Anchorage Daily News

Russian Jack, a murderer and moonshiner, wasn't exactly Mr. Family Values. Ben Boeke didn't ice skate. Jean Cartee didn't play softball.

No matter. Their names are nonetheless synonymous with places where scores of Anchorage residents flock for family outings, hockey and softball.

Everywhere you go in Anchorage, you find a park or sports facility with a name attached to it. Homesteaders, politicians, activists and plain old folks are honored from one end of the city to the other. In some cases, the namesakes are so familiar, so much a part of life in our city, the people they are named for have become footnotes.

Ben Boeke Ice Arena is one of them. Anyone who plays hockey or follows hockey knows of the arena, as do most figure skaters. Few of us even bother to include the words "ice arena" when talking about it. "Ben Boeke" flows so naturally off the tongue, newcomers probably think it's one word.

The real Ben Boeke was a city clerk who retired in 1972 after 25 years and more than a couple of administrations. By all accounts, he wasn't a hockey player.

"No, he wasn't," said George Sullivan, who was mayor when the ice arena was named in Boeke's honor. But he was a whiz on city government.

"If you had any question about city history, you went right to him, you didn't come to me or the city manager. He had a great memory," Sullivan said.

That Boeke's identity is now entwined with hockey is sheer coincidence.

"I wanted to name something after him and the hockey rink was being built at that time," Sullivan said. "He wasn't too well, and I felt personally he deserved something for his dedication to the community."

It was almost as simple as that. The mayor decided someone should be honored, he presented his idea to the city Assembly, and voila! Instant immortality.

Today, naming a building or park after someone generally takes more effort, and more time.

You can still go straight to the Assembly with a request. More typically, however, you go through an application process, which requires a written statement explaining why a person deserves recognition. Applications must win the approval of the city's Parks and Recreation naming committee, which meets twice a year. Then the proposal goes to the Assembly.

"There has to be credence and criteria," for naming parks and facilities after people, said Steve Beardsley of the Parks and Recreation Commission.

The city doesn't get many requests to name parks and buildings after people, Beardsley said, but it gets numerous requests to attach names to components of parks and buildings -- a trail at Kincaid Park, a sheet of ice inside Ben Boeke, a garden on the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail.

The naming policy is being revised to include a three-year waiting period after a person's death if a park or major facility is to be named for him or her, Beardsley said. A one-year period would be in place for the naming of a minor facility.

The policy does not preclude naming things after someone still alive, although it dictates that that person "has made a significant contribution to the community; brings notable honor and recognition to the community and/or has made a substantial donation to the acquisition or development of the property ..."

Perhaps no one has his name on more things than Sullivan, who served 14 years as mayor beginning in 1967. His best-known namesake is the George M. Sullivan Arena, home of the Great Alaska Shootout, the Anchorage Aces, the UAA hockey team and numerous concerts and trade shows.

When the arena was named, some people grumbled because it was named after someone still alive, Sullivan recalls.

"I remember somebody wrote a letter to the editor and said they didn't think it should be done till the person had passed away. I remember thinking, 'Should I go away and die?' " Sullivan said. "I've been extremely proud to have my name on that facility, and since I don't know if I'd be looking up or looking down at it when I die, it's kind of nice to see it now."

Besides Sullivan Arena, a power plant on the Glenn Highway is named for Sullivan, and so is a new addition to the Senior Center. And the park along Westchester Lagoon is the Margaret Eagan Sullivan Park, named for his wife.

"When they first named (the park) it cost me $20 extra in gas every month because my wife wife kept running over there to look at the sign," Sullivan joked.

Sullivan isn't the only person who's still around to enjoy his namesakes.

The coastal trail is named after Tony Knowles, the former Anchorage mayor who recently completed his second term as governor. The Chester Creek trail is named after Lanie Fleischer, the woman who in 1971 helped organize the effort to build a bike trail system.

Fleischer says she still gets a jolt when she sees one of the big wooden signs with her name on it.

"I'm incredibly honored, but I've always said the credit really goes to all the people in Anchorage who voted for the bond issue and the people who use the trails," she said. "We wouldn't have one foot of trail if people weren't using it like mad."

Fleischer said she was among about 40 people who championed the bike trails. For three years the group attended Assembly meetings, zoning meetings, platting meetings; it drew up plans for a trail system and found grant money. If anything, she said, the trail should bear the name of her husband, Hugh, who watched the couple's three children while Fleischer attended meetings.

"My kids didn't play house; they played 'going to meetings,' " Fleischer said.

When she first learned the city was naming the trail after her, Fleischer had mixed feelings. To her, "Chester Creek" was a lovely name.

"The reason I went ahead and said OK is now my kids have a little bit of a payoff for all that sacrifice, for all those years when Mommy was not there when otherwise I would have been," she said.

Fleischer was honored for her passion and muscle. So was Ruth Arcand, who homesteaded in South Anchorage with her husband, George. By the time she died in 1997 at age 78, she had won protection from the state Legislature for land in Sections 16 and 36. The resulting park is named Ruth Arcand Park, home to some of the city's most popular horse trails.

Arnold Muldoon and Ralph Kincaid were homesteaders too. Muldoon Park is a rambling, wooded area in East Anchorage popular with bikers and runners, and Kincaid Park is a huge multiuse park near the airport, famous for its world-class ski trails.

Brown's Point in Government Hill is named after Nellie and Jack Brown, who are believed to be the first permanent settlers on Ship Creek. Charles W. Smith Park on C Street and the Seward Highway is named after Charles W. Smith, who arrived in 1919 on the first train carrying passengers from Seward to Anchorage. His park is more commonly refered to as "Gorilla Park" because it is home to two gorilla statues. Lynn Ary Park honors the homesteader of the same name who gave land to the city in 1962.

Homesteaders and politicians are probably honored more than any other group of people.

The convention center is named after Bill Egan, the state's first governor. The airport is named after Ted Stevens, a U.S. senator since 1968. The Delaney Park Strip -- which was a firebreak in the early 1900s and an airstrip in the late 1920s -- is named after James J. Delaney, who came to Anchorage in 1916 and was mayor from 1929-31. He worked for the Alaska Engineering Commission and Alaska Railroad for 49 years.

Some people are memorialized because of their contributions or passion for a specific sport.

Davenport Field on Lake Otis Boulevard is named for Bill Davenport, who helped build some of the city's baseball fields and was the state boxing commissioner before he died in 1985. A softball complex in South Anchorage is named after Chuck Albrecht, a softball junkie who helped found the Anchorage Sports Association and who died of lung cancer in 1998 at the age of 54.

Mulcahy Stadium, home of the Anchorage Glacier Pilots and Anchorage Bucs baseball teams, is named after Bill Mulcahy, who died in 1965. Called "the father of Anchorage baseball," he organized the Anchorage Baseball League in 1923 and took a team to the annual Midnight Sun game in Fairbanks. He became Alaska's first commissioner to the National Baseball Congress in 1947 and introduced Little League to the city in 1950.

Next door to Mulcahy are the Kosinski Fields, named after another baseball devotee, Bernie Kosinski. He was general manager of the Anchorage Times when he drowned in a swimming accident in Hawaii at age 54 and had previously worked as the newspaper's sports editor.

Kosinski didn't just cover baseball, though. He played it.

"He was a player of note," said Dick Lobdell, a radio broadcaster and Pilots board member. "He was a good defensive catcher and a long-ball hitter."

Chris Kosinski, who was 12 when his dad died, remembers his father bringing home trophies and MVP awards.

"He loved the game. I remember he used to listen to the San Francisco Giants on Armed Forces Radio," he said. "I don't know if there's any truth to it, but people said he could've played in the major leagues if it hadn't been for the war."

As far as anyone can remember, Jean Cartee never played softball. But some of the city's most used ballfields were named for her in the mid-1980s, after her death.

Cartee's husband, Pat, owned the Cartee & Sons sporting good store and the Brunswick Bowling franchise in Alaska. While he took care of the state's bowling alleys, Jean watched the store.

Almost everyone who played recreational sports in the 1970s knew her.

"She had a soft spot in her heart for anybody who played athletics," said Rod Hill, former director of the Anchorage Sports Association, which helped develop Cartee Field. "People would go in there and say, 'I'm not going to get my check from my sponsor for three weeks because he's in Australia,' and you'd still get your equipment. She got things done for people. It was kind of the old Alaska. She made the best prices available for Anchorage Sports (Association), and Cartee's always sponsored teams."

The city's biggest soccer complex is named after a man who became president of the Alaska State Soccer Association in 1983, an uneasy time in the league's history.

Javier de la Vega "reduced the problem of violent conduct in the Men's Metro Soccer League," according to a brief history of the man and the fields provided by Parks and Rec. "Javier demonstrated great courage in this quest, as he received many personal threats from players banned by his disciplinary committee."

In 1984, de la Vega was killed in a diving accident in Hawaii. Two years later the state soccer tournament named its championship the de la Vega Cup and in 1987 the soccer fields near the airport were named in his honor.

Perhaps the most colorful person whose name has been immortalized is Russian Jack. Born Jacob Marunenko in 1883 in Ukraine, he came to Alaska as a railroad worker. In the 1920 Census, he was identified as Jack Marchin, but everyone knew him as Russian Jack -- pool hall proprietor, moonshiner and self-confessed murderer.

He built a cabin in what is now Russian Jack Springs Park in East Anchorage. During prohibition, he set up a still and sold moonshine. In 1937, while at a party downtown, he killed a taxi cab driver who had allegedly been fighting others at the party. Russian Jack said he shot the man in self defense, was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 21/2 years in a federal prison in Washington.

He served his time and was welcomed back to Anchorage. In 1948, several businessmen nominated him for Fur Rondy king, and although he lost the election, he served as prince that year. He became a U.S. citizen in 1954 at age 70.

Historians lost track of Russian Jack after 1959. He moved to California sometime after that, died there in 1971 at age 88, and is buried near Bakersfield in an unmarked grave.

Not to worry. He left an indelible mark in Anchorage, where his name has become part of the city's vocabulary.

Sports editor Beth Bragg can be reached at bbragg@adn.com.
Historical information in this article came from the Anchorage Daily News archives, the Anchorage Times archives and information supplied by the Parks and Recreation Department.