There will be a “Heavenly Birthday Dance Party” and potluck for Mark “Diz” Kistler at 4-8 p.m.January 25 at the Chilkat Center, as a fundraiser for Haines Friends of Recycling. Kistler, a longtime community volunteer and HFR supporter, died Dec. 14 in Juneau of heart failure. He would have been 78 on Jan. 26.
Every year, Kistler volunteered for HFR during the late shift at the Southeast Alaska State Fair so he could dance with his wife while they worked. Mardell Gunn says her husband loved to dance but had “awful rhythm.”
Kistler was a fan of vintage rock and roll. At his graveside ceremony at Jones Point in December, friends sang a favorite Queen hit, “We Will Rock You.”
Kistler had lived in Haines since 1981. The year before, while working for the Alaska Marine Highway System, he befriended co-worker Greg Rasmussen. When they weren’t on the boat, they enjoyed outdoor adventures around Juneau and decided to look for land in Haines. They both settled here and remained lifelong friends.
Rasmussen said Kistler’s “positivity” was his superpower. “Diz was up for anything, nothing daunted him,” he said.
Kistler was sometimes goofy (he liked funny hats), intense — he gave everyone his full attention — and very capable. He was a good skier, fisherman and hunter. Kistler also kayaked, canoed, biked and roller-bladed. While working on the ferry, he recited Robert Service to passengers.
At Gunn and Kistler’s 38.5 Mile home, Kistler helped Gunn build and tend her huge garden.
“Diz had a lot of patience,” Rasmussen said. “Pulling weeds is pretty boring, and Diz could pull weeds all day and well into the evening.”
He also ran the Bobcat, maintained the irrigation system and ate a lot of strawberries. “Diz loved strawberries,” Gunn said.
When Gunn managed the annual Hospice of Haines Rummage Sale, Kistler was her main helper. “We were partners in everything, in work and play,” she said. “We hardly drove to town separately.”
For over 40 years, Kistler volunteered for many community events and organizations from the Kluane to Chilkat International Bike Relay to Chilkat Center shows. Big Brothers Big Sisters director Sarah Elliott said Kistler was “a really great big brother.”
He was also a member of local and regional environmental organizations and Haines People for Peace.
Mark Stuart Kistler was born Jan. 26, 1948, in Hollywood, California. His father, Chalmer, was a mechanic for TWA and his mother, Patricia, taught typing at a Catholic school. He has a younger brother, Fletcher.
Kistler grew up surfing near home and hiking and skiing at a family cabin in the Sierras. After high school graduation, he served in Vietnam as an Army radio dispatcher. When he returned from the war, he needed peace and quiet, and headed back to the cabin in the mountains with a couple of friends.
“As you can imagine, three 20-year-olds had a lot of goofy, crazy times,” Gunn said. They dubbed their camp, “Dizzy’s Farm, Racing Team and Commune.” The name stuck. The only people that never called him Diz were his mother and mother-in-law.
Kistler earned an associate degree in forestry in Susanville, Calif., and headed north to Juneau, finding seasonal field work.
He applied for a job on the Alaska Marine Highway while working at Channel Welding. When he was notified of his ferry hire, he initially declined, because his father advised him, firmly, that if he “ever got a good job, he better keep it,” Gunn said.
Kistler loved boats, the sea and people, so he changed his mind and began as a steward and retired about 25 years later in 2005 as an able-bodied seaman. The last nine years, he worked on the LeConte.
From 1981-83 he was treated for advanced testicular cancer and given low odds of survival. He spent about eight months in and out of the Portland Veterans Affairs hospital before recovering.
In November 1995, Kistler met Gunn, a then-recent AmeriCorps volunteer from Minnesota and an Alaska Nature Tours guide, at a violin concert in the Chilkat Center. He invited her skiing the next day, but she declined because her car didn’t have snow tires yet. He showed up early the next morning to change them himself.
“I had already done it, but one needed filling, and he took it to town for me. I thought: ‘Wow, what a guy,’” she said.
The first present he gave her was a chainsaw. They married at their property at 38.5 Mile on winter solstice 1998.
When Chuck Jones moved out to the border, Kistler gave her lessons on cutting firewood and plowing snow.
“Diz took the time for six years straight, really took the time, to make sure we succeeded. I won the neighbor lottery when I met Diz,” she said. “He was the kindest and most authentic person I have had the pleasure of knowing. And he was a hell of a pike fisherman.”
Kistler broke his hip in November, and what should have been a routine recovery was complicated by heart surgery.
Gunn believes that those long-ago cancer treatments damaged his heart but also shaped it.
“Diz was very appreciative of every day,” she said. “He made time for people, he ate well, exercised, meditated and said grace before meals.”
The last few months of his life were a challenge, but also “a joy,” she said. “Diz took care of himself in every way, and that made me much happier to take care of him.”
There will be a celebration of Kistler’s life Feb. 21 at the Chilkat Inlet Retreat.
Donations in his memory may be made to the Chilkat Valley Community Foundation at P.O. Box 1117, or chilkatvalleycf.org