I Remember Fall

Memories written by my Aunt Bertha McGhee, Wellsville, KS. for Golden Years October/November 1995 issue.

I Remember Fall

How I remember the fall of 1940! Having graduated in June from the National College in Kansas City, a Methodist school for deaconess, I was offered, and accepted a job as housemother at the children’s home in Seward, Alaska. It was not a completely unfamiliar place to me as I had read letters from Beth Stewart, a nurse friend of my friend, Floy Leston, at Baldwin when I was a student at Baker University. It was a very distant place from K.C. where I had been living for some time.

There was no passenger air service to Alaska then. The trip took two days by train from K.C. to Seattle and then one week by ship from Seattle to Seward, Alaska. I had reservations on Alaska Steamship Lines’ ship, Columbia, that left at 7 a.m. the morning after I arrived in Seattle.

Leaving Seattle and Puget sound, we steamed toward open ocean, passing Victoria, B.C. Thru all the rest of the way we were never out of sight of land on our right side. We saw whales and other large animals that seemed to be attracted to the ship’s wake.

Our first stop, only a couple hours from Seattle, was Ketchikan, Alaska, located on an island that is really a mountain rising out of the sea. Its streets seemed one above the other, so steep was the mountain side. There were fishing in the harbor and at the dock I saw my first salmon being unloaded and also a large tuna lifted by a crane. It was taller than me!

After three days, marveling at the beauty and wonder of the scenes along this magnificent waterway, we reached Juneau, the capital of the then, territory, and the end of the “Inside Passage.” From Juneau we headed west, northwest passing Glacier Bay. We were close enough to see our first icebergs; great chunks of blue-white, floating ice. Because the tides kept rolling toward the land, the ship had a side-wise rocking motion that soon convinced me I was not a good sailor. I became seasick, taken to my cabin and missed several meals.

The Prince William Sound was a relief from the ’rolling seas’ and at its northern end, the sight I will never forget. The Captain took the ship in about three miles from the face of the Columbia Glacier. Then in contrast, small harbor seals and sea otters swam in the clear water and sunned themselves on the small islands. From Prince William Sound it was only a matter of hours to enter Resurrection Bay and Port of Seward.

Reaching Seward, Alaska on September 6th, I noticed no difference in the length of the days from what they are back here. After all, days and nights are at their equal at that time of year. My mid-October I began to notice a difference, the days shortened by about five minutes each morning and evening. The setting is a narrow valley ringed by mountains rising out of beautiful Resurrection Bay to a height of 7,000 feet and most of the time snow capped. Our home was at the base of Marathon Mountain so we watched the sun come up behind the mountains across the bay.

We soon noticed that the sun did not keep coming up behind the same peak but was coming up farther and farther south in the range until finally in late fall it was near 10 a.m. when it got up---way south behind the rugged island, then it just climbed a small arch and by 2 p.m. dropped behind the other side of the entrance to the bay.

As our home was so close to the mountain on the west we never watched the sun go down. Rather, we watched the shadow of the range move across the land and over the mountains on the east until finally the last peak was no longer lighted. As there was fresh snow on the peaks every month of the year, the sunlight made them look really “lighted.” I never got tired of watching this reversed sunset.

Still more amazing was the fact that even though the sun was down, it still did not get dark. The sun just circles the Pole and instead of deep darkness we had long, lingering twilight both morning and evening and when the moon reached half full and the ground was covered with snow it was light enough to read the newspaper out on the front steps after I had put my boys to be for the night. Then when added to that the frequent northern lights’ displays, our “long nights” were far from dark and gloomy.

Although I stayed in Alaska many years, I never got over the awe and wonder of the multitude of natural wonders of God’s creation revealed there. The mountains rising out of the beautiful bay, the ocean outside the entrance to the bay--reaching south all the way to Hawaii, the glaciers and icebergs, the forested islands and mainland, the numerous crystal clear lakes and rivers, the abundance of wild life in the waters, on the land, and in the sky. That fall of 1940 was one I’ll truly never forget!

Story ID:	838
Written by:	Gail Lee Martin (bio, contact, other stories)
Organization:	Kansas Authors Club
Story type:	Family Memories
Location:	Seward Alaska USA
Year:	1940
Person:	Bertha McGhee