Murkowski honors Army veteran, ATG member Earl Wineck

MAT-SU — The fifth installment in U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s Veteran Spotlight features Earl Wineck, who grew up in the Mat-Su Valley and whose family built the Wineck barn that was relocated to the Alaska State Fairgrounds.

“Dad was after me to fix up the barn,” Wineck said in a 2011 story in the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman. “I told him I’d read in the paper the fair was looking for Colony buildings.”

So his father contacted the fair and eventually donated the barn.

Murkowski featured Wineck as a member of the Alaska Territorial Guard and a U.S. Army veteran.

In 1934, Wineck’s father headed to the Mat-Su Valley to make a place for his family. Two years later, Earl’s mother took the rest of the family to Alaska in a Studebaker to join up with his father and begin farming.

In 1942, Wineck joined the guard at 15, the earliest age permitted. As an ATG member, he watched the skies over Southcentral Alaska for any signs of Japanese airplanes and helped Valley families conduct several blackout drills during World War II. As soon as Earl Wineck turned 18 in 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and was stationed on Adak Island.

During his Veteran Spotlight interview, Wineck recalls the harsh reality of military service on the farthest reaches of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. Rotten food, isolation, murder and suicide claimed the lives of some of his fellow soldiers. Wineck says he survived due to the unique type of toughness he had acquired living and working as a farmer in the Mat-Su Valley.

“I guess I was lucky — I survived all that, and I think the big reason was the way I was brought up. As a farming family, you had to do what you had to do to survive,” said Wineck. “You had to depend on each other in those early days, and I used that same mentality to survive Adak.”

“Earl’s story is one of an Alaskan pioneer, in more ways than one,” Sen. Murkowski said. “The Alaskan pioneering spirit shaped Earl and proved to be a lifeline for him in the Aleutian Islands Campaign during World War II. We owe it to veterans like Earl Wineck to honor them through sharing their stories, and we owe it to the rest of us to learn from the high levels of patriotism, commitment and service they demonstrated for us.”

To be featured in the Veteran Spotlight, email Spotlight@Murkowski.Senate.Gov.