Change

Alaska Coastal Grumman Goose in Pelican

This is vacation time around America. People take to the road, to the air, or to the sea. As I look back at the Twentieth Century, I am amazed at the changes that took place in air travel and in transportation in general during that time.

Now, 19 years into the Twenty-First Century, the changes in technology, and in communications, affecting every phase of life, would shock even my grandparents, who had lived through nearly a century of change. These only represent all of the changes we encounter in life that can amaze or unsettle anyone.

Every summer as a child in the fifties, I flew on an Alaska Coastal Airlines Grumman Goose from Juneau to Pelican, Alaska, to visit my Personeus grandparents for two or three months. The eight-passenger amphibious plane took off and landed on the waters of Southeast Alaska, where no roads connected the many islands, large and small. It flew up close and personal over the tops of snow-capped mountains and blue or stormy seas.

Since 2000, my husband and I have driven across the continent from New York to Washington State almost annually to visit friends and family, six to ten days each way. Now, we jet across the continent in six hours.

Born in 1888, my grandparents had already witnessed the transition from horse and buggy to the automobile and the Wright Brothers first flight by the time they went to Alaska in 1917. To get there, they traveled by train from Rochester, New York, to Buffalo, where they caught a steamer across Lake Erie to Detroit. From there, they again boarded other trains to take them across the country to the West Coast. In Seattle, they boarded another steamship to sail up the Inside Passage to Juneau. The entire trip took two months.

Regularly scheduled air travel around Southeast Alaska didn't begin until the mid-thirties, first with Ellis Airlines out of Ketchikan, and a few years later, with Alaska Coastal Airlines out of Juneau. Most people, however, traveled by boat--steamers, mail boats, or private fishing vessels. My grandparents didn't fly. Grandma was afraid to try it.

Fairtide II in Pelican 1948

After World War II, their son, Byron, began operating a gospel mission boat, Fairtide II, around Southeast Alaska. My grandparents joined him and his wife on the boat. When my parents returned to Alaska from Bible school in Pennsylvania, bringing me, a two-year-old, and my younger brother, Uncle Byron met us in Ketchikan with his mission boat and took us to Pelican to join the rest of the family in building the Pelican church. My earliest memory is of a big storm on that boat trip.

When my folks moved to Juneau for the birth of my sister in 1948, my dad was hired by Alaska Coastal Airlines as boss of cargo. As an employee, one of his perks was free air travel for him and our family. I began flying to Pelican when I was 3 years old. My father would put me in the seat next to the pilot. My grandparents would meet me at the float in Pelican, When it was time for me to return home, my dad would arrange for me to again sit by the pilot. My dad met me in Juneau.

Alaska Coastal Airlines Grumman Goose at the Hangar in Juneau 1953

Grandma was in her early sixties by then and had decided that flying was more than she could handle. The boat trips around the islands were bad enough, but to fly through thin air was more than she cared to experience. She thought she was too old to fly.

But one day as she put me, her eldest but still preschool-aged grandchild, on the Grumman Goose and saw me sit trustingly in the cockpit with the pilot who would deliver me to my father, she thought, "If that little child can put so much trust in her father's wishes, then I must overcome my fear of flying and trust my Heavenly Father to take care of me." After that, Grandma flew all over Alaska and the continental United States many times over the next 30 years.

PNA "Connie"

In 1961, as a teenager, I was flying home from Seattle alone on a Pacific Northern Airlines "Connie," a popular, four-engine plane. As we flew over the rugged Chugach Mountains toward Anchorage, the propeller outside my window fluttered to a stop. My heart nearly stopped too!

The pilot made no announcement so I surmised we could make it to Anchorage on three engines, but staring down into sharp, snow-covered peaks that yawned like an open shark's jaw below, I shivered to think of crashing.

Then a still, small voice reminded me that "underneath are the Everlasting Arms." Since then, whenever I fly, I remind myself of that verse and sit back and enjoy the flight.

In 1968, Alaska Airlines bought up Alaska Coastal and Ellis Airlines, built runways in the towns along the Inside Passage, and began flying cargo and passenger jets into towns on islands with no road connections. Private and tourist float planes still land on the water in tiny villages such as Pelican and on beautiful inlets and coves to see glaciers and waterfalls, but jets now land on runways built out into the sea in the larger towns..

In 2017, Bob and I flew back to Juneau for the 100th anniversary celebration of the church my grandparents founded in 1917. We flew the evening Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 "milk run." Our flight stopped at Ketchikan and Sitka before landing in Juneau.

When we emerged from the fog at sea level at Sitka, all we could see was whitecaps beneath us until the wheels hit the runway. Surrounded by mountains and sea, with frequent stormy weather conditions, and waves crashing against it even on clear days, the runway at Sitka is considered one of the scariest in the US.

Sitka Airport

I've been flying since 1948. When I think of all the changes, both good and bad, in my lifetime and add that to the changes in my grandparents' lifetime, I can't help but think of a line in that old hymn, Abide With Me:

"Change and decay in all around I see; O Thou who changest not, abide with me." 

And I am comforted that in all of life's changes, the Lord has been walking with me all the way. One day, He'll lead me safely Home.



If you'd like to read more about Alaska from gold rush to statehood and beyond, you may enjoy my historical books set in that time period. You can find them at my website (click here).

Free To Be

Painting by John Trumbull of Signing of the
Declaration of Independence

Two hundred forty-three years ago, 56 patriots signed the Declaration of Independence which gave us an independent nation--the United States of America.

The Declaration states, "All men are... are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Today, there is so much incendiary debate about just what rights we are entitled to that Congress gets nothing done. Everyone focuses on what is right for me instead of what is best for all of us. Politicians remind me of the old idiom, "Don't cut off your nose to spite your face." They are so against helping the other party get anything done that we all, including them, suffer.

The truth is that while it's fine to want and seek life and liberty and to pursue happiness, we are not entitled to those things.

The Bible teaches that what we all really deserve is eternal punishment in hell because of our sin. But Ephesians 2:4 announces,

The good news of the gospel is that God doesn't give us what we deserve! Instead, because of His great love for humankind, He gives us His grace through the death and resurrection of His Son! What is grace? It is bestowing upon us all the good things we don't deserve--such as forgiveness and eternal life.

How does that great truth apply in our human relationships?

First, we need to recognize that we are not entitled to anything from anybody. Yet, American society is based on "entitlement," the attitude that we are owed only the good things in life.

• Advertisements bombard us with the message, "You deserve a break today," or "You owe it to yourself to buy_______."
• College graduates think they are owed a higher salary.
• Parents feel their children owe them good behavior for all the things they do for them.
• Senior citizens think younger people owe them respect.
• People believe the government owes them everything--free health care, free college, and so on.
• Illegal aliens deserve all the rights of citizens.
• The rich owe the poor.

And the list goes on.

Christians seem to think God owes them a life free of trouble and suffering. But God doesn't owe us anything! He's already paid a debt we owed for sin that we could never repay.

The truth is, nobody owes anyone anything. To believe we deserve to get our needs met is arrogant. To expect special treatment as appropriate payment for what we do for someone else only invites anger, resentment, bitterness, and rebellion, which destroy relationships.

A sense of entitlement is self-serving, but focusing on how we can meet the needs of others fosters emotional well-being, cooperation, and mutual respect. Mutual giving builds relationships.

For our own well-being, we need to let go of feelings of entitlement. Instead, we need to follow God's example and practice grace!

Thank God for the freedom we have to be all we can be in Christ!

Happy Fourth of July!