History on the fly

Wasilla man recounts milestone events

February 24, 2006

DAWN DE BUSK\Frontiersman reporter

WASILLA - Juneau-raised David Alexander has been front and center for several events that have been etched in Alaska's history.

Alexander was 9 years old in 1956, prior to statehood, when he traveled to Fairbanks with his mom, Katie Hurley, while the state's constitution was being crafted. He remembers being excited to return to Juneau and tell his friends how unbelievably cold the Thanksgiving weekend temperatures had been.

In 1960, his mom remarried and moved to the Valley - at first to the Butte, and later to a home by then-pristine Wasilla Lake.

&#8220I made it romantic in my own mind like I was living in Western movies. Everyone seemed to have a horse in the Butte, and we were always out riding our horses,” he said.

Alexander was a teenager when the big quake rattled Alaska two days before Easter Sunday in 1964.

&#8220Oh, that was a day I won't forget. My little sisters, who were 3 and 5, were watching TV. I was reading the paper. I felt the house shake. You have those little quakes, but then it didn't subside. It got worse. I could hear things crashing out of cupboards. Glass was breaking and art on walls was spinning around,” Alexander said.

He grabbed his two shoeless sisters and bolted into the driveway.

&#8220You could see the land buckling like wheat waving in a field. The lake broke up and I could see the mud at the bottom. The telephone poles were touching ground and bouncing back up,” he said.

His hysterical sisters were crying about cold feet. Despite the danger, he returned to the house and grabbed shoes and coats. The family had no electricity for about a week and relied on a transistor radio for news, he said.

In 1969, Alexander spent the summer in Europe. He

met a cousin who was studying in Italy and, on their way to visit Norwegian relatives, they stayed at a dorm at the University of Oslo. &#8220We watched the moon landing on TV.

&#8220It was weird watching it in a foreign country. We were so proud to be American,” he said.

Back in Alaska, campaigning for U.S. Rep. Nick Begich Sr. during his run for U.S. representative interested Alexander in politics and led him to Washington, D.C.

In October 1972, when a Cessna 310 carrying Begich went missing during a flight from Anchorage to Juneau, Alexander was preparing to meet the plane and accompany the party to a banquet that night. He received a phone call from administrative assistant Gene Kennedy saying the plane couldn't be found on the radar.

&#8220Talk about awful. I imagine someday some of the wreckage would be found,” he said. &#8220He won his election even though he was missing.”

Disenchanted, he enrolled in Herbert Berghoff Studio in Greenwich Village and worked at a Spring Street Bar & Grill in Soho.

&#8220Andy Warhol, I met him. He went around with an entourage. His handshake was like a wet noodle. It was purposeful. He liked to be strange and different,” he said.

Alexander said it was the best five years of his life.

&#8220I got so wrapped up in going to Studio 54 and partying. You didn't go out until 1 a.m., you'd dance all night, then at dawn you'd stop and get bacon and eggs and go to bed,” he said.

Alexander moved to a mansion in Palm Springs, Calif., and followed job transfers that brought him from San Francisco to Seattle.

In 2004, Alaska called him back. He visited his old stomping grounds in Juneau, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the high school as well as a class reunion.

&#8220Every summer, there's more cruise ships and more tourist shops. You can hardly walk down the sidewalk when tourists are in. It's a zoo,” he said.

For the time-being, Alexander has returned to the home where he experienced the Good Friday quake.

&#8220Wasilla Lake,” he said. &#8220This is like my home port for me.”

Contact Dawn De Busk at 352-2252 or dawn.debusk@

frontiersman.com.