DALE LINDSEY: After 10-year struggle, 71-year-old ''risk-taker'' succumbs to disease.
Longtime Seward business executive Dale R. Lindsey has died at his home in Seward after a long struggle with cancer. He was 71.
Lindsey had a reputation in the Alaska business world some would envy: A successful and ambitious risk-taker considered "one of the good guys" by his peers.
"He was very generous and loyal. ... He was friends with everyone," his wife, Carol, said Tuesday.
With his wife, Lindsey co-owned Harbor Enterprises Inc., the state's largest independent petroleum distributorship, with fuel terminals in Soldotna, Kenai, Homer, Kodiak, Dutch Harbor, Juneau, Sitka, Skagway, Petersburg, Ketchikan, Craig and Whitehorse, Yukon.
The company began in the 1930s as Andy's Oil Delivery as a "mom-and-pop" fuel supplier in Seward.
The Lindseys acquired the tiny company in 1959, when they were both 23 years old.
"He was the (truck) driver and I was the bookkeeper," Carol reminisced Tuesday.
In the 1980s, they took the firm to the big time, first by acquiring a bulk-fuel plant from Chevron in Seward and two years later, in direct competition with Chevron, opening their own bulk terminal in Dutch Harbor to service the massive Bering Sea bottom-fish fleet.
Harbor now has hundreds of employees at its Alaska and Canadian operations.
"(Lindsey) was willing to take reasoned risks and he was successful with them more often than not," said Paul Laird, general manager of the Alaska Support Industry Alliance, who counted Lindsey as a close friend.
"He was truly a visionary," said Laird, who worked briefly for Lindsey at Harbor.
In 2001, Lindsey retired from his chief executive job but he remained chairman and co-owner until his death.
Before becoming a high-profile business executive, Lindsey worked as a locomotive fireman for the Alaska Railroad and as a commercial fisherman. He also was a founding partner of several independent firms that owned oil leases and explored on the North Slope, and had once owned a few commercial crab boats as well as an interest in a Valdez oil refinery.
The Alaska Chamber of Commerce named Lindsey Alaskan of the Year in 1995, and he and Carol were inducted into the Alaska Business Hall of Fame in 1997. He was a director of the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward, Northrim Bancorp and the Alaska Railroad.
He passed away last week after an on-and-off struggle with prostate cancer that began more than 10 years ago, Carol Lindsey said.
"I was so grateful that he could die at home. ... He was a fighter to the end," she said.
She said they grew up together in Seward and got married at 18. They were married 53 years and had five children, two of them deceased.
A memorial service will be at 2 p.m. Sunday at the SeaLife Center, 301 Railway Ave. in Seward. Arrangements are with Peninsula Memorial Chapel.
Find Elizabeth Bluemink online at adn.com/contact/ebluemink or call 257-4317.
