Courage And Conviction

L. G. Gunkel
Ann and I moved to Alaska from the Truckee Lake Tahoe area in the High Sierra Nevada Mountains. I worked for the Forest service as a foreman and fire boss in the summer and Ann and I traveled all over the western United States racing sled dogs in the winter. We made some money racing sled dogs but it’s a good thing Ann was a registered nurse to keep our bills paid. For several years our Irish setter sled dogs made the head-lines as the top winning team in the western United States. When we moved to Alaska it was to race sled dogs. We were able to compete, but the good teams were really fast. In September 1966, I went to work for the City of Anchorage in Alaska as a police officer. After graduating from the Police Academy, I trained on patrol with a senior officer, worked in the City Jail and on the City Prison Farm staffed by inmates who grew their own food, and then six months in the city traffic division monitoring traffic and investigating accidents. The balance of time I was in a patrol vehicle working assigned areas around the city, and because I am 6’4″ tall I also worked on foot patrol around 4th Avenue and C Street, Anchorage’s red light district. Two years gave me a solid foundation of what I call Law Enforcement 101. In 1968 I entered the Alaska State Troopers Academy. When I started, there were only 126 Troopers in the entire state. There were no sheriffs and very few city police departments. Two weeks before the end of my Trooper academy training I was given early release to the Anchorage Detachment, and then, just before my class graduated, I was offered the one man highway post in Glennallen. This area was huge. If you draw a line north to south down the center of Washington’s Cascade Mountain Range, this post was the size of the whole eastern side of Washington State. My area had three towns, Glennallen – 1,500 people, Valdez – 1,000 people and Copper Center – 500 people, four villages, Nabesna, Chistochina, Gulkana and McCarthy, and smaller settlements scattered throughout. At the time I was the only law enforcement in the entire region, with the exception of one city police officer in Valdez. The State Trooper I replaced had been very busy with few days off, and it got even more demanding during the two years my family and I were there. I had no office staff, so my wife Ann was my only radio contact while I was responding to calls or out on patrol. We truly learned on the job, lived the life and walked the walk, while exper