March 10, 2006 - Issue #5
Local News | Opinion/Editorials | Letters to the Editor
St. Patrick man’s Iditarod dream coming true as he hits the trail
When Eric Rogers stepped onto the runners of his dog sled and slid out to the snow-packed Iditarod course March 4, it was, as it is for many rookie mushers, the culmination of a long-held dream. The 58-year-old St. Patrick (Anchorage) parishioner has been preparing for the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race for more than a decade and has been dreaming about it for most of his life.
The long hours, midnight sled runs, time spent away from home and the funds and focus required to train a dog team add up quickly, but Rogers’ family was effusive in their praises for him before the race.
"He’s awesome. He’s an inspiration," 28-year-old Dawn Keith said about her dad. "He’s almost 60 years old and he’s accomplishing his lifelong dream. I’m so glad he’s getting to do this."
Keith traveled from North Carolina with her three children to support Rogers at the start of the race.
Marti Rogers, director of faith formation at St. Patrick, has been married to the musher for 34 years and said her husband receives strength from his "deep faith."
"For me, his heart and strength and gentleness personify what God wants us to be," she said. "He prays regularly, he talks to God," even out on the trail, she said.
Five days before the race, the Rogerses welcomed Archbishop Roger Schwietz to their Eagle River home to bless Eric’s dog team.
The musher led the archbishop through kennel yards where 20 sleek Alaskan Huskies leapt, yipped and strained against their tethers. Lead-dog Bass sniffed the archbishop’s hands and face and then nudged in closer for a rub.
Flinging holy water over the snow, doghouses and energetic canines, Archbishop Schwietz blessed the team.
The 1,158-mile Iditarod trail leads over the Alaska Range to the Kuskokwim and Yukon rivers, across the arctic tundra and then along the Bering Sea coast to Nome’s famous burled arch finish line.
Before he and 14 of his dogs started the epic race, Rogers said his goals were to have fun and "finish with a strong, happy dog team."
He said he planned to run "way in the back and way easy" with his team, which includes two yearlings.
Teams of 12 to 16 dogs usually take 10 to 17 days to complete the race, which is about equal to the distance from Los Angeles to Seattle. Rogers said he was hoping to make it in about 14 days.
While this is his first Iditarod, Rogers said he’s "not the greenest of rookies."
He and Marti and their four daughters moved from Texas to Alaska about 15 years ago. After the first few winters Eric purchased an old toboggan and a couple of retired sled dogs.
Soon, he hatched a three-year plan to put him on the Iditarod race path. First year — learn how to travel through Alaska and winter camp with his dogs; second year — learn how to race; third year — qualify for the Iditarod race and run it.
He now jokes that year two took a decade.
But, he added, the experience has prepared him well for a race that veterans say tests a musher’s ability to cope with disasters.
Rogers listed a few of the disasters he’s had to cope with in training and other races: He’s rolled his sled, had a lead dog come into heat, crashed into a tree, camped in 30-below weather, and walked 17 miles after his dogs ran off with his sled.
He thought about scratching the Iditarod altogether when, a week after signing up, his job as a systems engineer at a small high-tech company went away.
"I would never have had the courage to quit my job to do Iditarod but not having to work has really made this year’s training successful and positive," he said. "What looked like a disaster was God watching over me."
There is a lot to worry about on the trail, but Rogers’ voice softens as he explains what he loves about the days when everything is working in unison.
"It’s just magic — you’re out there on a clear moonlit night with the Northern Lights shining (listening to) the swish of the runners and a little bit of panting, the padding of the dogs’ feet. The dogs are cool and comfortable and they shift into travel mode, this rhythm and this routine and you just go and go and go and oh, jiminy Christmas — everything’s smooth."
He said he’s experienced that "perfect run" and the resulting telepathic communication only about three times.
Eric Rogers fell in love with the idea of dog sledding as a teenager reading Jack London books and watching "Sergeant Preston of the Yukon," a 1950s black and white television show about a Canadian Mountie who patrolled the wilds with his faithful sled dog "Yukon King."
Later, as a flight navigator in the U.S. Air Force, he flew to Alaska and became even more enamored with the state. Back in Houston, Texas, he sometimes called the Iditarod communications center twice a day for updates during the race.
"I can remember … wanting to be part of this group so bad it just physically hurt," Rogers said. "It was this mystery of Alaska and part of it was just the magic of the dogs. The romantic dream is still there but it’s been enriched with the reality of doing it."
Five days before Iditarod, sitting in the warmth of their Eagle River living room, Marti Rogers explained her role in the dream: "He takes care of the dogs and I take care of him."
In the week leading up to the race, that meant planning, cooking and vacuum-sealing meals for the trail, repairing harnesses, mending the sled bag, and stocking up on medicines, cold-weather lithium batteries and even a voice-activated recorder so he can document his progress.
Over the years, it’s meant spending quite a bit of time at home with four daughters and no husband at her side, she said. It’s meant getting dinner ready for him while he’s feeding 20 dogs or keeping their home in order while he’s winter camping with his team.
"Part of that support is giving him the freedom to be gone," she said. "It’s a partnership."
Marti Rogers possesses a high Iditarod fever of her own. She’s been volunteering at the race’s communication center for years, even renting a room at Anchorage’s Millennium Alaskan Hotel race headquarters to be close to the action. This year she’s at the communication center’s helm as a supervisor.
"I love Iditarod from behind the scenes," she said. "I love the uniqueness of it. There’s nothing like it in the world."
Couple celebrates 70 years of marriage
Faith, family, education.
As Wilson and Barbara Jerue look back over an incredible 70 years of marriage, it’s clear those were the values that guided their long journey.
It was 1936 when Wilson and Barbara Jerue were married in the small Alaska village of Tanana. The couple celebrated the landmark surrounded by their family and friends Feb. 18 at a Mass at Holy Family Cathedral.
At 90 years of age, both Jerues are remarkably agile physically and mentally. The memories they recounted from their home in East Anchorage sound like a chapter written directly from 20th-century Native Alaskan history.
"They called him ‘chief,’ " Barbara said proudly of her gray-haired husband, who served as the president of the village corporation in Holy Cross for years.
Barbara still does skin sewing and beadwork, with larger beads the only concession to her age and eyesight. A family picture shows her, only a couple of years ago, hiking down the trail with a day’s worth of berries harvested near the family fish camp near Holy Cross.
Wilson Jerue was born in 1915, the son of a French-Canadian trapper and his Athabascan wife in the village of Anvik. From his father, Jerue learned the skills of the trap line and the value of hard work, he said.
Jerue estimates he quit school in about second grade, and by the time he was 15 he was an accomplished trapper and hunter: mink, muskrat, fox, beaver, moose — any animal that could be exchanged for money and goods at the local trading post was fair game.
In 1936 he supplemented trapping income by working at the hospital in Tanana as a maintenance worker, where he met Barbara, a beautiful Athabascan-Yupik woman from Holy Cross. She had come to Tanana to be near a sibling who was recovering at the hospital from a broken back.
The two were married at the Tanana chapel.
In 1937, the Jerues moved to Holy Cross, and Wilson Jerue worked for the Standard Oil Company at a small site called "Railroad City" near Holy Cross. From spring through fall, he maintained the plant and loaded barges with oil barrels.
His family would be with him during the summer — pictures in well-preserved albums show a growing family posing outside their log cabin. Soon the Jerues would have 11 children.
"If we needed a house, I built it." said Jerue, adding that today "people are spoiled," expecting housing to be provided for them.
During winter, the Jerues would return to Holy Cross where their children attended school at the Jesuit-run Holy Cross Mission and Wilson continued to trap. It was a bleak day when the mission closed its doors in 1956 and relocated to Copper Valley, where Catholic missionaries had opened a regional boarding school.
Although Barbara Jerue takes issue with one aspect of the mission education — "they stopped our children speaking their language" — she said she otherwise is grateful for the school that was so vital to her hometown.
Pictures of early St. Ann Sisters, who staffed the school, hang on the Jerues’ living room wall near a framed portrait of Pope John Paul II.
With the mission gone, education in Holy Cross only went through the elementary grades. Determined to educate their family, the Jerues sent the older children to Copper Valley School, operated by the Jesuits, the Sisters of St. Ann and Catholic volunteers from around the country. But the separation proved too painful, and soon the family made the life-altering decision to move to Anchorage in 1958.
Their son Howard, who lives in Eagle River and attends St. Andrew Parish, remembers the huge sacrifice the move was for his parents, particularly his father, to whom trapping, fishing and hunting were an integral part of life.
"They wanted us to be educated," Howard said. "We tried to continue to do many things here — we would pick berries, and in the fall, until he was 75, we continued to go on the yearly moose hunt. But it wasn’t the same."
Nevertheless, the elder Jerues are cheerful about what life has brought them in Anchorage. Wilson worked in the Anchorage School District maintenance department for many years, and eventually they were able to move from renting into the small house they still maintain.
All their children graduated from West High School. Their oldest son, Wilson Jerue Jr., attended Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., a Jesuit school, and graduated from the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Today, two of the Jerue children have died, but the nine others all live in Southcentral Alaska and are close to their parents. Out of 19 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren, all but one live in the state.
Howard Jerue said his father and mother passed on all the traditional skills, plus a few more, such as dismantling and putting together an outboard motor. At their anniversary celebration, the couple wore skin vests decorated with symbolic beading by their daughters and a daughter-in-law.
The Jerues also passed on a love of the faith, according to Howard.
"It was really important to them. They were at Mass every Sunday," he said. "If something else was going on, they’d say, ‘But we have to go to Mass first.’ "
The parents’ faithfulness was rewarded; Howard said that most of their huge extended family continue to value their Catholic faith.
The Jerues are hoping to spend this summer as they’ve spent most of the summers for the past 70 years — at the family fish camp upriver from Holy Cross.
Turnout for vocation events stuns organizers
WASILLA — Archbishop Roger Schwietz has a new tool to combat declining vocations to the priesthood: John Paul II Priesthood Vocation Dinners.
In a shock to event coordinators, the archdiocese’s first two vocation dinners last month drew more than 30 youths and men who came to hear priests’ stories about their journey to priesthood.
"I was surprised big time," said Oblate Brother Craig Bonham, archdiocesan vocations director and coordinator of the events. "There seems to be more young adults open to the possibility to priesthood than people think."
Vocations to the priesthood have been in decline for decades. From 1965 to 2005, the U.S. priesthood fell by more than 16,000 members, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. During that same stretch, parishes without a resident priest went from 549 to 3,251.
The problem is self-perpetuating; Archbishop Schwietz noted that as the number of priests declines, fewer young men have contact with them and therefore fewer consider following in their footsteps.
But there are ways to fight back. Two years ago Archbishop Schwietz, who served 1992-2004 on the vocation committee at the U.S. bishops conference, established the St. John Vianney House of Discernment, a residence for men considering a call to priesthood.
Now the archdiocese is adding vocation dinners, a program Archbishop Schwietz first put in place when he was bishop of the Diocese of Duluth, Minn.
The archbishop said the dinners have grown in popularity around the country.
"A number of bishops have started these," he told the Anchor. "It gives them an opportunity to meet young men who might be interested in the priesthood and serving the church."
In preparation for the dinners at Sacred Heart Parish in Wasilla and St. Benedict Parish in Anchorage, Archbishop Schwietz encouraged local priests to extend personal invitations to their parishioners.
Two young men from St. Andrew Parish in Eagle River joined their pastor, Father Leo Walsh, at the Wasilla event.
"When a guy is discerning his vocation he thinks he is the only one — that he is all alone in this," Father Walsh said that evening. "Nights like this show you that there are lots of other guys thinking the same thing."
Dressed in clerical attire — black pants and black shirts with white Roman collars — the priests swapped adventure stories with their dinner guests. Dinner conversations included grouse hunting and salmon fishing as well as memories of John Paul II’s visit to Anchorage 25 years ago.
After dinner, Father Walsh, Archbishop Schwietz and three other priests shared their struggle and ultimate peace in following paths to priesthood.
"It was great," the 41-year-old Father Walsh said afterward. "You see where you were several years ago. If I’d had someone help me at that point, it would have made it just that much easier to respond to that call."
Fear of public speaking, wrestling with whether to get married and dealing with unsupportive parents were some of the challenges priests said they faced.
Remy Spring of Soldotna traveled to Wasilla for the dinner. The 17-year-old said he first thought of becoming a priest in the fourth grade, when he became an altar server. Watching and learning from his priest caused him to ponder his own calling, he said.
"My biggest fear, though, is speaking in front of people," Spring said. "I have sort of known this for a while but after the dinner it struck me even more to put it into God’s hands and he will take care of it."
Gabriel O’Lena, a 16-year-old from Soldotna, said he enjoyed hanging out with the priests but still has a way to go before making a decision.
"It’s not something to take lightly," he said. "I’m going to look into it some more, that’s for sure, but I’d like to experience a little bit of life outside of priesthood before I make a decision like that."
Throughout the meeting Archbishop Schwietz emphasized that discerning a call to priesthood does not occur overnight.
"You don’t always know what choices to make," he said. "This is a journey of discovery and of trial. It is a gradual process."
Father Walsh said he thought the event went well but believes it was long overdue.
"In the late ’80s in this diocese we were scrambling for ways to do without priests," he said. "Well, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now we are asking more — it is a great advantage."
Vocation director Brother Bonham said the archdiocese plans to host two to four vocation dinners a year.
"It’s a chance to open the dialogue about priesthood," he said.
Health care for the homeless
Shelter offers medical advice, help and prescriptions for vulnerable population
Third and last in series about homelessness in Southcentral Alaska. Click here to read story1 & story2.
He lives in a homeless camp. Rarely, he claims, has Anchorage’s frigid winter lured him into the Brother Francis Shelter for a warm night’s sleep.
"I lived in a house when I had my kids. What’s a house? It’s just sheet rock and nails."
He’s good-looking, 60-something with brilliant blue eyes. If you dressed him up in a suit and tie, and replaced the boots with the huge hole where the big toe hits the leather, he could be mistaken for a downtown attorney.
No, he insists, his "home" is somewhere hidden away in the city’s underbrush.
After all, he adds, "Anchorage started off as a tent city."
But tonight, Feb. 28, the man is availing himself of one feature of Catholic Social Services’ Brother Francis Shelter. He’s here to visit its health clinic.
Jill Johnson of the Anchorage Neighborhood Health Center is the physician’s assistant who is ministering, with considerable gentleness and respect, to the clients lined up in the shelter’s waiting area. Although the clinic runs from 6 to 9 p.m. tonight, Johnson will be here later.
Johnson peers under the man’s shirt at a nasty hematoma, the result, he says, of an encounter with a would-be thief who punched him in the chest before running from camp.
"I suppose I should have let him have the 20 bucks," he tells her. "I think he thought I was going to cut him."
The man has reason to trust Johnson. Once, she referred him to a physician when she feared the pain in his leg might be a blood clot. She was right, and she probably saved his life.
Tonight, she makes sure he can get the medication he’s been prescribed, and she urges him to put snow in a plastic baggie — a poor man’s ice pack — and apply regularly.
It’s one in a long list of health woes Johnson will hear tonight.
The Anchorage Neighborhood Health Center, a nonprofit supported by federal, state and municipal dollars, has been helping to run a clinic at the shelter since the early 1980s, when a group of local physicians volunteered their time, said Connie Markis, the coordinator of Health Care for the Center’s Homelessness Program.
Around 1992, Markis said, the Neighborhood Health Center received a federal homelessness grant that’s helped it maintain the clinic the first, third and fifth Tuesday evenings of the month. The other Tuesdays are staffed by the Providence Family Practice Residency program.
On Fridays, a nurse from the Neighborhood Health Center provides "triage" for shelter guests — giving advice, education and referrals.
On Tuesday last week, the problems include a young woman who is complaining of asthma. During the course of her conversation with Johnson, she reveals that she is two months pregnant. She smokes but is trying to quit.
Johnson addresses all three issues.
"Do you have prenatal vitamins?" she asks. The patient has a prescription, but was unable to get to the pharmacy. Johnson finds a bottle for her.
As the woman leaves, Johnson shakes her hand, as she does with all the patients.
"Congratulations on your baby," she says warmly.
David Boucher is here to show Johnson his ankle. He had extensive reconstructive surgery after a car collision — his knee was virtually remade — and now a pin in his ankle seems to be causing ulceration on the skin.
"This is a really great place," Boucher says of the clinic. "It’s tough, transportation-wise, to get to Providence, and it takes forever to get into the VA."
Boucher came to Alaska to fish in 1993. He’s worked at welding and remodeling jobs, but his accident plus child support make it hard to pay rent. Now, his 30-day limit at the shelter, which can be modified by case management, is almost up.
"Today’s my last day. If my disability check comes tomorrow, I’ll be able to get a place."
Respiratory problems and all kinds of "skin stuff" — frostbite, blisters, infections — are typical health problems among the homeless, Johnson said later.
Transportation is a key hurdle. Although the Neighborhood Health Center runs daytime clinics in both the Mountain View and Fairview neighborhoods, getting to those sites is tough when you’re on foot.
It takes a couple of bus transfers to get to the hospitals in the city, and even filling a prescription requires travel.
The new Brother Francis Shelter opened last year, and with it came a cheerful, well-equipped clinic.
Markis said the new shelter, despite being cleaner and less drafty than the old converted equipment barn it replaced, is seeing more health problems simply because the homeless numbers are growing sharply.
Anchorage’s low-income housing situation is deteriorating, Markis said, and the shelter is fuller now than it’s been in years.
Homelessness comes before wellness among the clients the clinic sees, Markis said.
With no insurance, no home, with a daily scrabble for survival and a constant quest for employment and rent money, "health is the least of their concerns," she said.
Dewayne Harris, director of Brother Francis Shelter, said he regards the clinic as one of the "vital services" provided by the shelter.
"For some, the clinic is their first contact with a health care professional."
News & Notes
AFACT hosts mayoral forum
Listen to what the four candidates for Anchorage’s next mayor have to say at the March 15 forum sponsored by AFACT (Anchorage Faith & Action – Congregations Together). Members of the faith-based community organizing group will pose questions to the candidates on issues that have come up in hundreds of AFACT’s one-to-one visits with their citywide neighbors and parishioners. The mayoral forum begins March 15 at 7:30 p.m. at St. Mark Lutheran Church, 3230 Lake Otis Parkway. Before the forum, the church will host a 6 p.m. soup supper and an Ecumenical Lenten Service at 7 p.m. Call 297-7731 for more information. AFACT is an association of twelve congregations that partners with the city’s leaders, police department and school board to improve the quality of life for Anchorage residents. The municipal election happens April 4.
Editorial
Faith-based group’s forum will feature different questions, more answers
The upcoming race for mayor of Anchorage pits Mark Begich, the incumbent, against challenger Jack Frost, right?
Not so fast. There are two other candidates: Thomas Mark Higgins and Nick Moe.
You’ve probably never heard of the "alternative" candidates for mayor of Alaska’s largest city. Mr. Higgins has been a political activist, and has even challenged Rep. Don Young for his congressional seat. Mr. Moe is a sophomore at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
An Anchorage radio program, KUDO 1080, hosted a candidate forum, first bringing Mayor Begich and Mr. Frost together for an hour and following up a few days later with the "other" guys.
Mr. Higgins let KUDO host Aaron Selbig know right away how he felt about being tagged an alternative candidate who apparently didn’t deserve to be at the same table with the big boys.
Mr. Selbig gracefully apologized and explained that it was partially a timing issue, that he only had an hour and decided to do two separate shows so the candidates had enough time to give meaningful responses to a wide range of questions.
Mr. Moe, the sophomore, unabashedly acknowledged that he wasn’t expecting to win. He is running for much more idealistic and noble reasons: to fight the apathy about public policy that his peers are so often accused of; to bring a fresh voice into the process and to speak out about the problems and solutions he sees in the community.
Mr. Higgins and Mr. Moe may not like being called "alternatives" to the "real" choices, but what they are doing is inspiring. So few people these days are willing or able to make the ultimate political statement and actually run for office. Most of us care about our communities but these two guys have taken the huge extra step to really advocate for their beliefs and to get deeply involved, even knowing they have no chance of winning.
The Catholic Church praises such involvement. The faithful are encouraged to learn about the issues facing their communities and, at minimum, to support candidates and policies that align most closely with their informed Catholic consciences.
"One of our greatest blessings in the United States is our right and responsibility to participate in civic life," the U.S. bishops wrote in their "Faithful Citizenship" teaching document.
These alternative candidates enrich the political process and ought to be commended for their efforts.
And, by the way, their desire to be placed at the same table with the "big boys" has been answered by AFACT (Anchorage Faith & Action — Congregations Together), the faith-based community organizing group dedicated to uniting individuals who otherwise wouldn’t have much of a voice concerning the problems they see in their communities (see Community Calendar, page 15, for event details).
AFACT is hosting a forum that includes all four candidates together, so a wider range of answers will be shared.
But also, because of the nature of AFACT, there will be a wider range of questions. AFACT sends members out from the church and into people’s homes, where they listen to the concerns and hopes of ordinary people. They invite the people to join together to bring their stories to light and to stand in solidarity with one another.
So at AFACT’s candidate forum, the questions won’t be coming from a talk radio host or newscaster, but rather from the members of local faith communities who have been listening to hundreds and hundreds of people who otherwise probably would never have their voice heard.
It should be interesting. We applaud all those running for office and all those making an effort to improve the community by engaging in the democratic process.
Letter to the Editor
Trust, obey church’s stance
To our brother in faith, regarding "No room for dissent?" (Readers Respond, Feb. 24): Echoing Christ (Mt 18: 18), St. Paul testifies that the church is the pillar and foundation of truth (1 Tim 3: 15). She must proclaim the truth in and out of season. Popular or not, she must shepherd Christ’s flock and protect it from the dangers of this world. The church has made it clear that women’s ordination is impossible (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 1577). However, this is not restrictive. The truth will set you free, if you allow it. We highly encourage you to read Pope John Paul II’s "Theology of the Body" (see Christopher West for an easier read). In it, he explains the beauty of our sexuality as man and woman. Once understood, you will understand the impossibility of women’s ordination and rejoice in the truth. Until then, we will pray that you follow the saints, trusting holy mother church in humble obedience.Palmer