January 06, 2009
Tuesday

Well it's been fifty years since I landed in a PBY with my mom, I was born in Michigan, and now I was landing on the waterfront of Ketchikan, at a place called Ellis Air. I was going to learn what it meant to be an Alaskan over the next fifty years, I still wonder where those years went.

Anyway, it has always impressed me, the tough nature of all these people I grew up in Ketchikan with. And nowadays I can tell you, for the most part that toughness is missing here. People I grew up with would never even think to not do their job just because it was freezing outside or it was snowing or even if they had broken their arm that day. Yes they were that tough! And it is that toughness and commitment to do it better than they do it down below, which has built this town and State. The people I grew up with would not let a couple of Governors of our great state of Alaska, run down southeast Alaska, destabilize our ferry system, try to move our Capital from Juneau, take away 30 years of dreams, and refer to us as "Nowhere".

I sure hope that those people I grew up with are as outraged as I am about the state of our town, our state, our country, because those are the people I could always look to to do or say something when they saw that something or somebody was not right!

Let's regain our identity as a town, as a State, as a country, let's show America what Alaska has always been about. Let's do our jobs when anyone from down-below would not, let's say somthings wrong when it is. Let's give another generation, a generation of Alaskans that don't understand can't!

James Schenk
Kwagiutl[at]att.net
Ketchikan, AK

Received December January, 20089 - Published January 06, 2009

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