We were in Karluk only a couple of weeks when Jacob Laktonen, the lay priest of the Russian Orthodox Church and an elder fisherman came to our cabin and asked Richard and I if we would be willing to help him with an urgent need. We reminded him that we had promised the people that we would do just that on the first Sunday of our arrival. We were told that Mrs. Jacob Simeonoff had just died and all the young men were out fishing in their boats which meant that he had no one to dig the grave. We agreed to dig the grave, after all we asked for it.
The next day we dug the grave while Jacob built the coffin and the elder women prepared to body for burial. Jacob officiated at the grave site and Richard and I closed the grave. Jacob Simeonoff did not attend since no one knew where he was fishing. The kind women of the village took care of the three of or four year old Alice Simeonoff. Upon the return of Jacob to the village, I learned that he was unable to care for the child and that he was making arrangements to place her in the Kodiak Baptist Children’s Home at Kodiak.
I received a radiogram that my trunk had finally arrived at the naval base and that I could pick it up at my convenience. I decided to get the next mail-boat on its return trip to Kodiak. As the boat was nearing Karluk and I was readying myself to leave, I was called upon by one of the villagers asking me if I would care for Alice on the trip to Kodiak and deliver her to the children’s home. I agreed to care for her never dreaming that six years later my wife and I would be her house-parents in this home and Alice would be in our charge. On one of our trips to Seattle we visited her as and Adult and she reminded me of something I did when we first arrived in Kodiak. She knew that soon she would be left in a strange place and strangers would be her companions and she broke into sobbing. Just then I noticed an ice cream stand across the street so we crossed over and I bought her an ice cream cone. She told me how much this was such a big thing to a small sorrowing girl. I would later be the one to give her away on the occasion of her marriage. The last time we visited her in her Edmond, Washington home she confided in Ruth and I that we were truly her mother and father, especially during our stay at the mission. Our relationship was close all these years until her death to cancer a year ago (1997).
About a year after arriving in Karluk young Alexander Laktonen came running to my cabin. He said his father needed me right away. He said his father was in the Banya and was found unconscious. The Laktonen’s lived about one hundred and fifty feet from my house so it was a matter of seconds for me to run there where he was still unconscious. A Banya is a steam bath where rocks are heated almost red hot and cold water is poured on them to produce steam. The Aleuts adopted the steam bath from the times of the Russian occupation. Jacob made the rocks too hot and poured too much water on the rocks. This made such at rush of steam that it caused him to pass out. He had a pail of cold water beside the bench, so I soaked a towel lying nearby so I placed the cold towel on his neck and head. After several minutes Jacob was revived. The family was grateful that Jacob was well and that I was nearby to help. I did what I thought was necessary which was to get his temperature down as quickly as possible.
I think that Joe Brown, the store keeper who cashed my monthly forty dollar check, told the chief how little I was living on, because the chief approached me the second year I was in Karluk. He came to my home and offered me a job on the fishing crew. He said he needed someone to operate the winch which pulled the seine ashore,. He said he knew that I could use the extra money and it would help the fishing crew greatly. He approached me several times, and finally I told him I would try but not if it interfered with my missionary work. The men said they were sure that it would not interfere, so I accepted. There was no fishing allowed on Sunday. According to Alaska law the fishing could not resume until six o’clock on Monday morning.
There were a large number of fishing boats tied to the docks in the river on this particular Sunday. After Sunday School, several boys and I were sitting on the cliff across the river facing the boats when we saw a boy playing on one of the boats slip and fall into the river. We immediately ran, crossed the river on the suspension bridge to where the boy went into the water. During the time it took to run the distance a member of the boat crew also saw the boy fall so he dove into the river. He was able to locate the boy who was already unconscious. He brought him ashore and laid him on the plank walkway. Upon arrival we found the crowd gathering around the unconscious boy debating the best way to proceed. Someone suggested that in Sweden they used a barrel to put the victim on and roll the barrel back and forth. Nothing was being done in the meantime and seconds were passing by.
I remembered reading about lifesaving in the Boy Scouts Manual so I quickly placed the boy so that his head was lower than his body on the walkway and his face turned to the side. I applied pressure to the lungs as I remembered the process. Thus I continued for a few minutes when he expelled water and coughed and began to breathe once more. Just then the man with the barrel arrived. The mother of the boy, Friede Reft, seeing her boy breathing, began to cry for fear and then for joy. She came to me and put her arms around me and exclaimed, “Skipper belongs to you now, you brought him back to life”. Friede was the cook for the fishing crew and as long as I was in Karluk she spoke of Skipper belonging to me. Skipper was nine years old at the time in 1944 and I am positive that he will remember that day as long as he lives.
One Monday morning we made a set near the south of the river. After having the net set for several minutes we saw a few jumping salmon which indicates that a school of salmon is in the bight of the net. The men decided to start the tug to bring the 1200 ft long net in to shore. After the end of the net was to shore, we began winching in the net. To our surprise we had a catch that was larger than any of the men could remember. We bailed the salmon into the skiffs and delivered them to the scow. When we had about 250,000 salmon in the scow it was taken to the cannery. We were notified that this was all the cannery could process in that day, so the villagers invited the purse sieners to fill their boats. In all there were 27 boats filled from that one net. The estimated catch was that about three quarters of a million salmon were caught, the largest catch remembered by any of the men in their lifetime[1]. At that time, the fish brought the fisherman 1 ½ cents for pinks, and 3 cents for reds. The average pay for the beach fisherman was 1200 to 2500 dollars. Purse seiners made far more, some as much as 125,000 dollars. Today fisherman sell their fish by the pound. When last I heard the price was 25 cents per pound. A red salmon weighs as much as 8 or 9 pounds, a silver as much as 12 or 14 pounds and a king as much as forty or fifty pounds.
[1] There was an occasion when Stephen was boating on a tributary of the Karluk river just after the spawn. Looking down into the clear water he saw a pebbly bottom and a few dead salmon just below the keel depth of the row boat. He jumped out of the boat to wade to shore, and sunk to his armpits in stinking, rotting fish carcasses.
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