A better place

From the late 1940s to the mid-1960s, the bodies of 133 patients who died of tuberculosis or other causes at Sitka's Mt. Edgecumbe hospital were sealed in two ammunition bunkers. The bunkers were in the way of a project to widen the Sitka runway. So in 1998, a repatriation project began, with the first remains leaving Sitka in July. Vera Martin was a student at Mt. Edgecumbe High School when she contracted TB in 1956. She spent a year in the sanitarium and returned to work at the hospital as a nurse for 18 years. (Photo by Fran Durner)

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