Both my folks came from Norway to Alaska. They lived in Petersburg during World War I, when the flu was causing so many problems. They had a girl, born a year and a half before me, who died in infancy from the disease and was buried on the far side of Sasby Island, where the cemetery was located in those days.
During her pregnancy, my mother went to live with her sister in Vancouver, B.C., where I was born in July 1918. After a short period, we came back to Alaska on a Canadian boat called the Princess Sophia. When she stopped at Wrangell, Dad picked us up in his 45-foot fishing boat and brought us home.
The Princess Sophia then continued on up to Skagway, where she took on cargo and 280 passengers. She was the last boat of the season, the last chance to go south before the weather got too bad, and she was loaded to the gills. In the early-morning hours on October 24, midway between Skagway and Juneau during a terrible storm, she hit Vanderbilt Reef, causing the deaths of all 353 passengers and crew. It's tragic but historic that we were on the last voyage of the Princess Sophia.
The first few years of my life, we lived on a fur farm in Tebenkof Bay, about 100 miles out toward the ocean. It was a nice life there, with two brothers to play with. We were pretty isolated. The nearest place was a herring processing plant 20 miles away; that was the nearest radio and means of communication.
We lived out there for four or five years until we had to go to school, at which time my folks sold out and we moved to town. At that point, I had to learn English because there was nothing but Norwegian spoken in our family.
HOOKED ON HALIBUT
My dad fished halibut in Frederick Sound for a number of years, then started working for the town's water department.
My brothers and I always found lots of fun things to do. We used to take a rowboat and go up Petersburg Creek, across the bay. There was also a sawmill there that drew us like a magnet. It was operated by a big steam engine, which is sort of hypnotic for boys that age.
I went through the 12th grade, and after graduating, the first thing I did was look for work. This was during the Depression, and helping the family was critical. In Petersburg there were a lot of big families who owned big boats, so for lots of kids, their jobs were guaranteed. Since my dad no longer fished, it was a little harder for me.
At that time, the cold storage of the cannery had burned down. There was a boat called the Teddy J. tied up alongside of it, and I got a job helping the carpenter repair it. When we finished, he said he didn't have any money to pay me but that he would take me out fishing for one trip. Prices were terribly low in those days. Halibut was around 5 cents for fish under 10 pounds and 7 cents for bigger fish, which made it all the more remarkable when he paid me $100. After that, I got a job with one of the fishing boats as a regular crew person, and I've fished ever since.
They wouldn't accept me in the military because I was 6 foot 7 inches. They never really gave me a reason; maybe they didn't have uniforms that big. So I just kept on fishing during the war. I was a cautious fisherman; I didn't want to get into trouble on the ocean. I always got along OK and made a good living.
I worked on one boat for 10 years, then decided to go out on my own. I went to Seattle and had a 56-foot seine boat, the Symphony, built in '46. I fished in that with a crew until '66, then I built a 72-foot steel boat, the Westerly, in Blaine, Washington. I fished in that until '86, then I quit. Fifty years seemed like a good, round number.
When I retired, my son bought my boat.
PIVOTAL YEARS
In the early '60s I got mixed up in politics. Gov. Egan needed someone to fill a position on the Fisheries Board, so he called me and asked if I wanted to do it. I said, "Absolutely." I took the job and lasted there for 20 years.
Prior to that, I had been to a lot of the meetings, so I had been involved earlier, and I had a good reputation; I hadn't been arrested, anyway. A lot of people didn't want to stand up in front of a hundred people and tell them they couldn't have what they wanted. It was a wonderful experience. I met a lot of nice people and a few that weren't so nice.
Those two decades, '61 until '81, were some pretty pivotal years. After they abolished the fish traps, they were sort of restructuring. In addition to everything else, they had to deal with long periods of low temperatures, which caused problems with the salmon. There were problems with the halibut and problems with other fisheries. We understood that kind of stuff and wanted to see what we could do to stop the decline. Fishing improved greatly under state management. We didn't have a lot of money for research, but we did the best we could with what we had.
I fished halibut each spring and salmon in the summers. Basically, the winter was for spending more time with the family and going to meetings. Sometimes I spent two or three months in the wintertime going to meetings, some of which lasted a month or so. There were a lot of issues to hammer out. Some years there were 600 proposals for changes to the regulations. They had to be decided upon each year. There was a lot of controversy, and people were always looking for better ways to do things.
I was also on the Halibut Commission for a while, as well as the advisory panel to the International North Pacific Fisheries for 30 years. As part of that group, I made many trips to Japan.
In '65, four of us -- Bob Thorsenson, Magnus Martin and Tom Thompson and I -- got Icicle Seafoods started here in Petersburg. The plant was already here; it had been Pacific American Fisheries. It was a good location, and all the equipment was already there. A bunch of us fishermen bought it, and it's been running ever since.
FAMILY LIFE
When I was in my mid-'20s I met a wonderful lady, Helmi Karjala. She was working in a Bristol Bay cannery and teaching school. We married and had two children, Sue and Chris.
Helmi was quite an artist. Her medium was every medium. She did ceramics, wall hangings, oil paintings, watercolors, you name it. She was Finnish, with a good sense of humor.
In the summers, I would take the Symphony up to Seward and fish out of there. Helmi and the kids would take the ferry to Haines, then drive our truck a thousand miles on the unpaved road, and we'd live in whatever was available at the time. In the fall, we'd all come home again.
We had some great family trips on the Symphony, going all the way down the inside waters, finding all kinds of useful things, especially lumber. People would buy old canneries, tear them down and sell the lumber.
Before the ferries got started and (when) we only had a steamboat twice a week, we'd go to Seattle on our boat and bring back all kinds of things. One year, Helmi wanted a car, so we brought that back. The cannery used to send up a few things with us sometimes, or we'd transport belongings for friends. Everybody did the same thing; that's how we lived in those days.
I built the house I'm living in in '54. I had some carpentry skills from the work I did before I went fishing. That's the Alaska way; you don't hire someone, you just go ahead and do it.
I don't get around too much these days. But I have my family and my grandson. I sit and watch the boats go out. I occasionally go fishing. Sometimes I even catch a salmon now and then.
Sharon Bushell lives and writes in Homer. Her books, "We Alaskans" and "We Alaskans II," feature her stories about Alaska pioneers that have appeared in the Daily News. For more information, visit her Web site at www.wealaskans.com.
