Editor’s note: This piece has been updated with additional information. Alaska was the first state to allow all residents aged 16 and older to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Now, it’s forging ahead with a new pro-shot campaign: Alaska will begin offering COVID-19 vaccines at four airports across the state to residents and tour alike beginning …
Former Ketchikan local Travis Gelbrich recently was hired as the Alaska Airlines Vice President of Inflight, a position in which he manages 5,600 flight attendants, as well as the management staff that supports them.
Now a resident of Sammamish, Washington, with his office in SeaTac, Gelbrich spoke by phone about his new position, as well as about his experiences growing up in Ketchikan.
Gelbrich said he moved to Ketchikan with his family when he was in third grade, and that he graduated from Ketchikan High School in 1990.
âKetchikan was a great place to grow up, and I have a lot of lifelong friends that I went to school with and grew up with, and I have great, fond memories of growing up there,â Gelbrich said.
KETCHIKAN (KDN) â No new COVID-19 cases were recorded in Ketchikan on Wednesday, leaving eight cases active in the community.
As of a Wednesday evening update to the local Emergency Operations Center dashboard, 405 positive coronavirus test results have been tallied in Ketchikan.
Of those cases, 223 have been due to close contact with a known positive, 96 were travel-related, 76 were determined to be community spread and eight have been linked to a congregate facility or industry setting, the dashboard showed.
Results were pending from 43 virus tests on Wednesday. Throughout the pandemic to date, 38,306 tests have been administered in Ketchikan.
According to the dashboard, 19,056 of Ketchikan s COVID-19 tests have been conducted in local health clinics, while 9,882 have been collected at the Ketchikan International Airport testing site and 9,368 have been done at the Berth 3 drive-up testing site.
Drency and Lillian Dudley, December 04, 1953
Photo courtesy JUDY ZENGE
If you ask most people why the field is named after Drency Dudley, they will say it is because Dudley, a local civic leader from the 1940s to the 1960s, owned the land that became Dudley Field, which is the sports area adjacent to Ketchikan High School.
Not surprisingly, that common belief is not true.
While Dudley was a leader in promoting local youth sports and led the Lions Club to build the field on Jackson Street between Fifth and Seventh avenues in the mid-1950s, the land actually belonged to several private property owners, local government and the Ketchikan Pulp Company.
Nathan Jackson s remarkable story continued this month with his selection as a 2021 United States Artists Fellow in traditional arts.
The Chicago-based national arts funding association on Feb. 3 announced Jackson s inclusion in the 2021 class of 60 fellows from across the country who were chosen for their bold artistic vision and significant impact, with each demonstrating generosity and care toward field-building that continues to inspire and propel their discipline.
Jackson, a world-renowned Tlingit master carver, designer and painter whose artistic endeavors stretch back to the late 1950s, was among seven individuals honored in the Traditional Arts category.
Lynette Miranda, USA program director, said the association is incredibly excited to announce Jackson as one of the 2021 Fellows.