�Ļ�ӰԺ

6/8
In his three decades serving as UAF’s Operations Superintendent in the Facilities Services Department, Darrin “Bear” Edson has seen just about everything under the midnight sun when it comes to the maintenance of Alaska’s flagship university campus. Edson’s nickname is fitting, given that he revived the Nanook mascot program at hockey games in 1998 and wore the costume for a decade (an experience he described to the newspaper as “breathing through a straw while running in place in a sauna with sweat dripping down your face”), but in fact, his “Bear” persona dates back decades earlier, to his experience in seventh-grade wrestling. Edson has plenty of interests outside of his work and mascot service, especially fishing, barbecue, and operating a mining claim out the Steese Highway. He’s looking forward to doing more of all three, as well as getting to spend more time with his family, after he wraps up his on-campus service.

6/15
High school counselor. Spin instructor. Musician. Thespian. Basketball coach. In his many years in �Ļ�ӰԺ, Willie Blackburn has worn many hats, figuratively and literally. It’s a hallmark of a man well established in the community, and one who feels comfortable in just about every room he occupies. Blackburn’s day job is as a counselor at West Valley High School, but he has been plugged into the �Ļ�ӰԺ music and performing arts scene for many years, often appearing with the Clarence Pate Project. His efforts on the theater stage have recently included a well-received turn as Walter Lee Younger Jr. in �Ļ�ӰԺ Drama Association’s production of “Raisin in the Sun.” Blackburn also stays fit and helps others pursue that same goal by teaching spin lessons at his home gym several nights each week. Blackburn’s energy level and enthusiasm for life are contagious; if anyone has ever told him he ought to slow down, it’s clear that he paid them no mind.

6/22
Life-long Alaskan Peggy Carlson was born in Anchorage and moved to �Ļ�ӰԺ in 1974, with stops in Ekwak, Homer, Ninilchik, Kodiak, and Kenya, Africa. She spent her 35-year career in education as an elementary teacher and Curriculum Director for the FNSB School District. After “retiring,” she worked as a District Improvement Coach for the Department of Education in southwest Alaska. In 1999, she received a BP Teacher of Excellence award, and in 2013, the Imagination Library designated her a Champion for Children. Peggy was a board member of Kids Voting North Alaska for twenty years and is currently the coordinator of Stars of Gold Readers, an organization promoting children’s literacy. Last year, they gave away 8,000 books to kids throughout Interior Alaska, and the highly successful Kids Literacy Farmer’s Market is now in its fifth year. Besides children’s literacy, Peggy’s other passion is Zimbabwean marimba. She teaches two beginning marimba classes and is a member of the performing group Serevende. Peggy believes playing music and playing with books make for a harmonious retirement!

7/6
Emily Ennis has spent decades at the helm of �Ļ�ӰԺ Resource Agency, a pivotal local nonprofit dedicated to assuring that Interior Alaskans with disabilities and their families have equal opportunity to be fully included in the community. In doing so, she has helped create, maintain, and grow some of �Ļ�ӰԺ’ most beloved events, from the Midnight Sun Run (which the �Ļ�ӰԺ Daily News-Miner sponsors and FRA operates as a fundraiser) to the annual fashion show that showcases local styles as worn by some of FRA’s clients. Ennis has also somehow found time to help out with several other crucial local nonprofit organizations. One example being the many years she spent on the board of directors of the Retirement Community of �Ļ�ӰԺ, which operates the Raven Landing Senior Community. She rarely seeks the spotlight, preferring instead to lift up and honor those with whom she works.

7/13
Corlis Taylor is a longtime Alaskan who worked in public health in Bethel and �Ļ�ӰԺ, helping operate one of the first centers to aid domestic violence and sexual assault victims in rural Alaska. She moved to �Ļ�ӰԺ in the early 1990s and worked at �Ļ�ӰԺ Memorial Hospital for the rest of her 40-year health care career while also diving deep into her passion for fiber arts and quilting. Taylor has continued to teach quilting and fiber arts through the Cabin Fever Quilters’ Guild and the Radical Alaskan Garments Society, a group she co-founded in 1991. She has also remained active in helping with the issues she spent her health care career dealing with as a board member for groups such as the Arctic Resource Center for Suicide Prevention and the Center for Safe Alaskans.

7/20
Shelly Foint-Anderson serves as the Public Health Nurse manager at the �Ļ�ӰԺ Regional Public Health Center, and the past decade of pandemics, public health crises, and more have given her plenty of stories. FointAnderson’s job combating infectious diseases and helping parents maintain their children’s vaccinations (as well as their own) has come with unique challenges in the age of vaccine science skepticism and online influencers and wellness gurus who are sometimes all too willing to promote their personal brands through medical misinformation. But she says one of her biggest takeaways from the Covid-19 pandemic was how heartened she was by the community’s resilience and the partnerships that community organizations forged to fight the disease and its impacts.

7/27
Cathie Harms is a one-woman encyclopedia of knowledge about Interior Alaska wildlife after spending three and a half decades as a wildlife biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. In addition to her work as a biologist, Harms helped manage the Creamer’s Field Migratory Waterfowl Refuge and the �Ļ�ӰԺ Hunter Education Indoor Shooting Range. She also designed the highly popular “Becoming an Outdoors-Woman” workshop series, which has helped hundreds of Alaska women develop fishing, hunting, survival, and general outdoor skills invaluable to an active lifestyle in the Interior. Her career at Fish and Game made her an authority in the intersection between humans and wild animals in Alaska, from bear attacks to wolves with rabies and everything in between. Harms’ interests are as varied as her job responsibilities were; for four decades, she has been part of the PAWS canine search-and-rescue group that helps find lost hikers and others in need of assistance in the backcountry.

8/3
Of course, �Ļ�ӰԺ’ version of a power couple would be entrepreneurs who offer reindeer yoga. Jane Atkinson and Doug Toelle are the cofounders of Running Reindeer Ranch, a popular destination for Interior Alaska visitors and locals alike. Jane is a naturalist and lifelong Alaskan who found her way to �Ļ�ӰԺ decades ago; she has been running the reindeer ranch in the Goldstream Valley with Doug for 20 years now. Doug was born in Portland, but moved to �Ļ�ӰԺ in 1978 and had a varied career before reindeer herding became part of his life. Doug worked for many years in the tech sector and founded �Ļ�ӰԺ’ first internet service provider, Polarnet. He also helped cofound the �Ļ�ӰԺ-based public policy and management consulting firm Information Insights and served as the advocacy director for the senior- and disability-focused nonprofit Access Alaska for more than a decade.

8/10
Robert Hannon has been working in broadcasting for nearly half a century, beginning in the 1970s at KFPA in Berkeley, California, and eventually ending up at KUAC in �Ļ�ӰԺ in 1983, where he has been a familiar voice on local airwaves ever since. He has held many roles at KUAC, on both sides of the microphone, and has also been a keeper of local oral history through his Northern Soundings interviews and as prior host of Tall Timbers. In addition to his work as a radio journalist, Hannon spent a decade working for the Catholic Diocese of �Ļ�ӰԺ and has also been active in local library and literacy related issues. If there’s a through-line of the work that Hannon has done over the course of his life so far, it’s a recognition of the unique value of the stories people have to tell. He was reticent to be interviewed himself, much preferring to ask the questions rather than answer them. But we’ve convinced him that, much like the hundreds of community members he’s interviewed over the course of his career, his story is also very much worth telling.