A nearly 70-year chapter in Ketchikan history is coming to an end in the next couple of weeks, when Roland and Alaire Stanton move
South.
The former city mayor and her husband, a former Borough Assemblymember,
are relocating to Lacey, Washington, a community just each of Olympia.
The Stanton's chose Lacey because they have relatives in the area.
Alaire was born on October 15, 1935 in Edmonton Alberta. Her father, a
Baptist minister, tried to join the Canadian army in 1941, and was
denied, so the family first moved to Idaho, Alaire said last week.
In Idaho, Alaire remembers delivering religious materials to the
Minidoka Japanese internment camp, the same camp that many of the
Japanese from Ketchikan were interned.
By 1943, the family was in Seattle and her father was the minister of
the West Seattle Baptist Church. She graduated from West Seattle High
School in 1953.
Roland was born on Jan. 2, 1932 in Seattle. He notes that the many of his forebearers and relatives were involved in education.
"Education was the family business," he said last week. His father,
specifically, was a school principal. After high school graduation,
Roland enrolled at University of Washington to study chemical
engineering.
The two met in the Baptist church youth group in the early 1950s, Alaire
said. She noted that the group included both high school students like
herself and college students like Roland.
"Roland had a car," she said last week. "And he offered to give rides
home to the group members who needed them. The group planned a surprise
birthday party for him, so one of other members of the group had to
follow behind him and pick up the people he had
just dropped off and take them to his house before he got there. He was
shocked when he got home and everyone was at his house. But he handled
it all so well, I knew he was the guy for me."
After graduation in 1953, Alaire attended Linfield College in Oregon while Roland finished up his engineering studies at UW.
Meanwhile, 600 miles to the north, the Ketchikan Pulp Company was nearing completion. The Stantons were up for the adventure and headed north. Roland was the water engineer when the pulp mill opened in 1954.
Water was a crucial part of the pulp mill operation, the reason the
company built the Connell Lake dam and a long wooden pipeline to get the
water to Ward Cove. Roland noted that the pulp used 45 million gallons
of water a day in the pulp making process.
"That was the same amount as the City of Tacoma," he added.
Like most of the other worker families, the Stanton's
first stayed in a small apartment in the Marine View tower. It soon
became too small as Alaire embarked on the "adventure" of having four
children in five years. Bruce was born
in 1954, Myra was born in 1955, Ralph was born in 1957 and Loren was
born 1959.
Alaire said that she got a lot of babysitting and other help from the
other "pulp mill wives" because many had already been through the
routine of having their husbands work - especially shift work - at other
pulp mills in Washington, such as the one in Bellingham.
"There was a real sense of family with the others," she said
The growing family rented a home at Mile 4 north Tongass briefly before
undertaking something that Roland also liked to do, build things, in
this case a house on Cranberry Road north of Ketchikan.
"The federal government thought we needed more houses in Ketchikan with
the mill opening," Roland said. "$130. We got a lot for $130."
The Cranberry Road house - which had 180 degree views up and down the
channel - was where the family grew up, according to oldest son Bruce.
"My dad really into making sure that we got a great outdoors education,"
Bruce said last week, as he helped his parents get organized for the
movers. "Hiking, hunting, fishing, getting out and about was what it was
all about. It was a lot of fun."
Alaire's first foray into public service, was as the treasurer for the Houghtaling PTA in the early 1960s.
Roland would spend three years on the Borough Assembly from 1966-1969,
when the borough government was just getting organized. He said that one
of his early interests, even before serving on the Assembly, was
getting better phone service for the north end.
When the family originally moved to Cranberry Road, there was a single
telephone for the area, attached to a tree outside. Stanton said he did a survey of the area and found 60 people interested in having their own phones
and he convinced the city to extend more lines out North Tongass.
Roland said the main efforts of the Assembly during his three years was "getting the borough organized."
"I'm an engineer," he said. "Engineers are problem solvers. I like to solve problems."
Later, when her kids were older, Alaire was appointed to the school
board in 1970. In short order she was the chair of the School Board and
held that position until 1980. She was also the chair of the Alaska
Association of School Boards and spent time as the
chair of the Western Association of school boards.
Alaire said the biggest challenges on the school board in those days are the same today. Funding. And how to get more of it.
"It was also always a challenge to attract enough people willing to come
to Alaska to teach," she said. "People seemed to feel that we were not
part of the civilized world."
Meanwhile, Roland left the pulp mill in 1974. He was the technical
director at the mill at the time. He said he had disagreement with his
boss over what Stanton considered inaccurate budget information. He said he was
fired a week later.
But that allowed him to go back into "building things." The family formed "Stanton Homes" in the mid 1970s. Alaire was the bookkeeper and the children pitched in. In 10 years, Stanton Homes built
26 homes and replaced 130 roofs.
Two of the houses they built were new homes for the Stanton family
on Fairview in the Carlanna area. Living in the city limits, allowed
Alaire to run for city council, which she did successfully in 1984. The
1984 Council
was a historic one in that it featured a majority of female council
members for the first time with Alaire joining Valerie Jackson, Elaine
Seymour and Georgia Skannes on the body. Alaire did not serve on the
council in 1988 and 1989 but was elected again in
1989 for another term. .
In 1991, she was elected city mayor - the first and - to this point -
only woman who has served as either mayor of the City of Ketchikan or
the Ketchikan Gateway Borough. She was the city mayor for two terms,
stepping down in 1997.
Alaire said that the biggest accomplishment of her time as mayor were
the steps the city took to expand the downtown docks into the port that
we see today. The old wooden docks had been around for decades but
Ketchikan needed modern port facilities if it wanted
to take advantage of the growth in the cruise industry.
She also said she was proud of the hiring of Karl Amylon in 1995. Amylon
retired last August after more than 26 years with the city. He died of
cancer a few weeks later.
"He was a great manager, a really good hire," she said. "He was a dream
to work with. He was a low-profile man, but he really made a
difference."
During her time as mayor, Alaire was also the bookkeeper for KRBD-FM.
After her time on the council, she served as administrator for the
Ketchikan Pioneer's Home. She also worked in Juneau as a legislative
aide.
"I think what we will miss most (about Ketchikan) is the people," Alaire
said last week. "Whether I was an elected official or just some someone
in the neighborhood, the people were always what made Ketchikan
special."
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