Copper Valley School
The fall of 1960 was mostly remembered for a transition from the big city of Anchorage to the little hamlet of Glennallen. Alaska had just become a state in 1959, and my Uncle John K Phillips was one of the earliest of State employees, working for the Department of Transportation. His wife, my Aunt Betty, worked at the Alaska Native Service Hospital as a lab technician, and they owned a small two bedroom ranch home near Anchorage’s AJ Wendler Junior Senior High School.
That was where I landed in August of 1960. I have some fond memories of that junior high school and of my short time there. I walked to the school, made friends with Philip “Flip” Kelley, an Aleut from somewhere south of Bristol Bay who was boarded in Anchorage to get an education. I fell in love with the Bassler twins and actually had the courage to call them and asked the one who answered (either Jean or Joan… they were identical twins!) if she liked me. I was shaking like a 13-year-old leaf when she answered, “I like you as much as I like anyone.” That was a perfect answer, I was “OK” but not special. I took that with me as my uncle announced he had been reassigned to manage the supply division of the Glennallen Department of Transportation site and we were to move there immediately.
Glennallen was named after the pioneers who mapped the road from Anchorage to meet at the north-south Richardson Highway, a 189-mile trek up past the Matanuska Glacier, past Sheep Mountain, and straight to the confluence of the Copper and Tazlina Rivers. I still have the postmarked stamps that officially announced that “Glenallen” was a mistaken typo and the name should be… and forever after was… “Glennallen”. Keeping envelopes postmarked midnight and 1 AM with different names seems petty, but to my stamp collector mind of that time, it was cool.
Glennallen was almost not there. If not for the road camp and one main grocery store/lodge at the juncture of the Glenn and Richardson Highways, there was no reason for the hamlet. There was a rudimentary high school, a clinic hosted at a missionary church, a small diner. A fish and game warden lived there, and a small church was set up on a hill overlooking the main road. Food was mostly fetched from Anchorage, along with liquor and sundries. The ‘”town” depended solely on the workers at the road camp, many who lived in housing rented from the State. I found myself in an upstairs room in one of three units in a wood framed building. Each unit had a basement, a main floor with a kitchen and living room, and a second floor with two bedrooms and a bathroom. Outside opposite the back door was a long wooden girder close to the ground that contained 6 plug-in points for cars to nose in and attach to headbolt heaters that would keep a cars’ oil from turning to sludge in 50 below zero temperatures.
One issue with the move to Glennallen was the school. It was a very basic school…Alaska was only a State for the past year! My aunt and uncle, however, discovered that there was a Jesuit mission near the Tazlina River that housed over 150 kids from all over Alaska, a few Jesuit priests, a few Jesuit Scholastics studying for the priesthood at Gonzaga University, a dozen nuns from a French-Canadian order, and volunteers from all over the US (and many from the Boston area). This Jesuit mission provided a full, k-12 curriculum of study and seemed very adequate.
So that November I joined the “dayhops” who drove the 12 miles from Glennallen to the Copper Valley School, where most students boarded and lived together. This was to be, for me, a life changer. I was now a minority in a group of Native Americans who were raised in a culture I knew nothing about. The premise of the "mission" was that it would offer a college-preparatory education, with 2/3 of the served students being indiginous natives from across Alaska. Some were orphans, but many were from far-flung small Native villages where schools did not exist. Some students were white, but also boarding to get an education not provided where their families lived. There were even four students of color who came from Kenya to gain access to the American schools and universities. And a few students were locals like me, taking advantage of the education opportunities provided. While the cost of attending as a “dayhop” were minimal, when I later I boarded there it cost $650 for the school year, running Sept 1 to June 1.
During that first winter I drove back and forth with about 5 other Glennallen residents and befriended them. To this day I remember nothing of them except for one boy my age whose dad was the area Fish and Game warden. Visiting their home was interesting. A ceremonial gift called an “oosik” sat on their living room coffee table and several animal hides hung from the walls. I later learned that an “oosik” was a petrified bone from a walrus’ penis. One was given to Johnny Carson when he featured Native students showing skills used during the “Eskimo Olympics”. He fondled it looking to figure out what it was. When told, he turned white, dropped it, and was speechless for a minute. A remarkable moment.
As I studied and got to know the students and adults at Copper Valley, I was gradually accepted, though still an outlier since I was not there after hours to interact. Despite my limited presence, my immediate classmates took me in and became lifelong friends whom I will discuss later.
That spring saw me walking the Glenn Highway from our road camp to a new small diner for cokes and hamburgers with kids living along the highway. It was a normal place like anywhere, with red and black checked walls, a shiny formica counter, small jukeboxes at the counter, and a friendly family staff. That March of 1961 was interrupted by my father coming to Anchorage for a much-needed job working at a Safeway bakery in Anchorage. He reestablished the skills he had learned in the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression, skills that took him to the WWII Pacific Theater (on Tinian Island) as a baker/sergeant. He stayed in the Safeway job for only a few months when he was convinced by another baker named Leo to join him in Valdez as a baker’s helper working at Gilson’s Grocery Store. My father moved there and called for the rest of my family to join him. For more about Valdez, see the story of Summer of 1961!
After my summer of 1961 in Valdez, my parents honored my request to return to Copper Valley School (CVS) and board there. I am sure my aunt and uncle helped pay that tuition.
There is much too much to impart in a single chapter about my CVS experience. It was the people that imprinted on me a view of life much different than my limited vision in Hamburg and Buffalo, NY. You may click below if you wish to "meet" some of them!
Memorable people of Copper Valley
That was where I landed in August of 1960. I have some fond memories of that junior high school and of my short time there. I walked to the school, made friends with Philip “Flip” Kelley, an Aleut from somewhere south of Bristol Bay who was boarded in Anchorage to get an education. I fell in love with the Bassler twins and actually had the courage to call them and asked the one who answered (either Jean or Joan… they were identical twins!) if she liked me. I was shaking like a 13-year-old leaf when she answered, “I like you as much as I like anyone.” That was a perfect answer, I was “OK” but not special. I took that with me as my uncle announced he had been reassigned to manage the supply division of the Glennallen Department of Transportation site and we were to move there immediately.
Glennallen was named after the pioneers who mapped the road from Anchorage to meet at the north-south Richardson Highway, a 189-mile trek up past the Matanuska Glacier, past Sheep Mountain, and straight to the confluence of the Copper and Tazlina Rivers. I still have the postmarked stamps that officially announced that “Glenallen” was a mistaken typo and the name should be… and forever after was… “Glennallen”. Keeping envelopes postmarked midnight and 1 AM with different names seems petty, but to my stamp collector mind of that time, it was cool.
Glennallen was almost not there. If not for the road camp and one main grocery store/lodge at the juncture of the Glenn and Richardson Highways, there was no reason for the hamlet. There was a rudimentary high school, a clinic hosted at a missionary church, a small diner. A fish and game warden lived there, and a small church was set up on a hill overlooking the main road. Food was mostly fetched from Anchorage, along with liquor and sundries. The ‘”town” depended solely on the workers at the road camp, many who lived in housing rented from the State. I found myself in an upstairs room in one of three units in a wood framed building. Each unit had a basement, a main floor with a kitchen and living room, and a second floor with two bedrooms and a bathroom. Outside opposite the back door was a long wooden girder close to the ground that contained 6 plug-in points for cars to nose in and attach to headbolt heaters that would keep a cars’ oil from turning to sludge in 50 below zero temperatures.
One issue with the move to Glennallen was the school. It was a very basic school…Alaska was only a State for the past year! My aunt and uncle, however, discovered that there was a Jesuit mission near the Tazlina River that housed over 150 kids from all over Alaska, a few Jesuit priests, a few Jesuit Scholastics studying for the priesthood at Gonzaga University, a dozen nuns from a French-Canadian order, and volunteers from all over the US (and many from the Boston area). This Jesuit mission provided a full, k-12 curriculum of study and seemed very adequate.
So that November I joined the “dayhops” who drove the 12 miles from Glennallen to the Copper Valley School, where most students boarded and lived together. This was to be, for me, a life changer. I was now a minority in a group of Native Americans who were raised in a culture I knew nothing about. The premise of the "mission" was that it would offer a college-preparatory education, with 2/3 of the served students being indiginous natives from across Alaska. Some were orphans, but many were from far-flung small Native villages where schools did not exist. Some students were white, but also boarding to get an education not provided where their families lived. There were even four students of color who came from Kenya to gain access to the American schools and universities. And a few students were locals like me, taking advantage of the education opportunities provided. While the cost of attending as a “dayhop” were minimal, when I later I boarded there it cost $650 for the school year, running Sept 1 to June 1.
During that first winter I drove back and forth with about 5 other Glennallen residents and befriended them. To this day I remember nothing of them except for one boy my age whose dad was the area Fish and Game warden. Visiting their home was interesting. A ceremonial gift called an “oosik” sat on their living room coffee table and several animal hides hung from the walls. I later learned that an “oosik” was a petrified bone from a walrus’ penis. One was given to Johnny Carson when he featured Native students showing skills used during the “Eskimo Olympics”. He fondled it looking to figure out what it was. When told, he turned white, dropped it, and was speechless for a minute. A remarkable moment.
As I studied and got to know the students and adults at Copper Valley, I was gradually accepted, though still an outlier since I was not there after hours to interact. Despite my limited presence, my immediate classmates took me in and became lifelong friends whom I will discuss later.
That spring saw me walking the Glenn Highway from our road camp to a new small diner for cokes and hamburgers with kids living along the highway. It was a normal place like anywhere, with red and black checked walls, a shiny formica counter, small jukeboxes at the counter, and a friendly family staff. That March of 1961 was interrupted by my father coming to Anchorage for a much-needed job working at a Safeway bakery in Anchorage. He reestablished the skills he had learned in the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression, skills that took him to the WWII Pacific Theater (on Tinian Island) as a baker/sergeant. He stayed in the Safeway job for only a few months when he was convinced by another baker named Leo to join him in Valdez as a baker’s helper working at Gilson’s Grocery Store. My father moved there and called for the rest of my family to join him. For more about Valdez, see the story of Summer of 1961!
After my summer of 1961 in Valdez, my parents honored my request to return to Copper Valley School (CVS) and board there. I am sure my aunt and uncle helped pay that tuition.
There is much too much to impart in a single chapter about my CVS experience. It was the people that imprinted on me a view of life much different than my limited vision in Hamburg and Buffalo, NY. You may click below if you wish to "meet" some of them!
Memorable people of Copper Valley