Jonesing for Iditarod? Art gallery has you covered

WASILLA — With the Iditarod moving from Willow to Fairbanks this year, where does a Valley-bound mushing enthusiast go on race weekend?

The Town Square Art Gallery says you’re invited to join its race celebration from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., Saturday featuring poster signings from legendary Iditarod artist Jon Van Zyle and a book featuring contributions from some of the race’s early organizers.

Gallery owner Janet St. George said a lot of those folks — they call themselves The Old Iditarod Gang — have been calling recently, asking if they can show up. The answer is always “yes.” St. George said it’s hard to pass up a gathering like that.

“It’s just always a great time,” she said. “There’s so much laughter and it’s such a good time.”

Van Zyle usually produces a poster for the race and heads up to Willow with folks from the gallery to do signings there at the community center.

St. George said that getting to Fairbanks was going to be too much work logistically and, anyway, the restart wasn’t at a community center like it is in Willow. It seemed like there’d be less room for that sort of thing.

As for the book, it’s called “Iditarod: the First Ten Years” and was put together by a group of early Iditarod volunteers calling themselves The Old Iditarod Gang. They are “Al Crane, Jo Crane, Frank Flavin, Frank Gerjevic, Raine Hall Rawlins, Gail Phillips, Walt Phillips, Rob Stapleton, Jon Van Zyle, Jona Van Zyle and Anne Patch Winters. The team also includes writers Joe May, Slim Randles, Tim Jones, Shelley Gill, Rod Perry and race photographers Bill Devine, Richard Burmeister, Jim Brown, Jeff Schultz, Fran Durner and many, many more. Tricia Brown is the editor.”

The book has been in the works for years and focuses on the time when the competition was much less structured than it is today.

“This highly collectible volume turns back the clock to those ‘flying by the seat of your pants' years, when the single goal was simply to finish the race,” the promotional material proclaims.

The book is filled with photos and remembrances from an assortment of Valley residents and includes a photo from the Frontiersman’s Iditarod archive.

St. George said that although the book took some time to put together, there was actually a sense of urgency.

“So many of those older people are passing on that they kind of wanted to get as many of those stories as possible before there’s no more of the old gang left,” she said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.