Alaska News

Mimi got everyone singing together

HAINES -- I am having a heck of a time writing Mimi Gregg's obituary. Mimi was the First Lady of the Arts in Haines. She was 92 when she died of old age. Dying peacefully in the 10th decade of an extraordinary life is not tragic. What I'm missing most about Mimi is the way she was when I met her, and the way we both were when we were younger, she in her 60s, me in my 20s.

I laugh now at how Mimi convinced me to direct "Carousel" when I had three children under 6 and was pregnant. When I said I couldn't, she said, "Oh piffle."

Mimi's story is wacky and typical of Alaska pioneers. She didn't fit any mold. Mimi arrived in Haines on a steamship in 1947 with two small children -- two more and a foster child would complete the family -- and her mother, Regina Viccarino, an opera singer of French and Spanish descent. Mimi was also named Regina and nicknamed after a character in Puccini's opera "La Boheme." Her father was an ambassador in South America, and she grew up in New York City and Argentina.

The ladies and "babes in arms" as Mimi would have said, joined her husband Ted, who was part of a group of Washington, D.C., area veterans who bought the grand old officers' homes of Fort Seward and the rest of the Army base, sight unseen. "The first summer was beautiful, fun and exciting," daughter Annette Smith said, "but when winter set in, it was wicked, wicked. They learned a lot about credit and how bad the economy was."

Later, Mimi would found the Chamber of Commerce and serve on all kinds of regional and statewide tourism boards, cheerleading for Haines and Alaska. But that first year Ted drove a truck, and Mimi opened a gift shop. She expanded it into a travel agency, and over the years also taught school, worked for the Legislature, wrote a column for the Juneau paper, was shipping agent and the deputy magistrate. But that's how she paid the bills. Her passion was the performing arts.

She helped found the Lynn Canal Community Players and our arts council. She hosted a weekly show tunes program, "Matinee," on the radio into her 80s. She also put on a lot of parades, concerts and festivals and helped build The Chilkat Center for the Arts. She was the force behind the Alaska Community Theater Festival held there every other year for about 25 years, and she brought a national drama festival to town in 1983.

Mimi persuaded the American Community Theater Festival to choose tiny Haines while the representatives of other larger and more accessible potential host communities were stuck in a broken elevator. "She was so nice, so charming," her daughter Annette said, that it was impossible to say no. "In her day," Annette said, "guys would lay down in a puddle for her."

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When Mimi decided to stage "Damn Yankees" during Haines' sawmill heyday, she recruited mill hands and loggers and taught them to sing and dance. When we put on "The Sound of Music," who but Mimi could find a guest director from South Africa, persuade her to spend the winter in Alaska, share her home with her and become fast friends?

I can't even begin to tell you how great a hostess she was or about all the gourmet meals we shared with opera on the stereo and a whole crowd of guests, all seemingly effortless on her part. She baked her own bread too.

My first summer in town Mimi talked me in to acting in a melodrama for tourists. Then she nominated me for the drama group's board. I was thrilled. Turns out half the board members were newcomers. Our first meeting was at Mimi's house, and she was there along with all the former board members. We all worked together. That's leadership.

The Chilkat Center was full of gorgeous bouquets for her memorial service, which was more like her last show. Mimi was not an "in lieu of flowers" gal. She was a Grand Dame. Mimi herself, in a pink porcelain urn that "wore" her pearls, occupied center stage.

Her son said Mimi didn't believe in the afterlife, "she felt you better make the most of what you get, because this is it." Then he said she's no doubt surprised by her new angel wings.

A local opera singer sang from "La Boheme," and our new women's choir sang sacred and show tunes. Our director noted that a chorus is a fitting metaphor for Mimi's life: "She got everyone singing along, she risked something to do it, but in the end got us to do something more than we could have done alone."

I'm so grateful for the way Mimi made Haines more interesting and artsy. But mostly, I'm thinking about what the Baptist pastor said. He is Southern, and met Mimi in her last years while he drove the van to lunch at the Senior Center. "Miss Mimi," he said, "always took my arm and said I was such a gentleman. It was easy to be a gentleman with such a lady as Mimi Gregg."

Heather Lende lives in Haines and is the author of "If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name." She can be reached at heatherlende@adn.com.

HEATHER LENDE

AROUND ALASKA

Heather Lende

Heather Lende is the author of "If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name: News From Small-Town Alaska." To contact Heather or read her new blog, The News From Small-Town Alaska, visit www.heatherlende.com.

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