no one knew what was happening to this sixteen-year-old orphan.
It wasn’t long before I had a court-appointed guardian to help with legal affairs, medical and dental care through the State of Alaska, and a clothing allowance. I was assigned to live at the homes of friends of my choosing.
Aside from the social stigma of my dad’s businesses and death, I must have been a pretty good teen. Or they didn’t know better. A friend once noted that I was the perfect houseguest: I always picked up after myself, dove in with cleaning, left any room better than I found it. She surmised I learned that after being a guest in so many homes.
I don’t think she meant that was a good thing.
I had little oversight, I guess, because unlike many teens in state custody, I didn’t get in trouble. I was easy to manage. Beginning the spring of 1974, I had several families whose homes were opened to me, then and forever after: Floyd and Hazel Johnson, Marianne “Mike” and Earl “Red” Dodge, and Rod and Donella Bain.
It wasn’t as if things were quiet at their homes. The Dodge and the Johnson families each had six children; the Bains had four. They were solid homes where the dads worked outside the home and the moms were housewives. But the women were, then and now, role models to me. All were smart and adventurous for the times. Hazel Johnson was a World War II army vet (rare for women back then), a member of the League of Woman Voters, and a community volunteer who read voraciously. Mike Dodge had a bachelor’s degree in physics that saw its expression in her oldest son’s graduation from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Donella Bain was a kind and articulate person who didn’t seem concerned when her daughter brought me home one day to stay with them.
Earl “Red” and Marianne “Mike” Dodge. They took me in as a teen despite having six kids of their own.
Donella and Rod Bain, who helped care and house me after my father’s death.
Rod Bain was a school teacher and World War II hero, having been a sergeant in Easy Company—the “Band of Brothers” (part of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division) made famous in historian Stephen E. Ambrose’s 1993 book and the celebrated miniseries.
Floyd Johnson was a forester who had traveled with his family to Iran at one point for his work on reforestation. Red Dodge was then a captain with Western Airlines. Both these men were also World War II vets, and Dodge had flown dangerous bombing missions in the Pacific.
In addition, the state-appointed guardian was on hand to watch over my “business affairs.” He was a friend of a friend, a divorced father of two young children, and one of the most protective and important friends in this period of my life. Walt Morgan came from a longtime Anchorage family. He was an entrepreneur: he ran a bike shop, a janitorial service, a landscaping business, a commercial house painting business, and more. Throughout my teen and college years, I could always find work with Walt and later, whenever I needed it, a home and place to stay.
But more than anything, Walt was a devoted father, sharing custody of his two children with their mother. Some of my first lessons in good parenting came from watching Walt with his son and daughter.
Walt is one of the funniest people I know and a prankster who was always setting up elaborate jokes. When he sold his janitorial business, part of the deal said that he got the buyer’s luxury black sedan. As I walked downtown one night, the black sedan pulled up alongside me, the side windows came down, and as if it were a Mob hit, I was pummeled with snowballs.
Walt Morgan, my court-appointed guardian ad litem and friend who helped take care of me for years.
The Bains, Johnsons, Dodges, and Morgans became my foundation. I couldn’t have asked for better homes. No matter how many times I came and went, their doors remained open.
Maybe this, more than anything else, helped me grow up more or less the way I longed for—normal.
ONE RESULT OF THE Woodstock party was my introduction to a new group of people. I attended East High, but students from all across Anchorage showed up. One contingent was a group of shaggy-haired, casually dressed kids. They were into the outdoors, hiking, and crosscountry skiing. Their parents listened to folk music and the Beatles, were professionals and even politicians.
I felt instantly at home with this group. I was fond of my friends from East High, but with the death of my dad, I wasn’t drawn to the normal football game/prom/student government way of life. These new friends would take me in a different direction.
Not long after the Woodstock party, Bridget reappeared. I was living with the Johnsons when she called and announced that she had sold everything in my father’s house. Walt Morgan and I drove over to Twelfth Street, packed up my belongings, and left. I never saw Bridget after that, and I never again had to deal with the 736 Club.
It was a relief.
CHAPTER 2
Peaceful, Easy Feeling
By summer 1974, at just sixteen, I was ready to leave Alaska and go see America. My destination: Phoenix, Arizona.
I picked Arizona because of a new friend named David Ray.
David was in Anchorage for a brief stay before flying to Phoenix, after working a season at a remote Alaska fish processing plant. A mutual friend introduced us because David needed a place to stay and there was room at my house.
A few years older than me, David took to me like a big brother. Of average build, David had long brown hair he wore down or in a ponytail, was soft-spoken and easygoing, and spoke warmly of his hometown and the American Southwest.
David had heard me talk so much about my dream of going to the Lower 48 that one evening he pulled me aside. He talked about his parents and an older sister and her family who all lived in Phoenix. He said I’d have a place to stay, and more than that—a home with him and his family.
He then did something I’ve never forgotten—he pulled out a $100 bill.
I was floored. That was a huge amount of money to a teen at the time.
“This is to help you get down there,” he said.
I promptly put the money in my bank account and used it later to help pay for my trip.
I WAS ALSO DRAWN TO ARIZONA and the desert by the fact that nearly all of my favorite bands or singers had songs about the area. I wanted to stand on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, as singer/songwriter Jackson Browne had written.
My plan was to hitchhike down the West Coast with a friend named Greg, the older brother of my eighth-grade boyfriend, who had moved to the San Francisco Bay Area with his mom a couple of years earlier.
Greg was going to see his family. Our itinerary called for flying to Seattle then going from there.
We had a big send-off the night we were to catch our red-eye flight. In the handful of grainy-looking color photographs that still exist, we’re with the dozen or more friends who showed up to say goodbye. We all looked like hippies, with flowing hair, flannel shirts, blue jeans, and hiking boots.
We all posed for one photo; others show Greg and me preparing to walk down the jetway to board our plane. In still another, I am alone on a padded vinyl bench, writing in my journal. I do not look happy. Perhaps whoever took the photo interrupted my writing, or maybe I had already had the first of many fights with Greg.
Our plan was to fly to Seattle then hitchhike to San Jose, California, where Greg was headed to join his brother and mom. On the way, we stayed at a youth hostel in Eugene, Oregon, where I visited a friend at college.
That first trip emphasized the distance I felt between