Culture

Art Beat: Lael Morgan remembers Anchorage at statehood

The theatrical cavalcade of Anchorage history continues at Cyrano's with "Sex, Money, the Political Frontier, and the Boom that went Bust" this week. As part of the Anchorage Centennial Celebration, local playwrights and actors have concocted a series of 10 plays, each encompassing a decade. The decade in focus this weekend spans 1955-1965 and is the first in which the writer (the series is using the term "curator") was an eyewitness to the events described.

Lael Morgan, 79, drove up the Alaska Highway with her husband, Dodge, in the fall of 1959. A native of Rockland, Maine, she'd been married for two years and never been west of New Hampshire.

"I looked at my in-laws and he looked at his and we decided that a 5,000-mile separation would be just about right," she said. "But I was terrified. We didn't have jobs waiting for us or anything lined up. I didn't know what to expect. But then we got here and you could buy anything and do anything."

Dodge Morgan found work as the sports editor for the Anchorage Daily News and Lael went to work as the public relations department for the yet-to-be-built Alaska Methodist University, now Alaska Pacific University.

"I'd always wanted to be a writer, but there were no jobs for reporters," she said. "I volunteered and sent in press releases for all these places and the newspapers took them. At the end of the year, I had more published clips than I could ever have gotten as a reporter."

Then came the magic moment when she was driving to work and looked up to see that the previously bare Chugach Mountains had turned white overnight. "It was like a wonderful dream. I was so amazed that I drove off the road."

Since then, despite repeated attempts to leave, she's been a hopeless Alaskan. "When I go back to the East Coast, it feels like Rikers Island prison," she said.

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The script for Morgan's play consists of a series of real characters, some as themselves, others played by actors, in person and on screen talking about the city they experienced in those days. One of the characters is Morgan herself. Why not?

"It was all so new," she said. "I really paid attention to the nuts and the mavericks and the freedom this place gives you.

"In New England, people wanted to know who your family was. Here, nobody gave a damn about ancestors. And if you went broke, nobody held it against you. Once I was taking pictures of the crowds in Seward and noticed people with their hands over their faces. You didn't ask where people came from. You didn't judge and you didn't hold a grudge. You couldn't afford to hate anybody in Alaska. We needed each other."

From Anchorage she went to work for newspapers in Juneau and Fairbanks, traveling to villages around the state, including a memorable trip to Unalakleet with singer Burl Ives. A key connection happened when she met Tundra Times publisher Howard Rock in a museum in Skagway. She broke an artifact she was handling and Rock, an artist as well as a writer, assured her, "Don't worry, I'll fix it."

"From then on I was beholden to him," Morgan said. "I would cover things for him, but under an assumed name, of course." She later wrote a biography of Rock, "Art and Eskimo Power" -- one of several books she's written, a list that includes the popular account of boomtown prostitution, "Good Time Girls of the Alaska-Yukon Gold Rush." A pair of madams are among the characters in her play.

Anchorage was so different from the world she knew that it was almost a different planet. "It was a fast and hard life," she said, "but I loved living hard and I loved living fast."

She recalled going to a bar with her husband to celebrate New Year's. One couple was having sex in the sawdust next to the patrons, "and nobody was paying the least bit of attention."

When her husband tried to get a speeding ticket fixed by calling a friend in Gov. Bill Egan's office, the friend told him, "Well, Bill just paid his speeding ticket, so I think you should pay yours, too."

The feeling that all things were possible pervaded the town. "We had over-the-pole flights," Morgan said. "It was so exciting. I was doing P.R. for Caribou's (department store) and I flew a buyer to Paris to come back with the latest French fashions. I met Eisenhower the first year I was here. I've met four presidents altogether. If you live in Alaska long enough, you'll meet just about everybody you ever want to meet."

What does she see for Anchorage in the next 100 years? "It's so hard to tell. But we were at the end of the road then and we're pretty much at the end of the road now. I'd guess that in 100 years we'll still be at the end of the road. But the best thing about getting older is that you get to find out how things turn out."

"Sex, Money" will be presented at Cyrano's through Monday, Aug. 3. The next installment in the series, dealing with the period from 1965-1975 and "curated" by Steve Heimel and Johanna Eurich, will open Aug. 5. Each of the 10 plays has a Wednesday-Monday run, until the final week, Sept. 2-6. Tickets are available at centertix.net.

Eat better and smarter

The talk by Rosalind Creasy, a pioneer in the field of edible landscaping, has been moved to the Carr Gottstein Building at Alaska Pacific University. Creasy is a board member of the international Seed Savers Exchange group and author of several books revered by fans of gorgeous gardening that puts food on the table. Columnists Jeff Lowenfels and Kirsten Dixon have previously sung her praises in the pages of this newspaper, and now she'll be here in person. The event is a fundraiser for the Alaska Botanical Garden and tickets are available online at alaskabg.org. It takes place at 7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 6.

Advice for writers

Million-copy-selling novelist Bryan Davis will make two appearances in the Anchorage area on Aug. 1. A creator of speculative fiction who runs a writing blog at theauthorschair.com, Davis says he would love to meet with aspiring writers to talk about their goals and discuss "the obstacles and pitfalls of the publishing world."

It's a subject he knows well. "I collected more than two hundred rejections from publishers and agents," he writes. Hence his mission to "smooth the path" for other writers by sharing what he's learned.

Davis will sign books and chat from 1-3 p.m. Saturday at Vine and Branches, 1120 E. Huffman Road, and 6-9 p.m. at Barnes & Noble, 200 E. Northern Lights Blvd.

RIP Gunther Schuller

Composer and music educator Gunther Schuller, whose career ranged from writing 12-tone music to accompanying Frank Sinatra, died June 21 in Boston. He was 89.

Schuller's performances in Anchorage included leading Alaska Festival of Music performances in the 1970s and a concert on tour with the New England Conservatory Ragtime Ensemble in 1996.

He was perhaps the world's leading advocate for fusing serious classical music and jazz, a form he termed "third stream," and won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1994. But to the wider public he was best known for his part in the ragtime revival of the 1970s, winning a Grammy Award for his recording of Scott Joplin's "The Red Back Book" in 1974.

Mike Dunham

Mike Dunham has been a reporter and editor at the ADN since 1994, mainly writing about culture, arts and Alaska history. He worked in radio for 20 years before switching to print.

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