1957 Pioneers of Alaska Grand President Robert DeArmond Passes

DeArmond's Alaska State Flag design contest Submission

At age 15, Robert Neil DeArmond of Sitka contributed a design for the flag of Alaska contest in 1927; it is housed in the Alaska State Museum.

DeArmond was educated in Sitka and Tacoma, Washington; he graduated from Stadium High School in 1930.

He spent a year at the University of Oregon. DeArmond returned to Sitka after college. There, he worked in the fishing industry for 12 years.

He worked in a salmon cannery in the summer of 1930, and later received a reporting job for the Stroller's Weekly in Juneau.

1930 High School Graduation

In 1931, he traveled by rowboat from Sitka to Tacoma; DeArmond wrote a book about his travel, A Voyage in a Dory, in 1999.

In 1938 he helped found the city of Pelican, Alaska, where he served as a storekeeper and the postmaster.

The DeArmond family moved to Ketchikan, Alaska, in 1944, and Robert returned to journalism.

He worked for the Ketchikan Daily News, the Juneau Empire, and other publications in covering the Alaska Territorial Legislature.

DeArmond worked for territorial Governor B. Frank Heintzleman in the 1950s and lived in Juneau during this time

In 1958 Robert DeArmond bought Alaska Magazine. 

A preeminent historian, he has authored several books on Alaska, as well as articles in the Ketchikan Daily News, Alaska Daily Empire, Alaska Sportsman, Capital City Weekly, Anchorage Daily News, Alaska Journal, Alaska Life,  Alaska Review, The Sitka Sentinal, the Alaskan Southeaster, and The Sea Chest, among others.

Robert married artist Dale DeArmond in 1935, and they both resided at the Sitka Pioneer Home.  Dale died on November 21, 2006.   Robert passed away November 28, 2010 at the age of 99.   They had two children, William and Jane.

Robert wrote, "I got something of an early start in the Pioneers.  At the beginning of the year 1931, I was working in Juneau when the Grand Igloo decided to start two new organizations - Sons and Daughters of the Pioneers. 

Membership was limited to the offspring of actual members of the Pioneers of Alaska.  I was eligible by reason of my father’s membership, and I joined.

Robert DeArmond circa 1940

The idea of the Sons and Daughters, as I understood it, was that membership in the Pioneers of Alaska would eventually be limited to individuals who had either come to Alaska before 1910 or who had come up through the Sons and Daughters.

So far as I know, Juneau was the only place where the junior organizations were started.  I left Juneau later that year and it was not until 1945 that I again lived in a town where there was an active Igloo of the Pioneers. 

That was Ketchikan and I had not been there long when the secretary of Igloo No. 16 invited me to join.  I pointed out that under the rules then in force, only men who had been in Alaska before `910 were eligible and that I was not born until 1911. 

In the course of our conversation I mentioned my membership in the Sons of the Pioneers some 14 years earlier.  He said that was good enough and I was taken into Igloo 16 and have been a member of it ever since.

Now to the Grand Igloo meetings, by 1939, partly because of travel difficulties and perhaps even more be a use of economic conditions in Alaska, the attendance at Grand Igloo meetings had dwindled almost to the vanishing point. 

In an attempt to remedy that condition, at the Grand Igloo meeting in Anchorage in January 1939, Fairbanks Igloo No. 4 introduced a resolution proposing that the Grand Igloo would meet only every other year and would meet in Juneau while the Territorial Legislature was in session.

Official 1957 Grand President Photo

At that time nearly all of the 40 members of the Territorial Legislature belonged to the Pioneers, and for the next couple decades, the every-other-year sessions of the Grand Igloo at Juneau had representation from all parts of Alaska.  In time, of course, as conditions changed, the Grand Igloo began to meet annually and at various locations.

In reading about the 1939 Grand Igloo meeting, I noticed one other thing that was different.  Dr. Will H. Chase of Cordova was the outgoing Grand President and he was also the Grand Historian had had been for many years. 

Under the system then in force, the Grand President chose the Grand Historian, and when one was found who would actually work on the history of the organization and its members, he was retained year after year.

One early Grand Historian who lived at Valdez started a monthly magazine called The Pathfinder, and with the help of other officers and members, kept it going for a number of years. 

It was full of information about the various Igloos and their members.  Doc Chase was the Grand Historian for at least 15 years and during the time he gathered and preserved a great deal of information about the Pioneers of Alaska.

Some years back the office of Grand Historian was made of the chairs in the progression up the ladder to Grand President.  A number of hot issues were on the docket. 

There were those who wanted to move the admission date from 1911 to 1920.  Others wanted to observe a 30-year waiting period, and many wanted no change at all.   They said changing the date would change the membership from one Pioneers to one of Cheechakos.

One group wanted to go back to annual meetings in different towns, but others said that would kill the Grand Igloo.  That afternoon the delegates decided not to decide on any of the issues and no one seemed to care."