Life comes full circle in Big Lake

BIG LAKE -- For Big Lake Elementary school's administrative secretary, the old brick schoolhouse on Big Lake Road is a second home -- and one of her first loves.

Nancy Nolfi-Dodge has been welcoming kids each morning for so long she often sees familiarity in the faces of the students -- familiarity that dates back to the beginning of her 23 years at the school. Many of today's students are the children of former Big Lake students she greeted years ago.

"I used to hold their hand on the playground when they were tiny, and now their kids are here," Nolfi-Dodge said.

The trim brunette claims a deeper connection to the school she loves so much. She attended Big Lake School when it was an old Army Quonset hut a short distance from its current location. In her office hangs a photograph of Nolfi-Dodge as a young girl standing in front of the school.

"It was a one-room Quonset hut, down across Hollywood from Big Lake Foodmart. Of course, it was all densely wooded then. We had one teacher, two outdoor johns -- a boys and a girls -- a water pump and a wood-burning stove," she said.

Her family homesteaded not far from the school in the late 1950s after living in Anchorage, she said, and she and brother Pete traveled the seven miles to school down a one-lane mud road.

"We had an old panel truck, but the road was so bad a lot of days we spent the whole day getting the truck out of the mud," Nolfi-Dodge said of her Big Lake childhood.

Her parents, Jay and Adrian "Nolf" Nolfi, returned to Anchorage for a time, she said, but eventually made their way back to Big Lake to build a permanent home -- the same home she lives in now with her husband George Dodge III and their two children from George's previous marriage. But even though her future husband lived a short distance away growing up and attended the same one-room school, she said, they didn't get to know each other until many years later. Nolfi-Dodge doesn't doubt that their paths crossed many times in the small community, but fate did not put them together until the timing was right.

"We knew each other's families, but don't really remember each other," she said, but did say that he vaguely remembers one girl in particular who played marbles with the boys. That girl was her, she said.

In the meantime, life happened. She left the area but circumstance brought her back to Big Lake, and to Big Lake Elementary School. In 1980, a then-single mother of son Peter, she returned to Big Lake. She applied for a job at Big Lake Elementary cooking school lunches -- even though she now admits she had absolutely no experience.

"I wasn't completely honest, but I was 100 percent desperate," Nolfi-Dodge says of her first job preparing lunches for 180 kids. Custodian Ed Olendorff saw through her guise immediately, she said, asking her, "You've never done this before, have you?"

"No," she answered, to which he replied, "Stick with me, kid, I'll get you through this."

The bluff paid off and nearly a quarter century later she is still at the school, but not cooking. As administrative secretary Nolfi-Dodge's job is handling the "business" end of the school, like purchasing, receiving and payroll, but she said the best part of her job isn't really part of the job description.

"What I love most is working with the children and helping to build self-esteem," she said. "What has always been consistent… that I have consistently enjoyed, is being around the kids, just in little ways. Not as a teacher, but interacting with them and finding little ways I can make a difference."

Throughout the years she has been lucky, she said, that each principal has allowed her the freedom to depart from the paperwork and involve herself in the activities of the children. Each morning Nolfi-Dodge greets the children as they come through the front doors, hugging a child here or there, tousling the hair of another, warning others to slow down. It's all part of the Big Lake Elementary "home" she says.

The office aide program is another avenue for interaction. Each day students volunteer to come into the office during their recess time to learn office skills. They make copies, deliver items, count and sort, among other things.

"It really pumps their chest up," she said.

Lately, however, Nolfi-Dodge has been thinking about retirement. A former stained glass artist and teacher, she has discovered a passion for fiber arts and is excited about pursuing her craft full time and expanding her business, Pizzazz Fiber Arts. She might be tempted to return to the school once in a while, though.

"I wouldn't trade a minute of my time here in this school … I truly can't imagine Big Lake school not being a part of my life," she said. "There would probably remain some kind of contact. Maybe subbing in the office now and then," she said.