Martha, even in tragedy. The Welfare Dept. had arranged for her to stay with a King Cove native family. Although our heart went out to all the orphaned children of the murdered Sanak couple, we were especially concerned for the future of this girl. Martha seemed to be a happy child at least when she was with other children. Stoic some days, yet loud and fun loving the next day, we wondered what hurt she must be hiding. The murder of her mother by her stepfather happened the week after we first met her and of course there was a break-up of the marriage of her real father before that. During the school year, she was shifted around among two or three different island families who had young girls around her age for playmates. Relying on the generosity of friends was the only way orphans could survive in a village without foster home care. Each of her brothers were taken in by different families so all three children were separated from that time on. Even though there must have been tremendous grief and resentment in her heart, she always showed her pleasant side to us at school. Martha was able to laugh, at least on the outside. She tried hard at her lessons and played with reckless abandon during active games.
I remember at our Christmas program, Marie and I made a special effort to give her center stage attention when all the kids opened their gifts. Her gift was a beautiful little ring with an artificial ruby stone setting. ( In an earlier school assignment we had asked each student for a letter to be written to Santa.) We had picked it out in October, thinking she would really like it. We had put it in a small box within another larger box, that was encased in another big box. We had packed it in continuing larger boxes six times so the last box was the biggest gift box to anyone in school. She kept opening boxes as everyone in the village watched. She was enjoying the attention so much so, that she unknowingly discarded the actual gift box during the shuffle. I was watching and recovered the ring box for her. When she finally saw it, she showed real emotion saying, it was worth the wait.
Martha became the last Sanak student to whom we gave our final goodbye and that represented the end to our adventure on "The Isle of Free Love."
I had taken my dory over to King Cove on the deck of the THRASHER. One night a storm washed the boat away from that beach in front of the ANS School. In the morning, I happened to see a gray speck on the beach and started hiking toward it. As I got closer, I saw it was my dory, the tide had just then moved it off the beach and it was drifting out to sea. I started to run so to catch it before it was out of reach. It was dragging the anchor but luckily the anchor caught and held it for me just off shore. I waded out up to my chest, got aboard, bailed it out and pulled in the anchor. As the oars were still aboard I planned to row around the point and set the anchor solidly in a little sheltered cove, come back later with a power boat and get it back but I hadn’t counted on the offshore wind. I tried to row that few yards shore-ward but the wind was too strong. It blew me seaward in a matter of minutes. It was now too late to drop anchor. I was on my way. There was nothing but water between the Aleutians and Hawaii and that seemed to be where I was headed with only a pair of oars. I was a victim of that off shore north wind that was so strong that I couldn’t row against it, but this time I do have a storybook ending.
I saw a green spot seaward and gave the standard distress signal, an oar straight up. Earlier that week I had seen an old dirty ugly looking green fishing boat at the King Cove dock called the AFFINITY. I didn’t like her looks, but that day when she happened to be out testing her engine, saw me and picked me up a few miles offshore, she was the prettiest boat I had ever seen.
On another night, I was careless in securing it properly so it drifted down the beach. In going after it I had to cross a little lagoon. A skiff was there so I borrowed it to get across. I planned to come back immediately after I finished and return it to its proper place.
But when I returned later with my dory, I was confronted by a very angry man about his skiff being on the other side of the lagoon. “I’ll help you get it back,” I answered and explained why I had to use it.
"My skiff is full of water now because the wind and surf has filled it up. You’ve wrecked my motor. ” he retorted.
I went with him, bailed it out, cleaned everything and dried off the motor. His old nine horse Johnson started and all seemed forgiven. I told my teacher friends about the incident and they were terrified. That’s the legendary Johnny Bearskin, they screamed. He always carries a loaded 45 pistol and it is common knowledge, yet not proven, that he has killed three people. No one messes with him! He has an uncontrollable temper!
After hearing that, we were not unhappy to leave King Cove on a fishing boat for Cold Bay the next day, as we were scheduled to board an old C47 of the Reeves Airlines to Anchorage and civilization. We sat sideways along the bulkhead amid the cargo yet that seemed luxurious to us knowing we were actually on our way home. Our pilot was curious about our situation and came back to talk to us about our life on Sanak. After answering his queries, he treated us like returning explorers. By radioing ahead, he made hotel reservations for us at an Anchorage hotel and ordered a taxi to wait for us at the airport. He even had the owner of the airline meet us as we stepped down the ramp. That was the famous old bush pilot, Bob Reeves. We had read about his life and his part in early Alaskan aviation history yet were really honored when he wanted to hear about the details of our Aleutian adventure, as the word of our eventful year had evidently preceded us.
Just the normal taxi ride from the airport to town with all the swerving, excessive speed and honking was a white-knuckle experience for us. We were suffering from urban culture shock by merely returning to normal city living.
On our return flight we stopped off in Juneau. After all, we had never met our boss. We were offered the job by mail, communicated by written reports each month, and our paychecks were sent to the bank. We didn't even know who we were working for.
When we met face to face with the Commissioner of Education, Mr. Erickson, we found him to be a typical Alaskan, full of enthusiasm for the challenges inherent in The Last Frontier. Mrs. Novotney, who was our immediate supervisor, said, "When you've successfully served at Pauloff Harbor, admittedly a problem school, you can have any school you want that's open next year." We learned that the Federal Government was slowly surrendering all the BIA schools to the Territory. For our next Alaskan year, we chose Copper Center, a former BIA school along the Valdez highway.
The first thing we did when we hit civilization was head for a good restaurant and order some fresh vegetables and finish that bite of steak that was taken away from me on the Garland. When the waitress came with our meal I looked at Marie and summed up the whole year by saying, “I think it was worth waiting a year for this steak.” The surprised waitress was little upset then said, apologetically, “Yes, I guess our cooks here are kind'a slow, aren’t they."
“ It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,”
(fromThe Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens 1850)
EPILOGUE
During our first year of marriage we were marooned, so to speak, on an isolated island with no way for either of us to bail out or go home to mother. With no outside support from family, friends or institutions, Marie and I found that there was no all-knowing super problem solver out there to lean on. We had to support each other and that molded us into a self-contained, self-reliant team. We had no fights between the male and female way of doing things as in some first year marriages of urban society. Our battle was against the world in which we found ourselves trapped. We, of course, had volunteered to go there, yet it was a bit like being trapped intellectually without any outlet to others. In the long run, that was the best thing that ever happened to us. We created our own ways to fight off loneliness and despair, while 100 mile-an-hour winds whistled over our bit of the Wild West.
Most residents came to Sanak in an attempt to find Shangri La, a place away from the problems of civilization. Each wanted a refuge away from the law, crowded cities, government
