Race organizer recognized for long, storied career

NOME — Joanne Potts, who was inducted into the Iditarod Hall of Fame this year, got her start with the fabled race because she was someone’s neighbor.

“She moved in behind me in the summer of ’75 and she was already volunteering,” Potts, a Wasilla resident, said by phone from the race’s finish line on the Bering Sea coast. “She said, ‘you want to volunteer for the Iditarod?’ and I said, ‘what’s that?’”

Pretty humble beginnings for a four-decade long career worthy of the hall of fame. Potts said that first year, the 1976 race, she answered phones two nights a week for two weeks during the race.

“They didn’t have a headquarters or anything like we have nowadays. They had phones for people to call in for information,” she said.

The race was only three years old then. In 1980, she said, Potts was promoted to coordinator of racing headquarters. In spring 1982, she was hired as an employee, and it’s been a full-time gig for her since 1983.

So what keeps her coming back to the race? What makes a person stay involved with an organization for 40 years?

“When people ask me that I say I believe it’s just the people. I was a school teacher before and I loved teaching, but I saw maybe 110 people a day and that was about it and it was the same people every day for a year,” Potts said.

Iditarod is different.

“With the Iditarod, I see people from all over the world and it’s never the same people,” she said.

A lot of those people, obviously, are mushers. Potts said she gets to work with them more closely and on a more continuous, year-round basis than probably anyone else at Iditarod.

“Working with the mushers, it’s been really fascinating and fun,” she said.

So it’s the people, then, not the dogs?

“We didn’t have sled dogs when I started working with the Iditarod, but I do love dogs,” she said. Probably 20 years ago her husband had some sled dogs. The animals are amazing to watch, she said.

“I see what the mushers do with their dogs and I see how the dogs do what they do and I just think it’s an awesome event to be involved in.”

In all that time, would it be fair to say she’s done everything there is to do with the Iditarod?

“No, probably not everything,” Potts said. “I’ve never been a veterinarian. I’ve never been a pilot. I’ve never been a HAM operator.”

But she’s done sales and administrative work. She’s even filled in as executive director on an interim basis a couple of times. The job is in Wasilla most of the year, then migrates to Anchorage until a week after the race start and finally in Nome for 10 days in spring. Potts said that is probably her favorite part, watching the mushers cross under the burled arch.

“Hearing somebody say, ‘it’s the most awesome experience in my life,’ I’m just happy to have played a part in it,” Potts said.

Potts said she’s been doing this long enough that she’s seen some pretty amazing careers come to fruition.

“Some of those kids I knew when they were in grade school,” she said.

The Mackey boys — who have five championships among them, not to mention their dad’s win — are a good example, or the three generations of Redingtons and Seaveys.

“Now the kids that I knew as Redington kids have kids running the race,” she said. “It’s an awesome thing to be involved with.”

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