Charlie Everett Blood was born to Matt and Holly Blood on March 14. He weighed 8 pounds, 4 ounces. Grandmother Barb Blood had left Fairbanks after a weekend visit with the family just 12 hours earlier. Barb attributes the week-early arrival of Charlie to Holly’s walking around the Fairbanks Ice Sculpture Park for an hour the day before. Charlie has two sisters, Taylor, 3, and Makenna, 1. Grandparents Peter and Michele Wing will travel to Fairbanks later this month. Charlie will make his first Haines appearance in May when the whole family will come down for aunt Hannah Wing’s high school graduation.
Haines was the site for a Wilderness Advanced Life Support Class (WALS) organized by Julie Anderson with the support of the fire department. One of only a handful of WALS classes offered around the world this year, participants traveled from the Lower 48 and Alaska. The class is designed for advanced medical professionals, teaching them to work in remote environments. Haines participants included Linda Keirstead, Laurie Keffer, Klukwan nurse practitioner Michele Susie, Julia Heinz, Dave McCandless, C.J. Jones, Kevin Forster, Jen and Clint Talley, Al Badgley and Jen Walsh. Eliza Lende came up from Juneau, Jodi Stickler Ivey traveled from Seattle and Jeff Bentley, son-in-law of Deb and Jim Stanford, came up with his family from Oregon. The training included afternoon rescue drills and one night of drills at Battery Point. During the evening drill, participants assessed, stabilized and transported seven volunteer “victims.”
Alan and Jeannette Heinrich are home from two months of family visits. They stayed with daughter Tara Heinrich and her family in New Hampshire and visited Alan and Jeannette’s families in Connecticut, including Jeannette’s mother Betty Bacon, who is almost 104. They also headed to Texas to see sons Kurt and Karl Heinrich and their families. They stayed busy watching the grandchildren’s soccer games, track meets, basketball and volleyball practices, and also helped with babysitting along the way. Son-in-law James Sage ensured their pleasant return to Haines by plowing and shoveling a path to their snowy front door.
Wendy McPhetres was selected to the Handbell Musicians of America All-Star Ensemble. The audition process included live auditions at national events as well as a video audition. Wendy will perform with the group at the 15th International Handbell Symposium in Liverpool, England this summer. The group of 16 is responsible for preparing their music prior to gathering in England for three days of rehearsals. They will perform a one-hour concert at the symposium. Wendy got her start in handbells at the Haines Presbyterian Church, when she was 10 years old, under director Karen Bertroch. She picked up handbell performing again after college and now plays with Bells of the Sound, a 16-member professional handbell organization in Seattle. Wendy is a middle-school choir director in Bremerton, Wash., where she teaches vocal choir to 200 students.
Dave and Carol Pahl spent two months in Australia, where they rented a camper van and logged more than 10,500 miles driving around the country. They avoided cities and visited many of the country’s conservation parks, where they saw kangaroos and myriad bird species including flocks of cockatoos and emus. While she was sitting outside their camper reading, Carol was startled by a four-foot-long goanna lizard. She thinks the massive reptile, as well as three others nearby, may have been drawn to the scent of meat in the camper refrigerator. A highlight early in their trip was their visit with the “Southern Hemisphere hammer man,” Rupe Wisseman, in Toowoomba, Southern Queensland. The 86-year-old and the Pahls have exchanged letters for a decade, since Rupe first read about the Haines Hammer Museum. They spent three days with Rupe, who has collected more than 3,500 hammers. He gifted the Pahls with a 24-pound sledgehammer head that was manufactured by his uncle to drive fenceposts.
Daymond and Renee Hoffman, and their children Cora and Wesley, have returned from two months on the island of Kauai, Hawaii. They stayed with Renee’s sister, Jenine Meyers at her home in Princeville and spent two weeks with Renee’s parents, Jim and Candy Hebert. They saw many Haines friends during their stay, including Bill Finlay and Nancy McGrew, Gabe Long and Krystal Norberg. Sonya Allen visited with her 3-month-old baby boy Parker West Allen. They also saw Julie and Noble Anderson, and Knikki Cinocco, who was on her way back from Peru. Renee frequented a circuit-training class led by professional beach volleyball player Gabrielle Reece and is making plans to introduce the workouts to Haines.
Jane Pascoe’s blueberry marmalade received a bronze ranking in the international division at The World’s Original Marmalade Awards, held annually in Cumbria, England. Jane harvested the wild berries from a small island off Admiralty Island. She scored 16.5 of 20 possible points. Judges wrote the tart jelly’s flavor was “unusual but good” and provided tips for improving consistency. Pascoe, who grew up in Australia watching her “mum” make marmalade with kumquats from the back yard, started cooking her own marmalade 15 years ago.