'IT'S JUST TIME'

After hosting the Iditarod Trail sled Dog Race at their Skwentna cabin through 39 races, Joe and Norma Delia are calling it quits.

This is the last year mushers, race crews and fans will be able to climb the hill from the Skwentna River to the Skwentna Checkpoint and hear Joe and Norma’s stories, eat a hot meal and bask for a few moments in the Delias’ extraordinary hospitality.

“It’s just time, you know?” Norma said.

Joe, 81, and Norma, 71, said they put their five acres up for sale last summer with an eye toward moving onto the road system and closer to their children, grandchildren and many friends.

It took a lot of convincing to get Joe to consider living in town, Norma said. He’s lived in the woods and pieced together a livelihood by trapping, guiding, working for the Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. Post Office since homesteading there in 1948.

Joe Delia is an Alaska old-timer who gawks at the tall buildings in Anchorage, has no idea how to ride an escalator and, until a few years ago, how to use his Visa.

It’s just too much for them to work at the Post Office full-time while doing everything else it takes to keep the water well, generator and wood stove operating, Norma said.

“I told him that we HAVE to move because I want us to spend our last years just taking care of each other,” Norma said.

Joe knows she’s right, he said, but still hates the idea of leaving the woods.

“I just can’t stand the thought of living in town,” he said.

Iditarod spokesman Chas St. George said the organization is still evaluating options for how to stage the Skwentna Checkpoint without the Delias.

“I’m still having a hard time believing it,” said St. George, who’d just returned from a trip to the Delias carrying a carton of French vanilla ice cream, Joe’s favorite. “Joe and Norma are heroes in the Iditarod family. We love them and we are going to miss them very, very much.”

Men like Joe Redington Sr., Col. Norman Vaughn and Joe Delia were all cut from the same cloth, St. George said. “And we’ve run out of that cloth.”

Skwentna is the second checkpoint on the trail — 86 miles from the starting line in Willow, 194 miles from Anchorage and 963 miles from Nome.

Joe Delia has been involved with the Iditarod since it was a gleam in Joe Redington’s eye, Norma said.

It was Delia who Redington Sr. turned to that first year — 1973 — to carve a trail through the wilderness to Finger Lake, she said.

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

So Joe Delia used his Ski-Doo to get the group from Finger Lake to Rainy Pass. He would later clear a prime portion of his trapline to use as a trail for the Iditarod Trail. Besides hosting a checkpoint for 39 years, during his career with the race, Joe Delia also was a trailbreaker and checker for many years.

“When Redington needed someone to do something on this side of the Alaska Range, Joe was at the ready,” St. George said. “He’s a phenomenal guy.”

In the next five years, the race also will see changes to the Willow restart, St. George said. Staff members are working with the FAA and the state Department of Transportation and Public Facilities to craft a new plan for how to deal with airplane and vehicle traffic in Willow for the official start.

“We’re working on that even as we speak,” St. George said. “We’re taking a look at how we can stage this race in the safest environment.”

Norma said for them, the change also is a chance to be involved with the race in new ways.

“We certainly hope to see the restart in Anchorage sometime,” she said. “We’ve never been to the race headquarters at the Millennium Hotel, the Mushers’ Banquet or the Willow restart either.”

To help defray the costs of hosting the Skwentna Checkpoint, volunteers design and sell clothing during the race each March. This year’s logo reads “Skwentna … Delia’s Historic Iditarod Checkpoint 1973-2011.”

Follow the action at the Skwentna Checkpoint, or leave a note for Joe and Norma Delia, online at facebook.com/frontiersman#!/group.php?gid=57550102935.

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