Island. Author House, 2011.

How to Eat a Dandelion
Kelso, Fran. Plant Lore of an Alaskan Island. Author House, 20ll.

A Short History of Cribbage
Kelso, Fran. Original article researched from several internet sources.

A Selection of Weird Alaskan Laws
From the website, www.dumblaws.com

Fine Russian Crafts: Hand-Made, Hand-Painted Matryoshka dolls.
Kelso, Fran. Original article researched from several internet sources.

Bizarre Alaskan Stories
Grass, Jonathan. Taken from the article, "Woman Punches Bear to Save Dog."
Juneau Empire: August 30, 2011.

The Halibut and the Fisherman
Kelso, Fran. An original modification of an old folk tale.

Quilting
Article by Accelerated Web Solutions administration.