[NASW Alaska Chapter Listserve] Photographs for Martha

[Sandy Kleven]

Hi all,
            I look forward to the rural conference call tomorrow night and
hope committee members have it in their schedule.  My outlook gave me a
auto-reminder so that’s why I am on top of it
 at 2 am.  When it’s quiet and
I can think about things.
            I’d like to ask for help with a wonderful project.  Martha Simon
of Hooper Bay lost all her family photos in the fire.  Many of them had been
taken by me over the course of many years.  I have been in her home and
taken family photos – posed.  I have have taken photos of her daughter
Minnie and displayed it on a story board.  I made a bound book out of photos
of her combing her grandmother’s hair.
            All these things were destroyed.  I want to make her new prints.
I have 600 – 1000 photos to search for the ones to return to her.  And then
prints made either on my printer or professionally.  I want to replace the
bound book.
            Together, I imagine all this would come to $200 - $300.  It will
happen a lot sooner if I can get some help with it.  I’ll make a web page so
you can see some of what I am talking about.  Anyone who chips in will be
acknowledged in a list of names that will accompany the prints.  I’ll keep
an open accounting so everyone feels that it is on the up and up
 on the web
page.  That’s a way to have transparency.
            I am excited to do this and I think it will be fun for you too.
            I wrote  poem based on Martha’s experience the day of the Hooper
Bay fire.
            It will be amazing to imagine her happiness when she gets some
of her photos back.  And maybe some she never saw before.
            Martha is the counselor in the village and has been for about 10
years.  She graduated from RHS and continues to work toward a more advanced
degree.  She is always pushing herself in good ways.  I few years ago, she
worked on driving stick shift in my car.
            Anyway, if you’d like to be part of the picture project, email
me off list and we can work together.
                        Sandy
            Hooper Bay Fire I
Martha’s House

 In village summer, when it never gets dark,
Martha took over feeding her grandson, at 6 am, with
six kids and her husband still trying to sleep.
Then, came a pounding and men’s voices, shouting.
”The school is on fire. Get out.”

Her husband jumped up to look toward the school, just a hundred feet away.
He didn’t see flames but thought it seemed foggy.
Fuel tanks towered just beyond.
Martha grabbed the kids then looked for her shoes and a jacket.
She put on her daughter’s dress shoes and a jacket she never liked
(a gift from her husband “Too puffy,” she said).

They left the house with nothing but kids.  She carried her grandson and
told them,
“When I look back, you’d better all be there.”
She left them at her mother’s for safety
then went back up the hill to see what all was burning.

Men saw her and shouted, “Get away now! This gas will blow sky-high!”

So, they waited in fish camp and watched the town burn.

When her home started burning,
Martha turned her back
and walked towards Tomaganuk Hill.


Sandra L Kleven
3978 Defiance Street
Anchorage, Alaska 99504
907 332 6735


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