Legendary trapper, storyteller Delia dead at 84

SKWENTNA — Somewhere out there is a would-be trapper who once returned to find the snares he baited with hot dogs had overnight sprouted buns, carefully held in place by rubber bands.

The buns and bands were the handiwork of Joe Delia, creative problem-solver, trapper, guide, woodsman, husband, father and beloved grandfather. He died Thursday, May 1, 2014. He was 84.

He is survived by his wife, Norma; sons, Pat and Lance; daughters Christine and Lori; grandchildren, Jason, Michael, Jamie, Brandi, Cody, Reed, Windi, Scott, David, Ethan, Sydnee, and the late Luke Delia; and great grandchildren Joshua, Justin, Dakota

He was the U.S. Postmaster in Skwentna from 1950 to 2012 and also worked for the Federal Aviation Administration for many of his more than 60 years living at his homestead along the banks of the Skwentna River.

Delia was perhaps most widely known as a longtime host of the Skwentna Checkpoint and race checker for the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

The best seat at the Skwentna Checkpoint for the past 40 years was the one nearest Delia, a gifted storyteller, gentle man and celebrated host.

And for most of those years, Cyndy Fritts has volunteered at the Skwentna Checkpoint for the Delias. She said some of her favorite Iditarod memories are of drifting off to sleep listening to old timers like Joe Redington, Herbie Nayokpuk, Emmitt Peters and Delia tell stories about the race’s early days and their lives in the great land.

“I didn’t want to go to sleep. I didn’t want to miss a thing,” she said.

Robbie and Cyndy Fritts’ sons, Zack and Keegan, grew up at the checkpoint listening to Delia’s stories and his big musical laugh.

There’s the story about the time the wolverine Delia thought was dead woke up in the plane. The time Norma taught him the meaning of thumbs up. Or the one about the time he butchered a moose in a tuxedo he’d been saving for a special occasion.

Coming to Alaska

Delia came to Alaska as an 18-year-old boy in 1948. He said he fled to the woods after being sexually assaulted by a priest days after his mother’s death when he was 12. It took many years, but Delia made peace with the crimes committed against him as a child, and used his own story of hope and healing to inspire others.

No recounting of Delia’s life would be complete without a chapter about the love he and Norma shared for their 31 years together.

Norma was living in Anchorage with Lori after getting a divorce. She was at the Sears Mall with her grandson, Jason.

Joe began playing with Jason and he struck up a conversation with Norma. He said he lived in the Bush and she told him he was a big city gal. Addresses were exchanged and they wrote to each other for a year before he invited her out to Skwentna on a fishing trip. When the day came for her to leave, he flew into town with her. They knew they wanted to be together but Joe insisted she should live at least three seasons in the Bush and make sure she would love it.

Smiling, Norma says she was the best trapper that year.

When the day came to return Norma to the airplane that would take her back to California, Delia delayed. He was fond of joking that he liked having her at the cabin so he never took her back to the airport, which is true. Norma has her own stories of failed attempts to adapt at life in the wilderness with Joe.

There’s the time he was kind enough to add indoor plumbing to their cabin to accommodate her, and the part where it took him seven years and a big stomach bug before Delia would partake of the indoor waterworks.

There’s one about a drawer filled with cuffs cut off of a rainbow of polyester pant legs she tried for years to toss, with Delia thwarting every effort. You don’t throw away anything in the Bush, you never know when you’ll need it, he reasoned.

For Delia’s family and friends, there are more funny stories revolving around the peculiar things that happen when you take an old trapper and turn him lose in the city.

There’s the time Robbie Fritts tried to teach Delia to use his Visa card, and another about the first time Delia encountered an escalator while traveling. A lot changed during the 60 years he lived in the woods along the Skwentna River.

Young and green

Delia hitchhiked from Mississippi to Seattle after high school and a bit of college, determined to be self-sufficient, to live off the land, to get away from people. When he was twice turned away as a vagrant at the Canada border, he found passage working for Alaska Steam on a ship from Seattle to Ketchikan.

He blamed Boys Life magazine for planting the seed that drew him north, he said.

He was so young and green when he arrived, that if it weren’t for old timers like Ward Gay and Max Shellabarger he would have surely died in the woods long ago.

It was Gay who vouched for Delia to trapper Shellabarger, who hired the young man on to help him operate a 125-mile line snaring mink, marten, lynx, wolf, otter, beaver and muskrat in the region near the confluence of the Yentna and the Skwentna rivers.

At first, Delia used dog teams to maintain the sets along the trap line, but later switched to snowmachine for efficiency.

The Shellabarger family was one of the earliest homesteaders in the region, starting a guide service in 1923, and later a flying service and weather station. A post office was opened in 1937. After World War II, Morrison-Knudson built an airstrip, and in 1950, the U.S. Army established a radar station at Skwentna and a recreation camp at Shell Lake, 15 air miles away.

Not much remains of what Skwentna has been. There’s a new Skwentna Roadhouse built after the original burned years ago, and there’s an airstrip where two times a week a plane lands to deliver the mail. For decades, it was Delia who made his way across the river in all kinds of weather to bring the bags back to the small log cabin post office he built to get the operation out of his living room.

The Sweeties and

the Darlings

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.

Honored with the Joe Redington Founders Award in 2013, volunteers who once worked for the Delias now provide hospitality at the Skwentna Checkpoint in the Delias name.

Delia volunteered for many years as a trailbreaker for the race, and he was the lead checker at Skwentna from 1973 to 1997 and was inducted to the Iditarod Hall of Fame in 1997.

Now Fritts’ son Keegan is head checker, like his father before him. His father, Rob, volunteered at the checkpoint for 22 years and took over as checker from Delia. Cyndy Fritts has helped for more than 25 years and remains coordinator emeritus.

Since 2012, the Sweeties and Darlings — two groups of volunteers who work for the Delias during the race — have operated the checkpoint for the Delias. The Sweeties work in the kitchen.

The Darlings help direct, park, check-in teams and keep a stove with gallons of hot water pumped from the Skwentna River for mushers to use to feed and water their hardworking teams.

Todd Silver and his brother, Scott, own the Darling Corp., which produces Rite in the Rain products — long used by Iditarod mushers and race officials.

Todd Silver flew up from Tacoma, Wash., in 1993 to watch the race and witness Rite in the Rain products in use.

He became a volunteer when his pilot forgot him.

“I was stranded here and said ‘What can I do to help,’ ” Silver said. “And I’ve been back every year since.”