Delias honored with Redington Founders Award

ANCHORAGE — Although Joe and Norma Delia have been part of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race since it began in 1973, Thursday was the first time they had attended the Mushers’ Banquet in Anchorage.

This time, they attended as honored guests to receive the Joe Redington Founders Award from presenters John Norman and Tim Woods.

“It was really nice honor. It was a really nice evening,” Norma said.

The Delias hosted the Skwentna checkpoint at their homestead along the Skwentna River from 1973 to 2011, when at ages 81 and 71 they resolved to leave the work of volunteering to the younger set. Since January 2012, they’ve divided their days between their riverbank homestead and Anchorage.

Although the Delias have temporarily moved to Anchorage due to medical reasons, their Skwentna home is still the site of the Iditarod checkpoint, and longtime friends and volunteers still provide hospitality during the race at this spot along the trail in the Delias’ name.

Since the 25th running of the race, mother and son Cyndy and Keegan Fritts and brothers Todd and Scott Silver have taken charge of organizing checkpoint operations during the annual race.

“We’ve done nothing since they took over,” Norma said. “They see to everything.”

The Skwentna Sweeties are the volunteers who work in the kitchen preparing meals and the Darlings are the volunteers who work on the river seeing to such details as checking in teams and seeing to dropped dogs.

Now 83, Joe Delia was 43 in 1973 when his good friend Joe Redington Sr. approached him with an idea to organize a race to Nome using sled dog teams. Norma said the two Joes met in the 1950s, soon after Delia homesteaded in the Skwentna area in 1948.

“Redington and crew had come out and used Joe’s trapline to get up to Finger Lake,” she said in a 2011 interview. “Some guy stepped out of the bushes on a pair of skis and told Joe they were making a trail to Nome.”

Joe used his Ski-Doo to break trail for the group from Finger Lake to Rainy Pass. Besides hosting the Skwentna checkpoint for 39 years, during his career with the race Joe also volunteered for many years as a trailbreaker and checker from 1973 to 1997.

Norma, 73, worked for decades planning meals, shopping and preparing food for the throng of volunteers, race judges, race vets and mushers who descend on the checkpoint Sunday evening after covering the 86 miles from the Willow restart.

At first, women in the Skwentna area rode their snowmachines over to help prepare hot meals for mushers. For the past two decades or so, volunteers fly or snowmachine from other parts of Alaska or the Lower 48.

Over the years, hundreds and hundreds of mushers have climbed the hill from the Skwentna River to the Skwentna Checkpoint to sit around Joe and Norma’s table telling stories, share a hot meal and bask for a few moments in the Delias’ extraordinary brand of hospitality.

“We’ve seen all of the changes over the years,” Norma said, recalling how the communications part of the race has changed from the early days when HAM radio operators provided the only communication link.

She said it was something the 1980 race winner told her a few years back that sums up the changes best.

“I think Joe May put it in perspective for me a couple of years ago when he told me the Red Lantern is won now in a faster time than his winning time,” Norma said.

May won the Iditarod in 1980 with a time of 14 days, 7 hours, 11 minutes and 51 seconds. Dallas Seavey won the 2013 race with a time of nine days, 4 hours, 29 minutes and 26 seconds.

Joe moved to the Skwentna area as a young man when he took a job working for Max and Belle Shellabarger. His missteps traveling from Missouri to Alaska are another story.

There’s a story too in how Joe and Norma met and how he convinced this city girl to come to the woods for a fishing trip. Norma accepted his invitation to come fishing and stayed for 30 years. The two were married in 1983 and raised their four children together.

Over the years, the Delias pieced together a living trapping, guiding, working for the Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. Post Office.

Norma said the honor was all the sweeter for them because of the man whose name it carries.

“Joe and I thank you for this award,” she said in prepared remarks Thursday. “And it is made especially welcome because it is the ‘Joe Redington Award.’”

She closed with a quote from her husband, Joe: “I just love the whole bunch of you.”

Contact managing editor Heather A. Resz at 352-2268 or heather.resz@frontiersman.com.