Kelsey and his older brother, Bob, owned the complex of piers and warehouses on the leased city dock, which was one of the dominant employers in Valdez. In fact, the community at times seemed as much a company town for the Valdez dock enterprise as it was a gateway to the interior of the Great Land (as Alaska liked to be called).
Longshoremen were arrayed on both sides of Kelsey now, positioning the forklifts and cargo pallets, pulling on gloves, joking with each other as they, too, watched the wall of seagoing metal slowly fill the horizon. John Kelsey was in effect their employer (through North Star Terminal Stevedoring Company, a union operation under contract to the Valdez Dock Company), but he was also their friend and neighbor. There was a camaraderie that cut across economic lines in a community like Valdez, a feeling of common purpose born of pioneering determination and shared hardships. There wasn’t room—literally or figuratively—in such a town for a country club set of standoffish owners and managers. It was, as one successful merchant put it, difficult for anyone to live on the other side of the tracks in a community too small to have a railroad.
The Kelsey family had purchased the dock complex in the early years of Valdez’s development. Brothers John and Robert, both born and raised by the cold waters of Port Valdez, took over in the late thirties, doubling the size and length of the facilities, adding warehouses, taking on management of the Standard Oil tank farm on the waterfront, and generally husbanding the family business into a family fortune. As the Kelseys knew well, by 1964 replacing his company’s facilities alone would cost over seven million dollars.
At 4:12 P.M. heavy hemp ropes snaked out from the deck of the Chena as the ship at last sat motionless alongside the dock, bow pointing south-southeast, her bulk lying parallel to the shoreline. Several families had already gathered, participating in what had become a weekly event: watching the Alaska Steamship Company vessel come in. One week the Chena, the next week perhaps the Talkeetna, both named for Alaska rivers, which had been named in turn by the original native inhabitants.
Kelsey noticed the little Growden boys, David and Jimmy, with their father. Jim Growden, schoolteacher and the town’s basketball coach, stood to one side of the dock with his sons, who were waving at the sailors thirty feet above and pointing to various parts of the ship. Over the next few hours scores of Valdezans would drive up to the dock, rumble down the long expanse of planking in family cars and station wagons, and spend a few minutes marveling at the size of the ship and the meeting of the two dissimilar worlds before them: a huge seagoing vessel and the stability of a stout wooden dock firmly anchored in what was assumed to be the solid material below.
John Kelsey signed the settlement papers and handed them back to Captain Merrill Stewart, the usual formal procedure by which a dock and warehouse company acknowledges how much it owes the shipper for the cargo coming ashore.
Both men stood in the office of the Valdez Dock Company, a block above the shoreline on Alaska Avenue. Kelsey and Stewart were a study in contrasts, the manners of old-school gentlemen worn like a comfortable sweater by men who could quaff a mug of beer with their crewmen as easily as they could take high tea in a formal parlor in San Francisco or Seattle. Both were natural leaders with a concern for those who followed, and though their meetings arose from the usual and regular duties of their respective stations, there was a civility underlying such contacts within which business could be conducted with a handshake—in which a man’s word was still his bond. Among such men, signing carefully drawn settlement papers was at once the proper procedure—and completely unnecessary.
As the two of them motored back onto the planking of the dock, Stewart noticed one of his men, the ship’s steward, energetically taking pictures with an 8 mm movie camera. The fellow had been filming nearly everything for the past three days. Stewart, amused, wondered when he was going to run out of film.
Kelsey stopped at the foot of the gangplank, the dock now alive with the sounds of winches and cranes, forklifts and busy men, flanked by numerous family members and onlookers watching the show. The captain had emerged from the car, closed the door carefully, and was leaning in through the passenger’s window.
“John, would you consider joining me aboard for dinner? We haven’t had enough time to talk.”
Kelsey pictured his wife with dinner ready at home, and realized he didn’t have a choice.
“Thank you for the offer, but I’d better not. I’m expected home for dinner tonight; my in-laws are with us.”
Captain Stewart smiled and nodded.
“Of course. Maybe next week. See you later.”
The master of the Chena started up the gangplank as Kelsey put his car in gear—and just as quickly stopped.
The longshoremen were obviously getting ready to rig the ship’s forward deck-mounted crane for the D-8 Cat in the cargo hold by positioning the extra boom normally stowed at the top. The process was called topping down the crane. Kelsey looked at his watch and read 5:15 P.M. If they got that huge Cat suspended in midair by 6:00 P.M., he’d have a problem. Either the men would go into penalty time and he would owe extra wages, or they’d go off to dinner, leaving fifty thousand pounds of bulldozer swinging in the breeze, suspended in midair. Neither prospect was acceptable.
John Kelsey got out of his car to look for the dockworkers’ superintendent. That Cat had to stay in place until after dinner.
It was the first time thirteen-year-old Tom Gilson could remember Good Friday’s triggering a school holiday. But this time it had, and the banker’s son was enjoying the chance to cruise around Valdez with several older friends, occupying the back seat of the car and doing nothing at all productive.
The Gilsons were also pioneers in Valdez. Tom’s grandfather had survived the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco and had come north to settle in the wild Alaskan outpost in 1910, starting a general store as the Gilson Mercantile. His son, Tom’s father, was born in the tiny community in 1919, and Tom had followed in 1951, the third generation. His father was now prime owner and president of Valdez’s only bank.
The group had seen the Chena dock an hour earlier, but they had been too busy talking to friends to get down to the dock before now. The bulk of the Chena could be seen clearly from almost anywhere in the tiny downtown area, her deck cranes in motion, and signs of activity evident along the dock in the distance.
As the car full of teenagers moved closer, rolling slowly down Alaska Avenue toward the water, the boys watched the activity ahead with practiced interest. On board and unseen, Captain Stewart was finishing a quick dinner while his steward plotted another escape from dining room duties to do more filming with his 8 mm camera. Just up from the waterfront John Kelsey was sitting down with his family at their second-story dinner table, while two blocks away Red Ferrier’s wife, Marion, was dropping scallops into a frying pan.
As one family drove off the dock, another drove on. Sammie Marie Stuart headed her Travelall toward the end of the pier, her three children in animated conversation and anxious to see their dad, Smokey, who would be waiting at shipside along with many other local fathers. It was a Valdez ritual, and with the temperature pushing forty degrees, no wind, and a holiday atmosphere, the end of the Valdez dock was a fun place to be.
It was naturally assumed by everyone that it was also a safe place to be.
Chapter 3
Anchorage, Alaska—1964
Bob Reeve was enjoying his birthday, which had taken on the aura of an impromptu party held in the brand-new Anchorage Petroleum Club on the top floor of the Anchorage Westward Hotel. The veteran Alaska bush pilot and founder of Reeve Aleutian Airways had started with a solitary lunch in the breathtaking surroundings of the new facilities, but decided to stay around the rest of the Friday afternoon as friends dropped by from all over the city to wish him well. He was one of the founding members of the club, which had instantly become a showplace for Anchorage, its oversize control tower type of windows providing a sweeping view of Cook Inlet and all of the city.
Scaffolding still hugged one side of the fifteen-story hotel, and one outside construction elevator continued in operation as the crews labored to finish interior floors and guest rooms. But the beautiful new landmark had already opened for business, and the smell of fresh paint, new carpets, and carefully crafted woodwork, which adorned the expansive lobby (along with a few remaining tarps), had greeted Bob Reeve’s senses hours before as he pushed through the revolving doors to the lobby, looking around with admiration at a facility built principally with local money and civic pride.
For Anchorage, and indeed for all of Alaska, the Westward was a symbol of legitimacy, further testament in mortar and steel to the fact that the largest of Alaskan communities was now an important American city, not just an outpost or another small town. The hotel was to be the focal point for expanded tourism and international commerce, as well as a magnet for conventions.
It was a confusing time for those with promotional responsibilities. On one hand, the frontier image brought in tourists and kept their links with the pioneering nature of the Alaskan wilderness firmly intact. On the other hand, no one wanted to be thought of as a frontier hick town with dirt streets and Wild West attitudes; big business and industry were seldom attracted by such images. So Anchorage existed with one foot in each province, the consummate modern frontier metropolis, where a New York businessman could leave his first-class room at the Westward in his locally purchased Brooks Brothers suit and catch a taxi to go four blocks through snowy streets to an Alaskan saloon with sawdust floors and moose heads on the wall (a place where sidearms were worn occasionally on Friday nights).
In many ways the Westward was also a confirmation that Anchorage had weathered the bad times and the uncertain times, had come of age, and was here to stay.
Certainly the hotel building itself was here to stay. The architects had been sufficiently worried about the layer of clay beneath the city to excavate a gargantuan hole for the foundation, drilling numerous vertical shafts below that bottom basement level for concrete pilings full of steel rods, all put in place before the basement concrete began to flow. Anchorage, after all, was earthquake country, and though in previous years the city’s residents and businessmen seldom had the luxury to worry about careful seismic engineering, a showpiece like this had to be done right. As a result, the Anchorage Westward was designed to stay in one piece right where it was, clay or no clay.
Bob Reeve greeted yet another friend as he sat at the bar, the image of freshly set tables with expensive new silverware and china in the foreground as the club staff began preparing for the dinner hour. The windows from the Petroleum Club took in a magnificent view in the background. It was too cloudy to see Mount McKinley to the northwest, but on a clear day the twenty-thousand-foot mountain the natives knew as Mount Denali would be breathtaking. Even with gray skies and low clouds amidst the mild temperature of thirty-eight degrees, the panorama of Cook Inlet to the west and the Chugach range to the east was very impressive.
To the northeast sat Government Hill with its microwave communications station, which bordered the large, important Elmendorf Air Force Base farther over the ridge. With all the people who worked at the Army’s Fort Richardson and at Elmendorf, which was headquarters to the Alaskan Air Command, the military and the U.S. government were the dominant employers in Anchorage.
To the north were the tiny port facilities of the city, principally a handful of docks which served shallow-draft barges brought in from Cook Inlet—a waterway oceangoing ships could not use.
Several blocks to the southwest and nearing completion was the new Four Seasons apartment building, built with a unique concrete lift-slab construction technique. Some of the workers on the Four Seasons project were just knocking off for the day.
And three miles to the southwest was the city’s exclusive new residential area known as Turnagain Heights, a development of beautiful new houses nestled up to the edge of a thirty-foot bluff overlooking the part of the bay (or inlet) known as Knik Arm.
From such a vantage point it was obvious Anchorage was coming of age—though still a bit hodgepodge in architectural styles and construction quality.
Anchorage had building codes, of course, along with zoning and planning commissions. Without an adequate building inspection staff, however, plans for commercial and public buildings were routinely sent to an expert engineering firm in San Francisco for examination. There were local experts in city planning, such as longtime Alaska resident Lidia Selkregg, a Ph.D. who spent most of her professional time in Alaska trying to guide the growth of Alaska’s largest municipality. But for a young, dynamic, expanding city in a hurry in a harsh environment (that made major construction projects all but impossible six months of each year), there was a premium on getting structures up rapidly.
There were houses to be built, housing developments to be started, and commercial buildings to be erected. There wasn’t sufficient time to debate the finer points of the geology of the city’s foundation, or to delay construction projects while dithering over the merits or the implications of a U.S. Geological Survey report issued three years before by geologists Ernest Dobrovolny and Robert Miller,1 which had pointed out the inherent instability of the layer of saturated clay that underlay the entire municipality. Bootlegger Cove Clay, he called it. If saturated with water and shaken, the slimy stuff was capable of doing very fluid and unpredictable things.
But in the face of rapid growth the prevailing attitude was disinterest. Earth tremors occurred all the time in Anchorage, and the land always seemed to remain in the same place. As with the Turn-again Heights area, if there was a prime piece of view property that cried for residential development, residential development would be the inevitable result. “They aren’t making any more land” went the saying, and that was rationale enough.
As Bob Reeve held court in the top of the Anchorage Westward with the dinner hour approaching, three miles to the west one of the owners of the hotel stood in the living room of his magnificent Turnagain Heights home, positioning a brass horn to his lips, taking a long, deep breath in the process.
With his wife on a late Friday trip to the store, Bob Atwood could play his trumpet at full volume without bothering anyone.
The panorama of mountains and inlet to the west painted an elegant backdrop for his tunes—the gray sky with its thinly veiled threat of snow flurries merely a confirmation that the great land beneath was Alaska in the spring.
Bob Atwood loved being in this place. He loved the challenges, the successes, the independence, and the feeling of being a sort of modern-day pioneer in a land neither hospitable nor tame—a land which always held a whisper of threat, of sinister intent, just below the surface.
Certainly his city had all the modern conveniences, including the respectable daily newspaper, the Anchorage Daily Times, of which he was the publisher and owner. But regardless of Chamber of Commerce hype, this community of strangers now known as the forty-ninth state still held a breed of individualists who stared bitter storms in the teeth and defied everything from periodic earth tremors and mind-numbing cold to overly officious federal bureaucrats. It was a heady mixture of adventure and routine—indeed, a frontier in spirit as well as in fact.
Atwood had become a well-liked and respected Alaskan during his many years in Anchorage. With his distinctive features—his rectangular face a memorable mix of clear brown eyes and a quick smile framed by slightly graying hair—he was the very model of a newspaper publisher, a clear-thinking fellow whose stewardship of his city was as zealous as that of any Chamber of Commerce booster.
Alaska in 1964 was a very personal place—an unusual locale where senators and congressmen and governors were people you could talk to almost at will—people who might come to any constituent’s house for dinner if invited. But even if the community were not so close and the politicians so accessible, they would still have been guests in Atwood’s home. For decades he had balanced the veteran journalist’s eye for unvarnished real
ity with the empire builder’s thirst for progress, worrying about such things as the degree of care with which the city’s newest buildings were being designed, while sniping in print at anyone who would stand in the way of development.
Bob Atwood stood in his showplace of a home and started down the same coda again, concentrating even harder on his music. All around him were the furnishings and cherished bric-a-brac from years of world travels carefully arranged throughout the modern log house—the first residence to command the view from this particular spot on the bluff. In such pleasant surroundings, such minor details as the suspicious seepage of water he had noticed years ago at the foot of the embankment below were far from his mind.
Four-year-old Mitzi Hines had gone to her room for a late-afternoon nap while her eighteen-year-old brother, Warren, was enjoying his day off from school. His graduation from West Anchorage High was just two months away. The family home at 3109 Turn-again Boulevard West was a few doors from Bob Atwood’s house, but the music from publisher Atwood’s trumpet didn’t penetrate the solitude of the Hineses’ living room as Warren gazed out toward Knik Arm, appreciating the snow-covered scene in the midst of a mild Good Friday. His mother, Margaret Hines, had gone to the store and would be back momentarily. His dad, a successful Anchorage optometrist, was at work several miles to the east.
Turnagain was a serene place to live. The list of residents provided almost a who’s who of Anchorage with the ranking movers and shakers and builders and leaders crowding the bluff with their expensive homes to gain a view of the inlet. Though Bob Atwood had been the first, now a major housing area sat behind and to the side of his home, and more were under construction. This was prime real estate, a few minutes’ commute from downtown and from most of the facilities the city had to offer.
On Shaky Ground Page 4