Good Memories of Growing Up in Jesse Lee Home

Good Memories of Growing Up in Jesse Lee Home
By Nancy Erickson
Seward Phoenix Log
December 12, 2002

Jim Simpson doesn’t remember what his father told him in 1929 when he put him on an Anchorage train in the early evening dusk bound for Seward.

“I don’t remember being frightened-more awestruck,” the 78-year-old Simpson said from his home in Oregon last week.
The young child was met at the Seward depot by Jesse Lee Home superintendent Charles T. Hatten and his wife and escorted to the orphanage northwest of town.

“I remember it was large and had lots of beds. And I wasn’t used to either,” Simpson said recalling his entry into the C dorm on the first floor of the Jewel Guard Hall that housed boys to the age of 11.

Simpson said he remembers getting ready for bed that first night and telling the matron he wouldn’t go until he said his prayers.

“He’s the first heathen who came here with a prayer,” Simpson remembers Hatten’s young teenage son commenting.
Simpson spent the remainder of his childhood at the home, leaving after graduation in June 1942, when he was drafted into the Army shortly after the start of World War II.

Simpson remembers a good life growing up at the home.

“Holidays were very nice. We had a full Christmas tree in the chapel” (on the second floor of the Jewel Hall), he recalled.
“Each dorm marched through all the other dorms and we displayed our gifts on our beds,” Simpson said of the Christmas holiday.

In the 1930s he recalls receiving gifts of mittens made by staff, an occasional orange or apple if available and “maybe a bar of soap.”

“Those fortunate to have parents got added gifts,” he said. Simpson remembers getting one gift from his father when he was in about fourth grade.

He mother lived in Chickaloon, but she didn’t come to see him at the home. His father came once when Simpson was about 10.

“He thought I should study electricity and become and electrical engineer,” he said. “In 1932, he said that was the coming thing.”

Instead, Simpson went on to obtain a Ph.D. in Education.

With many children housed in a self-sufficient orphanage, chores began at an early age.
Simpson remembers coming home as a first grader from the school built for Natives about a ½ mile from the home and going directly to the darning room on the first floor. There he learned to mend socks.

Saturday was floor waxing day. The older boys would way the first and second-floor hallways and polish them by pulling the younger boys on a blanket.

“The older you got, the more complicated the jobs became,” he said. A new job list was posted monthly.

In the spring the children would pick rocks and plant a huge vegetable garden next to the mountain that is now covered with houses.

Simpson was probably 14 when he was assigned to milking the home’s dairy cows and slopping hogs.

The barn was still in operation after the war when Simpson returned for a visit in 1950.

Simpson wasn’t aware until a few years after he left Jesse Lee that the home was evacuated in 1942 due to the threat of the Japanese bombing interior Alaska during World War II.

Some of the children were sent to Wrangell, Mount Edgecumbe and a boarding school in Eklutna, he said. Simpson was unsure, but he said the home may have re-opened in 1946.

Simpson remains in contact with a few of his acquaintances from Jesse Lee and expressed concern for the abandoned structure’s future.

Simpson once taught classes in facility planning and his vision for the future of the Jesse Lee Home will be presented at the Dec. 18 meeting of the Jesse Lee Advisory Board.

The public is encouraged to attend the 7:30 p.m. meeting in the basement of the Seward Community Library to furnish input on the home’s past and its future.

For more information, contact the Seward Planning Department at 224-4048 or e-mail city planner Malcolm Brown at mbrown@cityofseward.net or Donna Glenz at dglenz@cityofseward.bet to contribute information.