File under "Crawling around on the floor with world leaders": On Meeting General Westmoreland to plan for a school in Anchorage, Alaska

When I was 12 or 13 years old I met General Westmoreland, on Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska to plan for a school. At his invitation I met with him privately to discuss planning in North Mountain View, Orah Dee Clark Jr. High, so the jets landing at Elmendorf did not cross over or directly land over the planned combination elementary / junior high school because it was loud, disturbing and potentially hazardous.

My girlfriends and I did not want the junior high to lose it's cross county ski and running track, nor did we want the elementary and junior high to be combined due to drug problems and the cost of an overpass. The cost of the necessary overpass was not included in the city's planning, which drove the associated cost way up. There was also the potential problem of older kids hazing younger kids.

My mom made an appointment for me, and drove me to his office building; I was unusually wearing a dress with my hair combed. She waited in the waiting room. At first General Westmoreland did the "How may I help you pretty little lady" thing, but when he heard the problem description that all changed. We were looking for 5-10 other physical sites but having trouble finding any good ones.

General Westmoreland ordered a large map of Anchorage which included Elmendorf from his aides. Several rolls appeared immediatedly and he selected one.

He took off his suitjacket. We sat on the floor with a very large map of Anchorage spread out in his military office, much to his aide's surprise. They stood in the door way and whispered and fretted. I think there are protocols for guarding a general but what is the protocol regarding a child? They treated him like gold. Finally he shussed them off! (*dismissed*)


We crawled all over the floor together looking at the landing patterns and the potential sites, but really he knew I was asking him for land from the base (and even worse yet to change the landing fields.)

General Westmoreland told me that the military could not be involved with civilian matters, but privately I believe he communicated his advice. I included our meeting in the materials later presented at the Anchorage City Council meeting.

Since no practical solution was found the school was delayed in being built for 40 years(!). Anchorage did finally built it this last year. The school as it existed then was called Orah Dee Clark Junior High where I attended. http://www.asdk12.org/renewal/ms/clark.asp

My mom told me Westmoreland became a famous general in Vietnam. I recall how kind and gentle he was to me, though firm, and strong -- handsome -- he had a big aura. I can find no public records of his being in Anchorage, but I know he was.

Unfortunately due to the presentation we made to the Anchorage City Council the paid city planner was fired for incompetence. The Council reasoned that if three 13 year old girls could do this level of planning they could find a more qualified employee. My buddies, Nancy Byrd, Mary Liston, and I have high IQs so perhaps that was an unfair comparison to him. Everybody should have work, cause everyone needs it. It wasn't our intention to harm anyone.

An article and our photos were published in the Anchorage Times about the planning meeting. I'll see if I can find my old copy and digitize it.

Here's some more information about the General:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Westmoreland

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/VNwestmoreland.htm

You may be required to sign in to read this article - or just search "General Westmoreland" and you'll get it fresh...
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/19/international/asia/19westmoreland.html

Historic House, The Doctor's Place, Anchorage, Alaska

As a child under the age of 5 I was stung by hornets or bees nesting in the ground behind this now historic house above the slope near Elderberry Park. Another child tricked us into walking on the path, and the bees stung all of us.

Hearing our screams adults ran to us from all directions. They laid us down on the grass out front to treat us there were maybe 6-10 or so kids bitten. At first I wasn't sure but it finally did hurt. I have been increasingly alergic to bee or hornet stings ever since.

That was probably in 1959 or 1960.

The doctor drove a "Woody" a green truck with wood panels. I always thought he was the oldest person in the world as there were so few elders in Anchorage.

This historic house is near the house my grandparents built on the corner of 3rd and L Street in the old downtown section of Anchorage, near the statue of Captain Cook, which is just across the street from the empty lot were our house once stood.

The Good Friday Quake in Alaska, a personal reflection

The 1964 Good Friday Quake in Alaska, a personal reflection
By Dee Lane, March 2007

At 5:35 on a Friday night in Anchorage we had a stupendous earthquake at 9.2 on the Richter scale - it was adjusted later to that number because they didn't realize the spikes crossed. It was Good Friday.

Outside in front of the house through the large picture window we watched our parked '57 Buick, in gear with the brake on, with each wave of the quake the car would come up on the front yard incline and nearly touch the house as it rolled back and forth. Buicks were very heavy so I had some idea of how intense the quake was - and amazing. In the backyard the trees rolled to the ground back and forth like a wave, like the ground was made of water. The snow was bright white, and then the ground appeared black as it rolled so it was quite a show.

My kids were watching an episode of "Mighty Mouse" when the TV went off and they said, "who turned off the TV?" but they quickly realized we were going to have some fun with an earthquake. And they stood up to watch it, and watched in the back yard too --you could barely stand up. The primary earthquake lasted five minutes or so, and the only damage in our house was of a 1950 Motorola clock (a wedding present, one of a matching pair) and black malachite totemic statue fell and dented a stereo. Our house in Mountain View was stable, on the gravel of an ancient river bed.

Our neighbor Guntrin the baby sitter was at our house at the time of the quake and she kept ruining the earthquake for us, she would cry, “Oh God I'll be good, please God, I'll be good”. And her two little kids were with her and she was scaring the bejesus out of them. She had endured bombing in Germany but we wondered what she did that was so bad to ask God for mercy like that.

Our friends Joe (my boss) and Veneta Arns and their four kids showed up to make sure we were ok. They had driven in from south Anchorage.

For the newborn baby next door, Rachel the youngest of the Jensen children, the Jensens were getting snow out of the yard to make water for the baby, it as easier to melt next to our fireplace. And I left Veneta in charge and she took care of all the 7 kids from the combined families, and as it turned out others too. Joe and I reported to work at the Alaska State Highway Department. And, we got our matching orders but I don't remember much that happened, it was just not enough.

So more and more people starting coming to my house - I just done my shopping and stocked up on food and supplies as if I expected it. I had at least two or more cords of wood for our bright orange 1960’s style hooded fireplace one of only two working fireplaces on our street. So we did not turn away anyone who wanted refuge, a warm house, clean water, and light, as I also had stocked emergency supplies such as hurricane lamps and kerosene. It became apparent quickly that I was needed to help with the rescue effort and founded what became known as “Damage Control”.

So because I could not watch the kids and the house was filling with people I decided to send my three children Outside to live with my sister Marilyn, and her second husband, her two children and my father in Malibu, California.

Eventually there were approximately 150 people coming and going from my small 3 bedroom house with one bathroom.

There were lots of buildings that were flattened from the shaking. New construction met the same fate. After the kids left I wrote an announcement for the radio requesting all architects, engineers, land appraisers, surveyors, typists with manual typewriters, to come and meet at Z J Loussac library at 10 am the following morning, a Monday I think. Fortunately the Loussac librarian heard the announcement over the radio and she was prepared to greet us so in this way we didn't break in to the library as I had planned.

Lots of people came. We set up many teams of two people each with maps, we divided the city to try and figure out if there were people trapped and ascertain the damage and document it. The other purpose of the group was to prepare people for a possible tidal wave, a Tsunami as we called it. We went down to the water's edge and told people not to go to the beach it was dangerous and they were very likely to get wet [funny] - inundated by the Tsunami but no Tsunami ever showed up. I volunteered my car because I wasn't worried about the gas shortage, everyone else seemed to worry about that, but I didn't - I had a full tank. So the teams also used my car to get around and warn people.

I broke into the Department of Natural Resources and took maps that we needed to identify block by block the places that were damaged. And I set up a system of percentages of damages which ranged from 100% which was a flattened useless building to minimal damage like 20%. My ex-husband, Roland Lane, a noted architect, was once of the few that did not come to the meeting. Later I found him sleeping in his apartment on 4th and L street which was very close to the fault line but he said “this building is never going to fall down, so go way and let me sleep”. Pretty funny. He was right it never did, and neither did his "Cliff house" which was a few blocks away, on a cliff, overlooking the fault line.


We chose the innocuous name Damage Control to deflect any criticism from people who may have lost friends or relatives in the earthquake in those buildings, we rendered what aide we could and documented all the known damage, building by building, block by block, and where that wasn’t possible, we estimated in general at the town level such as Seward, which burned and lost the large oil and gas storage tanks. The regular officials entrusted with the authority to act were slow to respond.

We sent a team of people out to check up on an emergency official who did not report to work after several days, they found him with his entire family sitting wrapped in blankets shivering in the cold claiming the world had come to an end. They were fed and comforted.

But eventually we moved to the Civil Defense building where we set up a map of south-central Alaska on the wall with a piece of clear acetate over it. And as the runners bringing reports from distant regions poured in I took notes of the reported damage, fires, Tsunami damage, loss of life, boats destroyed or missing and the state of passibility of the roads and landing fields.

Because communications were down people were using short wave radios, and signaling from the end of their drivable range to the next truck on the edge of it's drivable range, to bring in this news. In the midst of this clever form of tracking, with the situation news being hand delivered scrawled on little bits of paper or from memory a man entered the room, and pitched an offer, he had a truck full of gas, a cat (caterpillar) and front end moose gooser (plow), and he was offering to rent them each for $50 an hour. At this interruption, almost without stopping four of the men present picked the man up and thru him bodily out the door and down the stairs out of the building and returned to what we were working on.

Quickly I realized that just capturing this news was not enough we needed to document it in such a way as we could send our representative to the US government in Washington DC and request emergency funds.

When I completed compiling the damage report I had a man whose house had collapsed and he was the last one to leave Anchorage on the scheduled plane -- I got them to delay the flight to Washington DC. He flew to Washington met with President Johnson to request emergency funds. He returned with a promise of funding. He was the speaker of the house of the Alaska Legislature. I worked at the State while the kids stayed in Malibu.

The FHA (Federal Housing Administration) Director took all my notes and presented them as if he had compiled them which was a bunch of bullpucky and I got to resenting him for doing that. I don't remember his name. I am sure he got some recognition and promotion from my work. Senator Yule Kilcher was at the State he was (sentance trailed off)

The reason I didn't say anything I just decided to do it - silently as benefit to everyone - and not a personal benefit. I stayed awake the first few weeks in 72 hour sections, and slept like 3-4 hours. I went too far, overextended myself and my health was never the same again after that summer.

A week later we had another really bad earthquake almost as bad as the previous week. I was out at Elemendorf in the vault which was downstairs and it scared me because I didn't know we could have another really bad quake that close together. I was looking for photographs to send with Governor Egan to the President. We found tons of photos, a bunch of Seward, the train all scattered around twisted sections of the traintrack - they were relatively new. They included photos before and after the earthquake - they were terrible photos because they showed such detailed damage.

We did not include any of dead people.

Anyway it was scary. So Governor Egan took the photos I found with him to show President Johnson the amazing extent of the damages due to the Good Friday Quake, the fires, tsunami, and after quakes.

Alaska was a new State at that time.

In this way Alaska was able to get emergency funding really fast, and at that time our infrastructure always barely stringing along but it was able to get patched back together. More money came as we showed need; we were pretty desperate, and when the oil was discovered later in the 1960’s it was widely seen as a god send that we had that help from the US federal government so quickly, and before a new source of revenue for the state and local peoples opened up.

dictated by
Darlene L. Lane
Alaskan Pioneer
Urban, Regional, Land and Energy Planner
(design highways and villages, worked on Alaska Land Claims Settlement, D-2 Lands)
Anchorage, Alaska
March 2007

Note:
1959 Alaska Statehood, President Eisenhower signs statehood bill on January 3.
1964 Good Friday earthquake.
1967 Fairbanks flood.
1968 Oil pumped from a well at Prudhoe Bay on North Slope. Governor Hickel establishes Alaska Lands Claims Task Force that recommends a 40 million acre land settlement for Alaska Natives.
1969 North Slope Oil lease sale brings $900 million. First live satellite telecast in Alaska.
1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act signed into law.
1973 Congress passes the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act; salmon fisheries limited entry program becomes law.
1975 Alaska Legislature appropriates funds to initiate purchase and installation of 100 satellite earth stations for establishment of statewide satellite communications network.



http://www.funsocialstudies.learninghaven.com/edu/good-friday.html

On certain
Christian holidays like Good Friday you are not supposed to eat meat.Ash Wednesday's you see an array of people are walking around with the symbolic ash on their forehead.

Just Browsing Outside

As a child I wandered into the University of Alaska at Anchorage’s library stacks and just started reading. If books on physics and math just happened to be across the stack from 19th century French poetry so much the better, it was an easier reach. When finished with one selection I chose the next one randomly, sometimes with my eyes closed just for fun.

This method works well when the amount of data is limited and the desire for information is high. Sometimes random information is a highly acceptable result. Soon I had consumed all the art stacks -- I found I was rereading them going back the opposite direction. I wished for a way to mark the books or sections of books I had randomly read. Memorizing thousands of Picasso’s images at the end of the row was the end of my road, and I went ‘Outside’ in search of cross cultural connections.

For Alaskans the term “Outside” generally refers to the United States, or “lower 48 states”. Prior to roads being built travel to Alaska was via boat and commonly originating from Seattle through the 'Inside Passage' in what is now Canada. Therefore the reverse route, through any means, is termed ‘Outside’, as in, “I’m going Outside on vacation.” or "She had her baby Outside so it could be President of the United States when it grows up" (really - this was a tradition such as evidenced by Alaska Senator Bob Bartlett's family, and my own). The term ‘Outside’, like a nickname or a tag, also implies a great deal about the Alaskan mindset, that the U.S. is really not home, and it is very distant. With a small population people were viewed as valuable.

Lots of people don't know where the term comes from, but my family helped populate the state arriving in 1896 a couple of years before the gold rush, so we contributed to popularizing slang terms 'cause we love 'em. On the other hand, my mom, so fond of telling the truth about everything confessed that my grandmother had not planted the large old birch tree at the very corner of Anchorage on 3th and L street, near where the statue to Capt Cook is now, as she had often repeated throughout my childhood and to anyone who would listen.

This leads me to believe there is another tradition, leg pulling. So all the other theories about where that expression "Outside" came from could be just as valid as that tree planting story. So much for the playfulness of Alaskans -- folksy, resistant to authority, maybe not exactly anti-intellectual but something like that.

My mom tells me she is writing a series of short stories titled "I Didn't Die" about all the times she escaped death in rural Alaska just going about her business in planning. She fell off a cliff and was caught by a net placed there for the express purpose of catching people at AlyeskaSki Resort just outside Anchorage, got stuck in a plane without fuel drifting silently past Denali (Mt. McKinley) but landed safely, once having accepted a plane ride with her inexperienced boss acting as a pilot got lost in the far north and navigating with a map and a flashlight from the air found the only airport for hundreds of miles by spotting a tiny distant light, ate hallucinogenic mushrooms by accident, and poisonous shell food and so forth. And you know what, you know the tag line - she didn't die.

I still see myself as just browsing Outside, and still, someday I might go home.