As told by Barb with Pam Meekin
Mom and Dad married shortly after WWII and then set out on what was to be a five-year adventure to Alaska. They and two other couples planned to drive from their homes in New Jersey across the U.S. and then on to Alaska via the just-constructed Alaska Canadian Highway. The U.S. government built the 2,200 mile-long gravel road from Seattle, Washington, to Fairbanks, Alaska, during the war to provide an over-land route to the northern U.S. Territory should the Japanese invade it during the war. Except for a few islands in the Aleutians, however, the Japanese never did invade, but the road endured as a passage to adventure.
The three young couples had a great time driving across the country. Their plans hit a snag when they got
to Seattle, however. The military still controlled use of the road and in an apparent effort to prevent prostitutes from travelling to Alaska, women were not allowed to use the new road unless they had jobs at the other end.
The plan was for men continue on the last long leg of their adventure while the women waited in Seattle. Once the men arrived in Anchorage and found a place to live, they would send for the women to fly up. It took five weeks for the guys to make it to Anchorage because the road was very rough in the best of conditions and, this being springtime, was very muddy in the worst. Besides, the men were dawdling along the way to fish and otherwise enjoy the adventure (after five years of war). But the women didn’t wait.
Maybe it was because they had become so self-reliant during the five long years of the war working as stenographers and secretaries or maybe it was just the nature of any woman who would even be a party to such an adventure, but within a few days of the men’s departure, the three women learned of a military office in Seattle hiring civilian women for Alaska. They signed up and arrived in Anchorage on April 23 – three weeks before the men!
While they waited for the guys, the women stayed in the Bachelor Officer Quarters on what was Elmendorf Air Field; it was not yet an air force base but part of Fort Richardson. When the guys got there they were not allowed in the BOQ so were very inspired to find housing to get their wives back.
The two other couples stayed in Alaska for about a year before returning the “civilization”, but Mom and Dad stayed to raise our family and give opportunity for all of these stories to come to pass.
Recorded by Kathy Meekins Kevrekian
Meekins Family Stories 