By this time I had acquired sled dogs. I threw them all into a utility trailer and took off down the Alcan, wandered around Outside for a couple years, and came back.
Worked as a cook in a tent camp in the Brooks Range, and at Prudhoe, and then got on the TAPS pipeline through the Operating Engineers union. Met the man I was to marry, and moved to Moose Pass. Eventually we purchased the abandoned, dilapidated Jockey Club, refurbished it, and named it Trail Lake Lodge. Our 35th reunion had an event there. Ran the Lodge for seven years and retired.
Jeanne Waite, 1963
I guess the place to begin is after high school graduation. I went to work at the Anchorage Daily News as a cub reporter. It was supposed to be a summer job only, but in August they offered me a permanent job and the court beat, with which I had fallen in love while covering for the usual reporter during his vacation. I did that for three years, then moved on to KFQD radio, where I was the Continuity Director (wrote advertising) and then switched over to news where I worked with Herb Shaindlin.
My husband died four years ago, and since then I have returned to my writing roots, writing anecdotal memoirs, various non-fiction essays, and have a fiction novel under-slower-than-evolution-progress.
Some say I’ve had a varied career. I think I just had a short attention span.
I’ve also traveled a lot the past few years—Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Mexico, Russia, and around the state. I’ll be heading for China and Tibet later in 2010.
Many of my writings and photographs appear at my blog:
