Letters from Alaska

By P. D. Vasko and Gerry Vasko

How could this happen? Two people buying the same house?

The year is 1951. Her life shattered by the sudden death of her husband, Trina Brown, a black lady with twin teenage daughters from Atlanta, Georgia, seeks a new life in Alaska. She begins working and buys a house at 144 East Chestnut Street in Juneau. She goes there with the help of her friend and mentor, Rose Williams.

Aaron Mueller is a successful Jewish businessman from New York City whose wife dies of lung cancer. Losing all interest in his family business, he sells out and is looking for a new passion in his life. At the suggestion of a friend, he researches Alaska and decides he’ll find it there. Through a real estate trade magazine, he buys a house at 144 East Chestnut Street in Juneau and moves there.

How did Janet Green manage a bank scam that caused Trina Brown and Aaron Mueller to buy the same house? Why does the FBI get involved? And how do a black lady from Atlanta and a Jewish businessman from New York City manage to live together and still get along?

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jan 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664218802

P. D. Vasko

P.D. Vasko is 77 years old. He is a dad and stepdad to 12 children and grandpa called “Papa V” to 30 grandchildren. He has been dealing with Parkinsons’ disease for the past 14 years. His Motto for life is “Giving up is not an option”

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Copyright © 2021 P. D. Vasko with Gerry Vasko.

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except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents,

organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products

of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-6642-1879-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-1878-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-1880-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021900394

WestBow Press rev. date: 01/27/2021

Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue

To all those avid readers who like a good story—people who

turn the page wanting to find out what happens next

Acknowledgments

I want to thank my wife, Gerry, for all her patience and encouragement during the writing of this book. I also thank her for all her editing help.

I also want to thank our son Clifford for giving me the idea for this novel.

In addition, I want to give a special thanks to Nicholas Geraci, a grandson, and Bob Barko Jr., a stepson, for all of their computer help.

Chapter 1

I t was Thursday May 6, 1949, and Trina and her twin daughters were making sure it was a special day at the Brown house. May 6 was Mark Brown’s birthday, and Trina Brown always made sure that his birthday was a special day. Trina and Mark had been married for four years, and Trina was making her husband’s favorite meal.

She was in the kitchen and was wearing a full-length cooking apron Mark had won for her at the Dade County Fair the first year they were married. Mark always laughed at the fact that he spent more money throwing darts at those balloons than if he had bought it in a store. However, it was the fun of winning it for Trina. The apron had a monogram on the front which read, I Made It Just for You. In addition to those words, hearts of different colors were sewn all around the words. It actually looked like a circle of hearts.

The meal she was cooking was one Mark had requested for his birthday: pork chops, mashed potatoes, a vegetable medley, and grits, topped off with a carrot cake. The chops were breaded with eggs and bread crumbs and then fried in oil. The mashed potatoes were made with red potatoes because Mark always insisted the reds made a better-tasting mashed potato dish. The grits were on the agenda because no good, black southern meal would be complete without them—even just as a side dish. Trina had planned them as a side dish.

The twins, Careen and Cassidy, were just finishing putting up their homemade decorations. Red, blue, and orange balloons hung from the chandelier over the table. The twins had also made a big sign, Happy Birthday, Dad, which they hung on the wall next to the door going into the kitchen from the dining room. The sign was also red, blue, and orange.

The night before, Mark had agreed to be home by five o’clock for dinner, which meant Trina would start frying the pork chops by four thirty.

When the doorbell rang at ten minutes to five, Trina thought, Who could that be? Could that be Mark, home early? But he wouldn’t ring the doorbell. Trina yelled to the girls, Get the door, you two.

Careen walked into the kitchen and said, Mom there’s a policeman at the door.

As Trina walked to the front door after turning off the stove, a dozen thoughts went through her mind—none of them good. It only took her six seconds to reach the front door.

A policeman was standing on the front porch with his hat in his left hand. He said, Are you Mrs. Mark Brown?

Yes, she answered.

I’m sorry, ma’am. There’s been an accident, and your husband is dead.

Stunned by the news, all Trina could do was cry out, No! No! No!

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May 5, 1951

Dear Rose,

I know I should have written to you sooner. I told you I would, and I started to write two different nights, but I got too tired to finish. So I’m writing this one right after dinner. I did not finish those two letters. Instead I’m putting all of it here.

Everything has been hectic this week. First, the trip from Atlanta to Seattle was a really long one. Five days on a cross-country bus was pretty tiring, but it was the least expensive way for three of us to get here. The twins held up better than I thought they would. The only time I needed to step in was when they argued about which one should sit next to the window. I finally started timing them and made them share equal time.

Yes, it was a long and tiring trip, but on the positive side, we saw some of the most fabulous scenery I’ve ever seen. The mountains in West Virginia were a sight to see. There were all kinds of trees growing up the sides of the mountains. Every so often, we could see a house halfway up a mountain. I could not figure out how people got to some of these houses. I’m repeating myself, but some of the scenery was out of this world.

Two days later, we saw land that was so flat there wasn’t a bump for miles—and we had never seen so much corn growing. I think it was in Iowa. Miles and miles of corn. Then there were the Rocky Mountains. They were also beautiful to see, and pine trees were sprinkled on the sides with snow on the tops.

When I bought the tickets for our trip, I never realized how many stops we would make before we arrived in Seattle. After we stopped in the third town to let some people off and let others get on the bus, Careen counted the number of stops until Denver. It was seventeen stops, and we switched drivers twice—once in Dayton, Ohio, and once in Chicago, Illinois.

We had to change buses in Denver, which meant we had to wait in the bus terminal for two hours for the next bus. A strange thing happened in Denver. When we got on the bus, Cassidy, out of habit, asked the driver where we should sit.

He told her wherever she wanted to sit.

Careen asked, You mean in the back seats?

He said, Wherever you want—just please take a seat. We’re already running behind schedule. If it had been Atlanta, Georgia, we’d be told to go to the back of the bus.

In Seattle, the waitress didn’t know what grits were. She said she’d never heard of them. I thought Cassidy wasn’t going to eat her breakfast if she couldn’t have her grits.

The boat ride from Seattle to Juneau was really fascinating for the girls and me. They couldn’t believe how much water there was in the ocean. I still can’t believe how far Juneau, Alaska, is from Atlanta. I sure hope this is a good change for us.

On the boat ride, we saw a number of different kinds of fish. At times, it seemed as if they were actually following our boat. We also saw some whales jumping out of the water. At least it looked like they were jumping.

The girls and I made up a game. When one jumped up, we would count to see how high we could before the next one jumped. The highest number we got to was fifteen.

I wanted you to know I met Tilly today, and I have an appointment on Thursday, two days from now. I will try to write on Thursday night to let you know what happens.

Love from Alaska,

Trina

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That was Trina’s first letter to Rose. It had been two years since Mark Brown was killed in the auto accident. Three days after the accident, Jeff Alter, Mark’s business attorney, got a copy of the police report, which described the accident. Jeff had known Mark for more than eleven years. He had gone on several fishing trips with Mark, and he knew Mark was a careful driver. Plus, Jeff knew Mark never had any reason to travel on Federal Street.

The police report said that Mark went through a stop sign on Federal Street in Atlanta and was hit by a car going west through the intersection with River Street, but when Jeff used one of his confidential sources within the police department, he found that the report had been altered to protect the woman who had killed Mark. Jeff discovered that a witness to the accident first told police that she was speeding across Federal Street, never slowed down, and smashed right into Mark’s car, killing him instantly. He never saw it coming. However, an hour later, the same witness claimed that Mark was speeding across Federal Street and caused the accident.

Jeff never relayed this information to Trina Brown. He understood the southern system in 1951. He knew they could not change it. Mark could not be brought back, and telling Trina the whole story would most likely make her even more distraught. Instead, Jeff Alter managed to get the woman’s insurance to give Trina $3,000. Plus, he privately discussed his confidential information with the woman’s husband, a prominent attorney in Atlanta, who gave her an additional $5,000. Trina was told the money came from a charity Mark had worked with for a long time. When Trina asked what charity, Jeff told her they wanted to remain anonymous.

What a trip Trina’s young life had been so far. Her mother died while giving birth to Trina, and she never met her father. She was told that before she was even born, he left to find work in Chicago and said he would send for the family, but he was never heard from again. Trina was raised by her maternal grandparents. Sam and Ginger Jackson were typical of the old-fashioned southern black family living in Georgia at the time. There were two things that were really important in their lives. The first was family. There were no tighter-knit families in the United States than southern black families in the forties and fifties. These families nurtured tight bonds and stuck together in their endeavors. They had their own schools, their own churches, and their own lives. They had to since so much of white society was willing to take advantage of them, put them down, and use them.

The second area where black families in the South could thrive was religion. Sam and Ginger Jackson held this as a very important part of their lives. They would attend church every Sunday come rain or come shine. They would memorize all the songs they would sing. From their youth through adulthood, everyone sang in the black churches; good voice or not, there was no choice. You came to church. You sang! And so it was with Sam and Ginger Jackson. In fact, Ginger Jackson took pride in knowing the songs so well that she rarely used the songbook. Trina was following in Ginger Jackson’s footsteps. By the time she was fourteen, Trina did not need the songbook either.

It was with this background that Trina Jackson grew up in an area called Fairfield. Many black families lived there on the western edge of Atlanta. Fairfield was not a wealthy area, but it was not poor either. It consisted of nearly one hundred families with moderate lifestyles. Most of the children went to the Madison School. This consisted of a grade school building of first grade to sixth grade and a high school building. The two schools were situated on a small plot of land near each other to minimize costs.

All of the students as well as the teachers at Madison were black. The staff at Madison prided itself in producing well-educated, polite, responsible graduates. It didn’t matter to them that the school was all black. Their job was educating children and not trying to figure out if society was fair in Georgia—or the world for that matter—and they were very good at what they did. In fact, the Madison School had received awards for excellence in education for twelve years in a row from the Education Department for the state of Georgia.

Sam and Ginger Jackson saved for ten years to buy a modest home in Fairfield. It was a one-story ranch-style house. It originally had a kitchen, a living room, two bedrooms, and a bathroom. Once they moved in, Sam added a second bathroom and an extra room off of the kitchen, which was used for laundry, sitting, and a study space for Trina and eventually her twin girls.

After several years of trying, Sam finally landed a job as a janitor at the grade school. Luckily for the school, Sam was very adept at fixing things and making small repairs. If something needed fixing, Sam was always willing to work on evenings or Saturdays to make it right. And since the buildings were more than fifty years old, this did happen regularly. Sam thrived in this atmosphere and made many friends in both buildings.

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May 15, 1951

Dear Rose,

It’s Friday, and I know I said I’d write last night, but by the time the twins and I got home from celebrating my new job, it was late—and I was really tired. So I’m writing tonight to tell you Tilly Walker offered me a job yesterday. I start on Monday. Thanks for writing to Tilly for me. She and the director of the hospital had a lot of questions for me.

I must have answered them okay because he told me she could hire me. Later, I learned that Tilly had approval to hire me before I even arrived in Alaska, but they still had to interview me to see if your letter was accurate. All this was due to your letter about my work with you. Thank you so much, Rose.

The facility here has only fifty patients. Forty of them are physically handicapped. The other ten are mentally slow. Tilly said I would be working with the physically handicapped to start. She wants me to start with two fellows for the first month. After that, I will spend time with each one so I can get to know them all. Tilly seems to be a very nice lady, like you said, and she is so dedicated to her work.

I mentioned that I was writing to you, and she asked me to tell you hi. She asked me to say, Let’s go, and she said she would explain what it meant later.

By the way, Careen and Cassidy said to tell you hi. It’s a good thing they have each other because the other kids at school seem to be a little leery of them. I think most of them have not had much contact with black people. It’s not like back home where people could be mean or hostile toward them. I think it’s a matter of the kids getting to know them.

We’re all three having trouble adjusting to the daylight hours since it stays light most of every twenty-four hours this time of the year in Alaska.

Anyway, we’re all doing well. I hope you are too. I’ll write again next week after I’ve started working.

Love from Alaska,

Trina

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Rose was white, but she had become Trina’s best friend, teacher, and mentor over the past several years. Eight years before she met her future husband, Mark Brown—when Trina was twenty years old—she had a short affair with a young man who lived outside of Fairfield. When they found out she was pregnant, he informed her he wanted no part in kids. So it was over, and she never saw him. At first, Trina tried to pretend it wasn’t real. She tried to convince herself she wasn’t going to have a baby. However, eight months later, she gave birth to twin girls. Because of all this, Trina decided to leave the secretarial school she was attending and find a job. She discussed it with Sam and Ginger and informed them she would get a job and help with the bills. At this news, her grandmother insisted she would take care of the girls while Trina was at work. It was that southern black family thing again.

Trina was twenty years old and was fortunate enough to be hired one week after making the decision to leave school. She was hired as an aide at the Georgia Rehabilitation Hospital, which was just three miles from their house, and she was able to walk to and from work.

The hospital was owned by the state of Georgia. It was home to seventy-five patients, all men, from all over the state.