As Yup'ik musher Mike Williams races for Nome on the Iditarod trail, he's carrying a special delivery sealed away in a Ziploc bag in the front of his sled:
A stethoscope and a family photo. A 25-year-old love letter and an obituary.
These are memories of Anchorage pediatrician Roger Gollub, who was killed by a snowmachine while trying his hand at mushing in November outside Kotzebue. Troopers say the man who hit him, Patrick Tickett of Ambler, had been doing drugs and drinking the day of the crash.
Tickett's now awaiting trial on a second-degree murder charge while Gollub's wife, Diane, says time has frozen into long days and longer nights back in Anchorage. She's waiting for the trial too.
As for Williams, he's doing what he does nearly every Iditarod -- racing to drive his message of sobriety across a state crippled by alcohol abuse.
"All six of my brothers died from accidental deaths and suicide. I'm the only one standing," Williams said Thursday night from the north bank of the Takotna River, just before departing from a mandatory 24-hour layover.
One brother fell through ice of the Kuskokwim River, where searchers found a whiskey bottle floating in the open water, Williams told the Daily News in 2000. Another shot himself after drinking homebrew.
Williams was born and lives in the Kuskokwim River village of Akiak, about 40 miles northeast of Bethel. He gathered hundreds of names of people pledging to stay sober and made his first Iditarod run in 1992.
"I'm still grieving. Running the Iditarod is my healing process," he said.
IDITAROD PAYLOADS
Williams isn't the only musher carrying something extra tucked in their sleds this year. Mushers DeeDee Jonrowe and Jessie Royer are hauling more than 100 envelopes -- each with the footprints of a baby from one of Alaska's intensive care units to publicize the obstacles facing babies born prematurely.
Dr. Lily Lou, an Anchorage neonatologist launched the program. She moved to Alaska just months after Gollub and connected his widow with Williams, whom she met at a conference years before.
"A really fitting legacy would be if sharing (Gollub's) story could make any difference in terms of safety for the community where he cared for kids and really invested himself, his whole heart, emotionally," Lou said.
Gollub retired in September from full-time work after a 30-year career and periodically visited Kotzebue to treat local kids. On Nov. 19, he was mushing about three miles outside of town when, according to troopers, Tickett's snowmachine slammed into him.
Troopers accused Tickett of drinking and using cocaine and marijuana sometime before the crash. Gollub's death drew a flood of memories from peers and patients' families, while Tickett's February arrest and accusations of drunken driving labeled the case as the latest in a long history of alcohol-related tragedies across Alaska.
BAG filled with MEMORIES
The widow and the musher caught up with each other last month in Big Lake where Williams was training, Diane said. She brought him a pot of beef stew -- "I frankly hadn't cooked since Roger's been gone ... There's nobody here," she said -- and a collection of her husbands keepsakes to take on the trail.
Diane said didn't want to weigh Williams down and figured he'd pick and choose what to take. As far as she knows, he decided to carry it all:
• A 25-year-old love letter Diane wrote Roger just before they married.
• Notes to their father from the couple's adult daughters.
• A plush toy in the shape of the virus that causes the common cold -- a nod to the doctor's life's work with the Indian Health Service.
• The wool socks he wore as a hiker. Gollub loved Alaska's trails, and was an Iditarod junkie who would e-mail friends with race updates throughout the day.
"Some kids have baseball cards; Roger had Iditarod," Diane said.
Find Kyle Hopkins' blog on rural Alaska at adn.com/thevillage. E-mail Kevin Klott at kklott@adn.com. Hopkins reported from Anchorage and Kevin Klott from Takotna on the Iditarod Trail.
Live standings: Musher leaderboard
Voices from the Trail: Jen Seavy and Linwood Fiedler
By KYLE HOPKINS and KEVIN KLOTT
Anchorage Daily News