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2—Daily News-Miner, Fairbanks, Alaska, Thursday, April 28, 1983Nenana church gets a second life thanks to dedicated membersNENANA—The congregation of historic St. Mark’s Church is alive and doing very well, thank you. Somewhat like the premature obituary of Mark Twain, a report last fall on the death of this church was somewhat exaggerated.DINAH RICHARDS“Mission days were happydays ’ ’True enough, attendance was down to three members and one Sunday last fall they decided not to hold services. Then, somehow, a new spirit emerged and the people agreed that any church that had survived for 77 years deserved a second chance. The members got together and worked together and prayed together and the church grew. They have no priest and no outside funds from the diocese but they are committed to surviving.On Sunday, April 24, in celebration of St. Mark’s Day, the church set aside the day to remember its history andOissued special invitations to the oldtimers to reminisce about their days at the mission school. Present were 59 members and guests who shared a potluck dinner and listened to stories about Bishop Bentley and Deaconess Ann Kathleen Thompson and others who ran the mission school.Bishop Hudson Stuck founded the mission in 1905, a time when there were no other schools in the area. It was about a mile upstream from present day Nenana and was home to about 40 boys and girls who lived, worked, studied and prayed together.“We prayed morning, noon andJIMMY BEDFORDHumblingAroundloti nnight,” said Dinah Richards, who now has 16 grandchildren. “It was so nice,” she recalled. “Mission days were happy days.” Perhaps the hap piest of all was the regular Friday night dances in the big dining room. The children’s ages ranged considerably and being older, she was knownas “Aunt Dinah.”“One of my jobs was to sew and mend clothes for the boys, and I remember one little boy who put on a new shirt I had made and said ‘Aunt Dinah,’ and he stretched out his hands real wide and said ‘I love you THIS MUCH.’ Those were good days,” she said.She also recalled that each girl had to make her own dress for Easter “and we could hardly wait for Easter morning.” Dinah remembered the big gardens they put in to raise theirown food. The boys hunted moose and tended the fish wheel.When A1 Starr arrived in 1911, the school was just six years old but it was “really something” for him. “I had come from Tanana and I saw my first banana in Nenana,” he recalled.“I was just a little kid then,” he said, “and when Sally started crying, I started too.” He remembers going down about once a week to Charley Luke’s store but he seldom had much money to spend. “I was always a willing worker,” he said. “I’d pile lots of wood for the Deaconess but she would say, ‘You didn’t pile it so good,’ and it would take me a couple of weeks, maybe, to earn a quarter.”By 1915 Nenana was still a rather small place but Fairbanks was prettybig, he said. “I remember in 1915 my brother went to Fairbanks for dedication of the new college they were talking about and it took a long time to walk through the brush to college hill,” said A1 Starr. “Now look at how it has grown.”He has a similar faith in St. Mark’s church. “What it’s going to be like 100 years from now, I don’t know but it’s going to grow,” he predicted.“My father brought me to townfrom Kantishna,” Minton Evans said, “and he had a store there. He brought me here to the mission and let me play with the other boys while he went back to the trading post.” He hadn’t been gone long before “I saw the boat pulling out and heading back to Kan tishna and I jumped in to swim after it but it was too far and I had to swim back to the mission,” he said.“I had to stay,' he recalled. “I had never been away from home before and they just brought me here and left me. They didn’t tell me I was going toschool. They probably figured I wouldn’t have come.”One by one, they told their stories, savoring the rare moments of childhood and remembering with the telling of it, those golden days of long ago. Of special mention was Deaconess Thompson who was the teacher for all eight grades and who handled the administrative duties when there was no priest around.During her last Easter season as she was dying of cancer, she became aware that the Saturday train had failed to bring dresses for four of the girls. Although the rest of the staff assumed the girls would just have to do without Easter outfits, the deaconess got out some new yard goods and a Sears catalog for patterns, then cut out the material and passed out sewing assignments to each of the other women. Jean Dementi, the mission nurse at the time, had to give her pain pills three times that night but Deaconess Thompson kept working until she finished and the girls had their Easter dresses. It was one of her last jobs on earth. She died a few weeks later.“Friday night was dance night,” one oldtimer recalled. “We couldn’t go to the dance unless we went to chapel first.” The regular day began at 6 a.m. with the boys building fires in the dining room, chapel and classroom. Chapel was at 7 a.m.. before breakfast and it was one of the last things they did before bedtime.Saturdays we got to go to town and visit friends but we still had to do our chores first,” one of the ladies recalled, remembering the fun times they had visiting friends, going to the movies in later years. By 1947 there was a school in town and the mission school was closed.Riverbank erosion had removed the dormitory and the church building was moved to Nenana, along with the school building. The mission schoolwas closed but St. Mark’s church remains today as a memorial to those who have gone before and as a beacon for a better life in Nenana. Already plans are under way for a bigger turnout next year for the St. Mark’scelebration scheduled for April 29, 1984.ALSTARR“I came here in 1911 fromTanana”
Newspaper Details
Fairbanks Daily News Miner
Fairbanks, Alaska, US
Thu, Apr 28, 1983
Page 2
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USA 13 Dec 2020
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