“Todd instantly fit in with the cool guys,” says Bitney. “At that time, the cool guys were on the basketball team. Hockey was for the renegades, the stoners, the misfits. They called themselves the Mob. The basketball team was the Beaver Patrol. Molly Hatchet’s ‘Flirtin’ with Disaster’ was the song.”
Adding to Todd’s panache was the fact that his mother, Blanche Kallstrom, was one-quarter Yup’ik Eskimo, making Todd one-eighth Native. (The word Native is used in Alaska to describe the state’s indigenous people.) Given the racism rampant in Wasilla—then and now—it was a tricky thing to be just Native enough to seem glamorous, but not so Native that it was obvious. Todd could easily pass for all white. But the first day he met McCavit and John Cottle, Rod and Colleen’s son, he got drunk on beer. “When he gets drunk he starts talking like a Native,” McCavit says, “so we all knew right away. A part-Native with wheels like he had and with all the money he had—it was just one more thing that made him cool.”
But there was another side to Todd that wasn’t so cool. Racism had come to the Valley with the influx of right-wing Southerners who arrived to work on the oil pipeline in the seventies. Wasilla was so white that there was only one African American in the entire school system. He was Clyde Boyer’s adopted son. Catherine Taylor was his stepmother.
One day, when the boy was in junior high school, Todd, then a senior, and two friends waylaid him by the gravel pit adjacent to Wasilla High and beat him up, simply because he was black. It was far from the worst beating he endured. “Not even in the top ten,” he would tell me. “Once, I wound up with seventy-seven stitches in my head after some guys kept banging it against the curb. Sure, Todd was a racist bully, but that just made him one of the guys. Growing up black in Wasilla was hell, and I’d never have made it without the love and support I got every day from my dad and from Catherine.”
Sarah and Todd graduated from Wasilla High in 1982. Instead of the usual well-wishes or humorous remarks, Sarah inscribed Bible verses in her friends’ yearbooks. After graduation, she and Todd went separate ways—Sarah to the Hilo campus of the University of Hawaii, and Todd to a junior college in Washington State. Todd didn’t last long: college was not for him. He’d barely managed to graduate from Wasilla High. Not even his best friends would say he had an aptitude for the classroom or an interest in the life of the mind. Todd liked machines. He could fix things. In Alaska, this was a coveted attribute. But Mechanix Illustrated was as deeply as he delved into literature.
Sarah was hardly an intellectual herself. In her high school yearbook she declared that her ambition was one day to broadcast major sporting events alongside Howard Cosell.
She left Hilo after three weeks, without formally enrolling, because the many people of color there made her nervous. “They were a minority type thing and it wasn’t glamorous,” Chuck Heath later explained. Sarah and her closest Wasilla High friend, Kim “Tilly” Ketchum, enrolled instead at Hawaii Pacific University in Honolulu. They shared a condo at the high-rise Waikiki Banyan on Ohua Avenue, less than two blocks from the ocean.
There were people of color, however, even on Waikiki Beach. Sarah and Tilly soon transferred to North Idaho College in Coeur d’Alene, less than fifty miles from Sandpoint. Then Sarah transferred to the University of Idaho in Moscow. She dropped out and returned home to take classes at Mat-Su Community College before returning to Moscow for three more semesters. She finally graduated in 1987.
The one constant through all the fits and starts was Tilly Ketchum. From the locker room at Wasilla High to Hilo to Honolulu to Coeur d’Alene to Moscow, wherever Sarah went, Tilly followed, or vice versa. For five years, the two were inseparable. They remain close friends today.
Sarah also grew close to Tilly’s father, Kerm Ketchum, a professor at Mat-Su Community College. “He became her surrogate father,” Bitney says. “He’s the first person Sarah ever smoked pot with—the old professor, a good man. He loved Sarah, still does. And she inhaled. She’s never denied it. Kerm Ketchum got Sarah good and stoned.”
After her graduation, Sarah returned to Alaska and worked on the sports desk of Anchorage television station KTUU. On weekends, she’d sometimes appear on camera, delivering sports reports during the 10:00 PM newscast.
Her attitude toward people of color was evolving. In Anchorage, she even dated black men. A friend says, “Sarah and her sisters had a fetish for black guys for a while.”
Each year, over Thanksgiving weekend, the University of Alaska hosted a basketball tournament called the Great Alaska Shootout, featuring some of the country’s best teams. In 1987, one of the top squads to visit Anchorage was the University of Michigan, led by six-foot-eight junior Glen Rice, number 41.
Rice would lead Michigan to the NCAA Championship in 1989, appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated and setting a scoring record for the NCAA tournament that stands today. After graduating from Michigan as the school’s all-time leading scorer, he starred in the NBA for fifteen years.
Whether in her professional capacity as a sports reporter or simply as a basketball groupie who’d begun to find black men attractive, Sarah linked up with Rice during the weekend tournament. One friend recalls, “They went out. I suspect it was more than that. I can’t say I know they had sex, but I remember Sarah feeling pretty good that she’d been with a black basketball star.”
In one version of the story, Sarah’s encounter with Rice took place in her sister Molly’s dorm room at the University of Alaska Anchorage. “She hauled his ass down,” a friend says, “but she freaked out afterward. Hysterical, crying, totally flipped out. The thing that people remember is her freak-out, how completely crazy she got: I fucked a black man! She was just horrified. She couldn’t believe that she’d done it.”
(illustration credit 2.1)
Glen Rice remembers the weekend quite differently. When I spoke to him by telephone in March 2011, he said, “I remember it as if it was yesterday. She was a sweetheart. I met her almost as soon as we got out there.”
Rice does not recall being in a university dorm room. “We hung out mostly at the hotel where the team was staying,” he told me. “We just hit it off. In a short time, we got to know a lot about one another. It was all done in a respectful way, nothing hurried.”
“So you never had the feeling she felt bad about having sex with a black guy?” I asked.
“No, no, no, nothing like that,” Rice said. “Even after I left Alaska, we talked a lot on the phone. I think right up until the time she got married. She was a gorgeous woman. Super nice. I was blown away by her. Afterward, she was a big crush that I had. I talked about her for a long time. Only good things. She was a well-rounded young lady. It’s amazing the way that’s stayed with me. I think the utmost of her and I felt that way from the start.”
Todd, meanwhile, was living the happy bachelor life in Wasilla. “They were pretty wild times,” McCavit says. “We were young and single and making enough money to have fun.”
The group included Todd, McCavit, Bitney, Tim Smith, Dan Fleckenstein, Joey Austerman, Ted Knutson, Casey Williams, Jim Spain, and Howard Tresham. In later years, some fared better than others. Todd was arrested for a DUI in the mid-1980s, but avoided further brushes with the law. Austerman wound up working in Sarah’s gubernatorial campaign. Bitney became her legislative director after she was elected governor. McCavit became a successful executive with an Anchorage-based oil services company.
Ted Knutson, however, went to prison following “a short foot chase” in April 2008, after which, as the state police report said, “He was arrested for DUI, Eluding, Misconduct Involving a Controlled Substance 6th Degree, and Driving with a Revoked License.”
And then there was Howard Tresham, who in January 2010 was charged with stealing thirty thousand feet of copper wire, valued at $114,500, from the Matanuska Telephone Authority, where he had worked for twenty-five years.
“Coke was everywhere in Wasilla,” Bitney recalls. “What’s now the Mug-Shot used to be call
ed Huppie’s. Its motto was ‘Ain’t No City Bar.’ They were dealing coke right out in the open. Sometimes they’d lock the front door and start chopping lines on the bar. It was a pretty rough joint. Those were great days.”
Huppie’s changed its name to the Mug-Shot Saloon when management announced a plan to put mug shots—either real or staged—of frequent patrons on the wall. In the face of opposition from the clientele, most of whom did not want to be known as frequent patrons, the plan was abandoned, but the name change stayed.
“What’s now the Sports Bar used to be the Kashim, a twenty-four-hour diner,” Bitney says. “It was the closest thing Wasilla ever had to an institution. Huppie’s stayed open till five, then we’d all go over to the Kashim. Sure, Todd did coke with us all. He was on the end of the straw plenty.
“The thing about Todd is, he doesn’t sleep. He’s one of those people, he might not sleep at all one night and the next night get three hours. A long night’s sleep for him is five or six, and that’s rare. He’s an all-nighter. You see that a lot with emotionally unstable people, guys notorious for their temper, like Todd is. When they fly off, it’s like, wow! When Todd is on a temper bender you don’t want to be anywhere close.”
“I’ll tell you this about Todd,” McCavit says. “He has the most amazing beer-drinking capacity I’ve ever seen. He can consume ten times the quantity of a normal person and still not seem drunk. And he’s the fastest drinker I’ve ever seen. He says, ‘Hey, you want to split a six-pack?’ and you say, ‘Yeah,’ and by the time you’ve finished your first, he’s already chugged the other five.
“Normally this doesn’t affect him, but if he’s already wound up about something—watch out. I had to fight him sometimes when he was drunk, because it was the only way to get him out of my face. And I wasn’t the only one; any of his friends will tell you the same.”
One fistfight McCavit recalls involved Sarah. “No, no, it wasn’t jealousy, nothing like that. Matter of fact, in regard to Sarah, all of us felt he was welcome to her. Nobody envied him, that’s for sure. But this one time, he was going on and on, he wouldn’t shut up, he kept saying Sarah wanted to get serious but he didn’t think he could give up all the other girls. ‘What should I do? What should I do?’ he kept saying. I finally said, ‘I don’t give a damn what you do, but just shut up about it, all right?’ Next thing I know he’s swinging at me.”
WASILLA WASN’T ALL fun and games in those days. In December 1983, state troopers arrested George Koenig, a music teacher at Iditarod Elementary School, and charged him with having molested seventeen third-grade girls.
For months, parents had been complaining to the school principal, Ray Carter, about Koenig. He refused to act on the complaints. After Koenig’s arrest, a new superintendent of schools fired Carter. By a 6–0 vote, the school board supported his decision. At that point, Chuck Heath swung into action. Carter was an old friend of Heath’s from Sandpoint. Chuck wanted his pal Carter reinstated and he wanted the three women on the school board recalled.
Chuck and his friends set up an RV in the parking lot of Wasilla’s shopping center (there being only one at the time) and spent Saturdays and Sundays urging Wasillans to sign recall petitions against the three women. As one of the women, Pat O’Hara, recalls, “Chuck Heath created a lynch mob mentality about a horrific crime that should have been handled with great sensitivity.”
Meetings were held at Cottonwood Creek Elementary School. Chuck and his crowd denounced the board members who’d voted to uphold Carter’s firing. “The good old boys could do nothing wrong, and we had no right to challenge their power,” O’Hara says. “Chuck Heath led an ugly, violent mob that quickly grew out of control. There was always the threat of violence in the background.”
O’Hara recalls Chuck spreading rumors that the women on the board were having affairs with the new superintendent. “The tactics were violent and dangerous,” she says. “I was alone much of that winter, with a five-year-old and a newborn and no near neighbors. I lived in a constant state of fear. My husband had to leave his job in Valdez and fly home. No matter how ugly the threats, we could never get police protection. It was the custodian at Cottonwood Creek school who walked us through the gauntlet of hate and shouts and threats after meetings and made sure we got to our cars safely. And then we’d find death threats written in the snow on our cars.
“There was a willful ignorance of inappropriate sexual behavior in the Wasilla community,” O’Hara says. “The Iditarod school staff and most of the community, including the local papers, seemed unconcerned about what occurred with Koenig and his victims. The furor was focused on protecting Ray Carter, and Chuck Heath was largely responsible for that.”
Eventually, a compromise was reached: the recall petitions would be withdrawn, and a hearing officer would conduct an independent, noncriminal investigation of Carter. On July 16, 1984, after the hearing officer delivered her findings, the school board controversially rehired Carter, but not as a principal. The board issued a statement that said: “We have placed him in … the correspondence area, where students pursue lessons at home rather than in schools.”
Koenig pleaded guilty and was sentenced to forty years in prison. The new superintendent of schools quit and left town. Pat O’Hara was reelected to the school board. Chuck Heath returned to teaching sixth grade.
“Chuck Heath and a few others created such a maelstrom that nobody was safe for a while,” O’Hara says. “They were bullies, pure and simple, and essentially that’s what Sarah and her cohorts are today. They bully the most vulnerable parts of the society—young women, children, gays, the poor.
“Sarah learned from her father: if someone disagrees with you or does something you don’t like, annihilate first, ask questions later. Like Chuck, she’s all about intimidation and fear. ‘Don’t retreat, reload.’ Veiled threats, verbal violence, complete disregard for the welfare of victims—these all came from Chuck and they are all inherent in the current persona of Sarah Palin.”
THREE
Sunday, May 23, 2010
I INVITE A COUPLE of friends from Anchorage for dinner on the deck. It’s been another splendid spring day. One friend has brought her children, who play in the yard and on the somewhat decrepit dock. I cook salmon and halibut on the Traeger. I’m quickly falling in love with my grill. I even like the sound of the name.
“Traeger,” one of my friends says. “The Palins could name their next kid that: Track, Tripp, Trig, and Traeger.”
“Laugh now,” the other friend says. “This is going to get a lot less funny very soon.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“How do you think they’re going to react when they find out you’re living next door?”
“Todd and Sarah?”
“Yes, and the millions who adore her from afar.”
“I don’t know. I’d like to think Todd will take me for a ride in his floatplane and Sarah will bring me over a housewarming gift and welcome me to the neighborhood.”
“Are you serious? This is no neighborhood: it’s a compound. And you’ve breached the wall.”
“It’s a fence, not a wall. And I haven’t breached it. Nor will I. I’m only kidding about the housewarming gift. Frankly, I expect them to be annoyed. But once they see I’m going to mind my own business, things should be fine.”
“You’re dreaming. Sarah’s the most paranoid person on earth, and Todd’s now apparently a close second. It’s their perception. They’ll see this as an aggressive act by a wise-guy writer who’s out to get her. She always has to play the victim. Wait till you hear her squeal about this.”
“But I’m not going to bother her. I’m not the National Enquirer. I’m not going to take pictures over the fence or write about what they’re cooking on their grill—if they even have a grill. As a matter of fact, once Todd gets a whiff of the Traeger, he’ll probably be over here cooking on mine.”
“Do you know who’s going to be over here? A gang of vigilantes, armed. To
dd and Sarah are not going to just sit back and let this happen.”
“That’s ridiculous. This is Alaska: live and let live.”
“No. That is Alaska, starting at the end of your driveway. This is Palinland. And uninvited visitors are not welcome.”
Monday, May 24, 2010
THE WEATHER CONTINUES to be perfect. It’s the sort of day when the mountains beckon, when you want to pull on the hiking boots and head up a trail toward the tree line, leaving the cares of low altitude behind.
Not me. I head for Target and spend $250 on household supplies and groceries. In the late afternoon I call my wife, Nancy, in Massachusetts. She’ll be coming out for ten days on June 3. She hasn’t been here since 1976, when she worked as a reporter at the Anchorage Daily News while I researched Going to Extremes.
Then I call Levi Johnston’s mother, Sherry, and arrange a meeting for tomorrow. It’s just after 5:00 PM when I take my laptop outside. I listen to music while I go through my list of appointments. I’m about halfway through a run of a dozen Hank Williams songs when somebody walks around the end of the fence. I look up.
“Who are you?” the guy says. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m renting this place. I just moved in.”
I think it’s Todd Palin, but I can’t be sure. In the pictures I’ve seen, Todd had a moustache and small goatee. This fellow is clean-shaven. Then I notice his T-shirt. It says, in block letters across the front, FIRST DUDE. Yup, must be Todd.
The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin Page 3