A man’s body was discovered in a van that was burning in the parking lot of a mid-town Anchorage restaurant Thursday night.

Karl Leroy Cox. Junior, 28, was reportedly living in the van. The van was not street legal. The investigation continues.

A child visiting a sled dog lot in Big Lake is hospitalized after a dog got loose and attacked her. The lot was Jake Berkowitz’s but there were other dogs boarding there as well.

Two-year-old Elin Shuck was with her mother tending to their dogs when another dog reportedly came after the child. Elin is reported in stable condition with serious injuries.

There was a fatality Friday on the Cat-train bringing supplies for the Susitna Dam studies at Stephan Lake Lodge.

A D-6 bulldozer fell through the ice and the driver died in the accident. He is identified as Donald Kiehl, 72, of North Pole. Kiehl was retrieved from the lake and individuals on scene attempted CPR on Kiehl but he was unable to be resuscitated. 

Wayne Dyok of the Alaska Energy Authority, says the decisions about transportation were up to the contractor, Alaska Diversified Services.

“You have a very capable crew here, and bottom line here is it’s their expertise, and I believe they felt it was safe to do so,” Dyok said. ”So, we need to take a step back here, look at the investigation, let that unfold and then go from there.”

State Troopers got in by helicopter.  Investigation continues.

Photo courtesy USGS.

Listen to the full audio story:
growing up anchorage final (1)

Today we’re growing up in Anchorage. Many people who move to Alaska end up never leaving, but what about the people who grow up here and then move away? Jana Nelson came to Anchorage in 1948, when she was just six years old.

“For some years I’ve been toying with the idea of growing up in Anchorage, as Anchorage was growing up,” Nelson says. She left Alaska in the mid 80s to move to Oregon, but a few years ago she returned to Anchorage for a wedding, and couldn’t believe what she saw.

“It was one of those really cloudy summers in Anchorage. You couldn’t see the mountains, you couldn’t see the inlet. If my daughter hadn’t been driving us around I wouldn’t have known where I was. It was so grown up,” Nelson says.

So when Nelson returned to Oregon she decided to create a website dedicated to the city she remembered. She titled it growingupanchorage.com.

“It started out for me as an “I” project. I wanted to do it for my grandchildren, for me, for my children,” Nelson says.

Many posts include family photos from the era.

But it didn’t take long before Nelson’s childhood friends found out about the site, and were offering to tell their early Anchorage stories too. She says she has about a dozen contributors now. Most of them are like Nelson: living in different states today, but still having that strong connection to Anchorage.

“I’ve been out here since the mid 80s, and after all these years I still talk about going home. It was just a magical time, especially the pre-statehood years. It was the frontier; we were all in it together. We had this sense of community and family, and we loved it. And I miss it terribly,” Nelson says.

And there is a lot to miss about this place.

“Let’s see, in this order: mountains, northern lights and king crab. Daddy working for BLM years and years ago, he and the neighbor Gus would fly down to Homer on business and they would get a king crab off the dock, bring it home. And I would come home from school and there would be a king crab thrashing around in the bath tub,” Nelson recalls.

The stories on Nelson’s website are often playful ones like that, but there’s tragedy and drama as well. She recalls a story from one of her writers whose father would land a small bush plane right on the Turnagain Arm inlet to pick up his children after a day of fishing. But after dealing with a broken tail wheel, the pilot was scrambling to get back to his children in time.

“When he came back the tide was coming in and they just almost didn’t get off the ground as the tide was flapping at the tires on the airplane,” Nelson says.

The stories often speak of an Anchorage that most people would have a hard time imagining today, but Nelson and her fellow writers look forward to sharing them all with their readers no matter where they live. She says she’ll never forget any of it.

“I think more than anything it just reflects the way life was then which is so different than now. It was a really special place, in a really special time.”

www.growingupanchorage.com

Raven asks his friend Ethan Petticrew to teach him how to say “boat” in his family’s language. Ethan’s family is from southwestern Alaska and they speak Unangax.

The Unangax word for boat, is ayxaasix.

Raven puppet © 2012 Axtell Expressions, Inc.

Bill Streever is an author, biologist and avid adventurer. He is also a life-long diver.

In this edition of INDIE ALASKA we follow the intrepid diver under the ice of Summit Lake, in the heart of the Chugach National Forest, for a view that few Alaskans ever see.

INDIE ALASKA is an original video series produced by Alaska Public Media in partnership with PBS Digital Studios.

The weekly videos will capture the diverse and colorful lifestyles of everyday Alaskans at work and at play. Together, these videos will present a fresh and authentic look at living in Alaska.

Video:
Travis Gilmour
John Norris

Story:
Travis Gilmour

Music:
Starship Amazing

Early season clammers are already testing the waters of Cook Inlet, anticipating great tides for clamming over Memorial Day weekend. Most are looking for Pacific razor clams, although butter and littleneck clams are also available on some area beaches.