Assembly candidate Mark Smith was born and raised in Alabama, where he went to college and then onto a military career spanning more than three decades.

Mark Smith, candidate for the Haines Borough Assembly. (Rashah McChesney/Chilkat Valley News)

Smith, who retired a colonel and doctor in the army, did not start out to be a doctor. 

“I started off as a combat officer, he said. “I was an artillery officer.” 

He did two tours with…

Rashah McChesney is a multimedia journalist and editor who has reported and edited newsrooms from the Deep South to the Midwest to Alaska. For the past decade, she has worked in collaborative news as the...