Cold Climates Clips: An Alaskan Traveling Trainer's Essays, Observations, Anecdotes, and Childhood Stories

By Sharon Lattery

Cold Climate Clips is a book for folks who are keen on adventure; appreciate diversity, travel and enjoy humor! Readers will gain a valuable vision of Alaska’s rural villages and small communities through the eyes of a person infatuated with her job and the people she worked with for more than 30 years. The stories in Cold Climate Clips take place prior to the technology we have today—before an issue could be settled with a facsimile, email or a call on a cellular phone. Enjoy the humorous and joyful adventures of the author’s childhood as a precocious girl, growing up free in small, but busy Skagway. Alaska during the 40s and 50s. Cold Climate Clips is an adventure book. Be prepared for more than a chuckle! From beginning to end Cold Climate Clips speaks to the reader about a woman who worked affably and good naturedly with a blend of people and learned her best social skills growing up in small town Skagway, Alaska! It demonstrates strongly her love of Alaska and its people.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publication Consultants
• Release date: Jun 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781594332418

Sharon Lattery

Sharon Lattery was born soon after the beginning of World War II. She moved to Skagway, Alaska, with her mother Rex, prior to the end of the War. She holds the honor of being Alaska’s first Child Development Associate and completed requirements for a B.A. in Human Development through a Master’s Able Program at Pacific Oaks College. She was extremely active in numerous councils, associations, conferences and committees during her 30-year career. Cold Climate Clips is Sharon’s first book; however, she has been surrounded by literary luster through her husband, Dennis, an author and poet, and her daughter, Denise Trutanic, a writer and editor. Seldom able to spend much time recreating prior to her retirement in 2001, she currently enjoys renovating her summer place in beautiful Seldovia, Alaska. She collects sea glass, unusual cookbooks, fishes, recreates and has experienced a late life interest in painting on large canvases in bold colors.

Book preview

States.

Part I

The Traveling Trainer

I’m still infatuated with what I did for a living. It’s the memories of people and travel and my work environments that connect me to my past careers, not just what I achieved. We all know that realizing successes takes a tremendous amount of individual leadership time and team effort—sometimes years. It takes a first-rate leader to grow staff that is willing to accept change and be nimble enough to deal with outside influences that are in constant flux. It keeps a person busy! However, to remember and record special incidents—like the time that your heart suddenly grew, an issue that made you decide to take another path and work with other folks, or even a memory that evokes guilt—also shows leadership growth and life-skill development. The stories that follow are my memories and personal recollections. At least the ones I want to share.

Alaska is poles apart from other places and sometimes difficult for us who live here. Just getting to work in the morning takes an effort that many people in other parts of the world don’t understand. Some mornings I’d awaken in the wee hours in frozen, snowy Chugiak only to have to drive twenty-five miles to the airport; get on a plane, fly to rainy (but warm) Juneau, hop a small seaplane and fly on to sunny Kake, a commute of almost eight hundred miles and a world away from home. There I’d spend the rest of the week working with families and teachers. My career included training and travel to other states, and contact with parents, children teachers, and community members. It was my time with RurAL Alaska Community Program, Child Development (RurAL CAP/CD) and Child Care Connection, Inc. (CCC) that offered me the opportunity to actually be in the company of families, children, and the teachers who work with the children while their parents are at home or away at work. I was with RurAL CAP/CD, CD, for almost fifteen years and never left the office at the end of a day with a clear desk. It was the most exciting of times and the wildest and most stimulating environment in which I ever worked.

When I first arrived at CD we were the brightest and the best. We were given the freedom to create rules and processes that had only to be approved by our fantastic managers before immediate implementation. Most of those approvals probably took place on the fly early in the morning before we arrived at work. We loved every minute. They had to dance quickly to keep ahead of us because we worked fast and were very skilled. The Department seemed to thrive with us for a number of years. We did it all. As you read these pages remember, for better or for worse, we accomplished what we did with little technology. There were no computers, fax machines were very new, and there were definitely no cellular or satellite phones available to the public.

Sharon—always flying something somewhere…

The Agency (RurAL CAP) expanded throughout Alaska and serviced many regions including all Alaska Native and Eskimo cultures. The CD staffers were as diverse as the people with whom we worked. I recall that at one point, we had a Yupik community specialist working with a Norwegian teacher director in one community, and a Swedish trainer working with a Yupik teacher director in another village. The first year we worked together under a new child development management agreement that placed training and program leaders on equal footing, something very new and different from previous approaches, we were able to quadruple the number of certified teacher directors and child development associates (CDAs).

After I departed RurAL CAP/CD I went on to direct the Child Development Center at the University of Alaska. Finally, I was hired as the interim executive director at Child Care Connection, Inc. (CCC). Those were banner years for me! Things just went well. I was in my element in child care, which I have always believed to be the most needed service in the United States and the world at large. A good old regional program, CCC had limited services and had become stagnant and needed to grow and expand. We took our time, added a few new programs, and hired the right person as the new executive director (ED). I thought I was retired. However, the new ED asked me to return as her community services director, and away we went.

Sharon arriving at Onion Bay from a a training in Cordova.

I traveled and trained. We wrote grant after grant. We applied for special projects and implemented numerous new programs. We hired brilliant new staff and moved to another building so we could continue to expand. It was a magical time for child care! I finally really retired in 2001. Child Care Connection, Incorporated, formerly a regional organization, has now blossomed into threads, Inc. and serves the entire state.

What you are about to read are my personal recollections and my opinions. If they sound politically incorrect to you, just remember, they’re my memories of my career. I sincerely hope that those of you who take pleasure in anecdotal writing will enjoy what I believe is a good read.

Highly Nervous Neighbors

Serendipity by design

Only once did I work for a private for-profit company. They were new to Alaska and my job was to develop the early childhood education vocation program. My future students would use the adjoining child care center as a lab. I started with a beautiful, empty classroom. Not once did anyone ever question me about what I ordered to fill that shiny new space or how much the items I was ordering cost. The entire environment of the vocational school was beautiful; however, I never really felt comfortable there—I always felt like someone was watching and waiting for me to break something. I didn’t stay very long.

On the other side of the coin, during the ‘60s and ‘70s many Head Start (HS) programs were set up in church basements and operated with hand-me-downs and other beautiful junk that we were happy to have. At one of my centers, Chugiak Children’s Services, during the day the rooms were used for early education programs. After hours they would revert to church rooms. It wasn’t unusual for church committee members working with us to expect that HS completely push back and clear the furniture and roll up the carpets every day. Weekends were often an absolute disaster. Sunday school was held in rooms where the HS equipment and classroom materials were stored and sometimes some of our supplies would migrate during church services. Some items were found as far as the upstairs sanctuary on Monday morning. And don’t think that a good Christian won’t borrow your favorite markers from the storage cabinet and put them away where you can’t find them. Head Start eventually left the church environment when we moved into the leaky old former Chugiak Elementary school building. It was wonderful!

I started working for RurAL CAP/CD at their Anchorage central office building immediately after I left Chugiak. I believe at one time during the 1940s and 1950s the RurAL CAP building may have housed public health nurses. It was also rumored to have been the telephone company at one time. It was a classic not-for-profit rental that was furnished with federal government leftovers. There were only two wooden desks that I’m aware of; the rest of the furniture was of the old shaky metal variety. It was a well-known fact that any sturdy wooden gems—whether desks, cabinets, or bookshelves—were willed to dear friends upon death or departure from the organization.

Our headquarters were located in a colorful part of Anchorage where you never quite knew who or what you might see when you looked outside or made your way to the parking lot. It was also close to some good old eating spots that served double duty as neighborhood watering holes.

The outside of our building sported peeling paint and a sagging roof. If you arrived at work early enough there was parking next to the well-lighted old building. The stairs squeaked and the floors were uneven. The carpeting was beyond worn, it was gross! There was so much traffic in and out every day that there was no way to keep it clean. The building had no real temperature control so it was either too hot or so cold you had to wear your coat during much of the winter. Offices were shared, except for those of directors or coordinators, who worked with confidential issues. The neighborhood did not lend itself to working late, though we all did. Homeless people and drunks frequented the property across the street and we had problems with them that only increased as time went by. They’d get into fights, and some had serious issues and would expose themselves to us as we came and went from the building. One or more of them learned how to break into the building and one night left all his clothes in the ladies room. We finally moved.

Another building I worked in was completely renovated before we moved in. In terms of location, it was still in a less-than-businesslike environment but it was a step up for all of us!

Space Wars erupted the moment word got out that we were moving and continued until well after the move. Everyone wanted a private office, on the sunny side of the building, and jockeyed to procure a seat on the design committee to help their case. Friendships were forged and lost over the move and one staff member ended up leaving the agency at the end of the program year. She told me it was too distracting to work in a large office with four desks and eight file cabinets, no matter what size it was.

Space and room assignments really didn’t work out fairly for everyone. Child Development gained greatly in meeting and training space but lost out in office space, which is important to staff who are on the road for weeks on end and want a home office to come back to. However, it was a nice, clean, fresh, and safe environment and in the end people came to live with it and began to enjoy some of the additional benefits the building offered.

It was our neighbors who endeared many of us to the area. The ability to make a quick run just across the street to a grocery store made grabbing lunch or shopping on the way home easy. Or if you wished to go to a restaurant for lunch there was a good one close at hand. The restaurant site also conveniently shared the block with a hotel where our rural staff stayed when they came into Anchorage to attend training. The office was also close to a post office, and happened to be directly across the street from a state-operated home that housed special-needs adults that required attention and care in their daily lives. It was this house that gave a few of us joy and hours of distraction during the years we were fortunate enough to spend working on the sunny side of the building.

Anchorage’s famous Floyd, a smiling, waving street icon who spent his days dancing and waving at passing traffic, lived in the home as did a young fellow who would give you—if he couldn’t sell it to you—the shirt off his back. Literally. Other people in the home tended to blend in more because they had less evident issues and would usually just play games or take walks as a group. Some residents would be outside in the yard and pull a stunt that wasn’t appropriate—the staffers sent them in only to have them immediately crawl out the windows and start the same antics all over again—just like a game! There were outdoor clean-up chores. We observed that it sometimes took staffers a long time to assist in the completion of sweeping a sidewalk or picking up items that had been thrown out the upper and lower windows. Our hearts grew watching every antic. Once, one of our clinical health staff referred to the adults in the home as clients. Another of our staff said They’re not clients, they’re just highly nervous neighbors. And so it was, we worked across the street from the highly nervous.

One spring morning a rototiller showed up in the backyard of the home and cleared out what looked like a garden spot. Sure enough the next day a couple of hoes, spades, shovels, two buckets, and a long hose were situated next to the garden plot. Mid-afternoon someone on our side of the building yelled Everyone’s outside at the garden! To the windows we rushed.

As I recall, there were three adult staffers with what looked like two bags containing seed packets talking to the group. The twelve adult residents ranging from early twenties to mid-forties were milling around, not even mildly interested in what was being said. But they did begin to pick up the tools and grab the two buckets—there was not enough equipment to go around and an argument ensued. All the equipment was taken away and placed in a pile next to one of the staffers, who was left to fend off three or four sneaky Pete’s who kept trying to steal the buckets. We couldn’t hear what was going on, but pretty soon someone went inside and came out with big spoons, plastic pans, and other homespun garden paraphernalia. Now there was enough for everyone to have something and the gardening began.

I’m not a gardener—I always thought of it as a boring and tedious hobby. This group, however, attacked