Isabell Katzeek,
1920-2009

By Heather Lende

In the last months before she died, Isabell Katzeek remained as stubborn as ever.

On her way to a med-evac flight after suffering a heart attack, she sat up suddenly, looked at the ambulance crew, and said, “Now wait a damn minute, where the hell do you think we’re going?”

Katzeek, a lifelong resident, died at home April 15 of heart disease at age 88. She was born in Haines on May 3, 1920. Her father, John Leslie, was a Scotsman, and her mother, Susie George, a Yukon Tlingit.

She was their only child. Leslie was in his fifties when she was born and he doted on her, family members said.

Leslie maintained the school boiler and used to pull his daughter on a sled when he went to check on it, said daughter-in-law Cheryl Katzeek. Isabell and her mother made regular trips on the train from Skagway to visit Yukon relatives.

As a young woman she worked with her friend and neighbor Elsie Mellott at Sheldon’s store and later worked canning salmon at Haines Packing Co.’s Letnikof plant.

She also babysat. Families she cared for still recall the paper dolls she made. “She drew and cut out all the outfits and pieces, they were beautiful,” said Lorraine Kasko.

 Isabell’s high school graduating class had four students.

“Isabell and Elsie loved to walk. They walked everywhere,” Cheryl Katzeek said, including to dances at Chilkoot Barracks. “She said she met all her husbands on the dance floor.”

There were two. She married Robert Martin Sr. and they had three sons. In April 1951 she married Klukwan’s Tom Katzeek. To marry Isabell, Katzeek had to borrow $25 from his father for a marriage certificate and to defy his mother, who favored traditional, arranged Tlingit marriages. The couple had three sons.

Isabell and Tom never stopped dancing, remaining devoted  more than 50 years until his death in 2004, family said. “They called their favorite step, the Vancouver shuffle,” Cheryl said.

Katzeek had a lively sense of humor. When she saw the Benny Hill Show on television for the first time, she laughed so hard people in the hotel room next door complained, said former daughter-in-law Sandra Martin.

Katzeek and Mellott were neighbors, and would meet at the Bamboo Room almost daily for coffee and a cigarette. Later they took drives in Mellott’s car.

Katzeek drove, briefly. For her, a car had two speeds: moving or stopped. At the time, an automobile was still a luxury and a woman who drove one a novelty, especially in Klukwan where much of the family lived. “The village ladies loved to ride with Isabell,” said brother-in-law Smitty Katzeek.

Once Katzeek took the turn into Klukwan at highway speed, throwing at least one of her passengers out of her seat. “Even with grandma under the dashboard, she kept going 40 right through the village,” Smitty said.

Katzeek’s nails were always polished and styled, said Sandra Martin. She wore skirts but didn’t regret not having girls. “We suspect that Isabell liked being doted on by the seven men in her life,” Cheryl Katzeek said. She kept strict house rules, assigned chores and taught her sons how to cook and bake bread.

Isabell “had Scotch ways,” Cheryl said, and kept her purse close. “If she invited you out to the Bamboo Room for dinner, you would end up with the check.” And she never missed a Bingo game. “She called it her work.”

Katzeek took up traveling in her seventies, and saw the country and the world mostly in the company of Sandra Martin. On their first trip they took the trans-Canada railroad to Halifax and a bus to Boston. She went to New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and all over Europe.

She said that Katzeek was unimpressed by the Swiss Alps, noting that the view out her kitchen window was more impressive.

Her Tlingit name was Shaaw Tlaa and she was a Ch’aak- Dakl’aweidi from the Keet Gooshi Hit in Klukwan. However, she was not a stickler for cultural tradition. “When she was ready to go home from a potlatch, she went, and nobody was going to stop her,” Cheryl Katzeek said.

Friends and relatives from Southeast Alaska and the Yukon traveled to burial and memorial services Saturday in Klukwan’s Keet Gooshi Hit (Tall Fin Killer Whale House) and the Klukwan gym. The Haines American Legion Auxiliary, of which she was a 58-year member, prepared lunch.

As her health declined she found joy in the presence of her big family and many caregivers. To the end, when she heard Glen Miller’s orchestra, “She’d tap her feet, wave her hands” and do a kind of dance, Cheryl Katzeek said.

Katzeek is survived by sons Ron Martin, Gene Martin, John Katzeek, Les Katzeek and Lawrence Katzeek, as well as by 13 grandchildren and 12 great-grand daughters. She was preceded in death by husband Tom Katzeek and by son Robert Martin Jr.