Jesse Lee Subject of New Book

Jesse Lee Stories Sought for New Book

The Jesse Lee Home is the focus of a new book. Family After All: Alaska's Jesse Lee Home [Unalaska 1889-1925, Seward 1925-1965] is planned as a two-volume compilation of reminiscences and writings by and about the residents of the Jesse Lee Home.

Author/compiler Jackie Pels became interested in Jesse Lee Home stories when she learned that her cousin's wife, Ann Wemark Rogers, was one of three Jesse Lee teenagers who became the first women to complete the Mount Marathon Race. Ann and her siblings lived at the Home after World War II, while their parents, Joy and McKenna Wemark, were recovering from tuberculosis at the Seward Sanatorium.

"In the process of researching my last book, Any Tonnage, Any Ocean, about Captain Walter Jackinsky of Ninilchik, I met two more former "Jesse Lee kids," his half-sister Barbara Jaklin Redmond of Wasilla and his old friend Fred Lange of Cordova, each with stories diferent from the other's and from that of the Wemark family," reports Pels. "I decided that I could not let any other writing project get in the way of Jesse Lee, and I've been working on it now for almost two years."

Jackie Pels has stronger ties to Seward than the average Northern Californian, and that has no doubt influenced her decision to feature Seward in her writings.

"I have just had the pleasure of finishing a chapter on the founding of Seward General Hosptial and its links to the Jesse Lee Home," Pels says. "I was born in that old schoolhouse-hospital, and some of my Unga Island counsins were the first baby and then the first set of twins born there."

Pels has traveled to Arizona, southern California, Oregon, Washington and all over Alaska to gather Jesse Lee stories and photographs. She plans to travel to New Mexico and Wyoming in the near future to meet with several more Jesse Lee residents.

"People in Seward have been extraordinarily helpful, beginning with Patrica Ray Williams, who worked besider her father, mayor of Seward at the time, helping to clear the land for the Home in 1925," suggests Pel. "Would I like to hear from even more people? You bet! I'm particularly keen to hear from anyone with specific information about two times when the Home closed - in the World War II years, when the children were sent to a variety of locations, and, of course, after the 1964 earthquake, when again the children were displaced."

Pel is also looking for photographs of the Jesse Lee statue of Balto, a copy of which stands in a New York City park.
Some have suggested that the statue disappeared after the earthquake, while Jesse Lee resident Dr. James Simpson reports it went missing much earlier than that. Pel suggests that confusion about the Home is common.

"I have a file marked 'Bogus', for particularly dismaying examples of misinformation that will probably be included in an appendix to Volume II," explains Pel. "Most misinformation isn't intentional, it just happens. Something misheard or misunderstood gets passed on and printed and embroidered and reprinted and finally ends up considered 'fact'. We have worked hard to uncover those layers of misinformation and get at the real facts. It's been a daunting and sometimes humorous process."

The introduction to the books addresses the misinformation discovered about the Jesse Lee Home. “For the seeker after historical accuracy, of course, all sources are suspect. Newspaper accounts and even history texts are sometimes colored by fad or ism – boosterism, jingoism, racism. Children’s writings are subject to adult approval; adult memories of childhood are filtered through intervening events. Over the course of the book we have tried to balance varying accounts, to get to the bottom of things. There are no villains. There is some heroism. Mostly there are people of all ages trying to do, as Billy Blackjack Johnson said of his teachers, ‘the best they could with what they knew at the time.’”

Retired Unalaska teacher Ray Hudson is writing the first volume of the story, which covers the 40 years the Jesse Lee Home was located in Unalaska. Those with information about the 40 years the Jesse Lee Home operated in Seward can contact Jackie Pels c/o Hardscratch Press, 2358 Banbury Place, Walnut Creek, California 94598, telephone 925.935.3422 or e-mail at jrbpels@hardscratchpress.com.

"Next year, 2007, is the 80th anniversary of Benny Benson’s flag and the 70th “anniversary” of my arrival at Seward General Hospital," explains Pels. "I plan to celebrate both with a new book in Seward!"