Joe Parnell competed in the Whitehorse Fall Football Classic last weekend. The town revived the flag football tournament – or “Yukon Super Bowl,” as Parnell calls it – this year, after many years of a declining flag football presence. Parnell’s eight-person team consisting mainly of young Whitehorse men placed third among four teams, narrowly missing Saturday’s championship game when a teammate fumbled his Hail Mary pass. “The bomb is a great play, but it isn’t easy if you haven’t practiced it a time or two,” he said.
Lori Webster, whose love for travel brought her to Haines in 2007, has been named to lead the Alaska Seaplanes operations here. “We’re delighted to have Lori leading our operations in Haines,” said Kate Crowell, the airline’s manager of customer services. Webster rose to the top of the outstanding managerial candidates through the interview process, Crowell said. Webster said she’s excited to lead Haines’ “great” team, which includes customer service associates Ronnie Alsup and Susan. Schumacher
Amy Brodbeck of Clinton, Miss., and Kaylin Werth of Wisconsin visited Tod Sebens and family last weekend. Brodbeck deckhanded for Sebens’ whale-watching tour boat, Taz, in Gustavus, and Werth worked as an interpretive ranger at Glacier Bay National Park. In Haines, Tod took them on Chilkoot Lake aboard his zodiac and took them hiking to the “Glory Hole,” a sockeye spawning pond. The two also went square-dancing at the ANB Hall and visited Jenty Fowler, also a deckhand on Taz this year.
A Canadian couple recently got engaged while on a flightseeing tour aboard pilot Paul Swanstrom’s DeHavilland Beaver. The groom-to-be had asked Swanstrom to let him know when the plane was in “a good place” for a proposal. It was over Alsek Lake, “the most beautiful place with the best lighting,” that Swanstrom gave him the go. “That’s when he went into his spiel,” Swanstrom said. “She cried and said ‘yes.’ It was nice.”
“Cornucopia,” Sunday’s annual Chilkat Guides party, was a “fairly mellow affair,” said director of operations Andy Hedden. About 50 guides and friends attended the party at the Fort Seward tribal house, and were entertained by local band Devine Funk, whose members include guides Steve Ritzinger, guitar, and Andrew Cardella, drums.
Former resident Dennis Andrews and granddaughter Dallas Carter, both of Chiefland, Fla., are in town visiting friends Bruce and Jenny Lyn Smith. Dennis and former resident Billy Ray Sharp, also of Chiefland, launched Haines’ Lutak RV settlement after buying the property in the 1980s. Andrews, who hadn’t been back to Haines for about 10 years, went fishing, ptarmigan hunting, and out to 33 Mile restaurant with Bruce and Carter. It’s Carter’s first Alaska trip. “While they’re out, I’ve been staying home and doing artwork,” Jenny Lyn said. The Smiths visit Andrews in Florida annually for a turkey hunt.
Georgia Haisler’s son Gregg Haisler and wife Anne sold their place in Petersburg and moved to New York state. The recently retired couple stopped in Haines before heading to the Empire State in search of a small home with land good for gardening. Gregg, a 1974 Haines High graduate, and Anne lived in Haines until the early 1990s, shortly after working together as extras on the set of Disney’s “White Fang.”
Guide Jesse Reis rescued Macky Cassidy from a mudslide at 19 Mile Haines Highway late Sept. 11. Cassidy said she was driving Tim Thomas and Sierra Kramer’s pet fish named Hi Fish home for a fish-sitting stint when she ran into the muck around 11 p.m. With only a single bar of service left on her cell phone and the slide pushing her car, Cassidy dialed Reis, who came and towed her Subaru out of the knee-deep slurry of mud and rock. “He was a hero,” she said. Walking a distance of only about 12 feet out of the slide was difficult and cut up her legs, Cassidy said. It also cost her one of the silver, custom-decorated Birkenstocks she was wearing. On impact with the slide, about half the water in the fish tank slopped into her purse, but Hi Fish was unhurt, she said.
Duly Noted
