Robert Carl Mielke

Robert Carl (Bob) Mielke, 86, died April 20, 2010, at the Alaska Veterans and Pioneers Home in Palmer.

Service information will be given at a later date.

Bob was born March 22, 1924, in Oshkosh, Wisc., to Carl and Thekla (Bleck) Mielke, the oldest of three children. His family moved to Alaska in the summer of 1945, loading up their Hupmobile like Okies, as he put it in his memoirs “Two-Mattress Okies,” driving and camping cross-country to Seattle, then taking the SS Alaska to Seward.

After a stint driving a taxi in Fairbanks, he went to Palmer, worked for a short time in the “road commotion” (his words), and then started the best job of his life — long-haul trucking throughout Alaska. As “The Mielke Way,” he drove trucks and also started the first commercial garbage service in Palmer. He sold that business in 1961 and began a new career as a potato farmer, selling to the military and supplying both the Carrs and Safeway grocery stores until 1985, when he retired and began spending winters with his wife Evelyn in Texas and Arizona fishing, touring and talking.

He built recreational cabins at Crosswind Lake and in Seldovia. He was a jack-of-all-trades, a carpenter, a mechanic, an electrician (carefully) and a farmer. His love of salmon fishing took him to Seward, Valdez and Kenai, pike fishing to the Interior, and ling cod and trout to Crosswind. He hunted moose and caribou with friends and later with his son Robert. These trips were a rich source of inspiration for his many stories, as was long-haul trucking.

Bob enjoyed all things automotive, buying old cars and trucks, refurbishing them and then reselling them. A raconteur, he had a full array of stories, each tailored to the topic at hand, engaging strangers with his fascinating experiences, although his family members sometimes had to say, “OK, Bob, that’s the 50th time we’ve heard that one.”

He is survived by his beloved wife of almost 62 years, Evelyn; sisters, Marion and Margrye; son, Robert (Terri); daughters, Marie (James) Dryden, Teresa and Gwendolyn (Jon) Erwin; nine grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

Arrangements are with Legacy Funeral Homes & Cremation Services — Kehl’s Palmer Mortuary.