My friend Dale Lindsey left us the day before Thanksgiving after putting up a valiant, but ultimately losing, fight against cancer. I count myself among the many fortunate people whom Dale called “friend” and among those who know that a quiet giant has departed the community and the state that he loved.
I first met Dale when I worked for Governor Sheffield in the early 80s. Dale was part of a group promoting Seward as the location for the new state maximum-security prison – a goal the group achieved.
However, I got to know Dale really well through a serendipitous series of events that led to my wife, A.J., going to work for Petro Marine Services – the company that Dale and his wife Carol Ann built from a one truck fuel service enterprise in Seward into a major piece of Alaska’s economy. The story of how A.J. became part of the Petro Marine family is illustrative of how Dale’s mind worked.
Bill “Shep” Schoephoester, one of Petro Marine’s senior people, had been given the substantial task of writing up the oil spill contingency plans for the company’s numerous facilities. Bill was looking for a secretarial type when Dale suggested to him that the Anchorage Times had just closed and perhaps there might be a journalist or two who knew how to write and was looking for work. My wife, A.J. McClanahan, who was one of those unemployed journalists, was chosen by Shep to give him a hand.
A number of good things came from what some would call Dale’s “out of the box” suggestion. Shep got a writer (and a very good one, if I do say so). A.J. embarked on a new career that has led her to accomplishments she never dreamed of when she was a journalist. And, best of all, A.J. and I became friends with Dale and Carol Ann.
Why do I call Dale “my kind of Alaskan”? There is not room in this column to list all of the reasons, but I will give you a few. Dale was a promoter, but not a self-promoter. I suspect that not all that many Alaskans know who he is. However, if you are from Seward, have anything to do with the Alaska Railroad, know anything about fuel distribution in the state, follow what a small Alaskan-owned independent oil exploration company is doing on the North Slope, risked capital in the fishing industry, have some familiarity with the Seward Sea Life Center, or have hung around RDC for any length of time, you know what kind of person Dale was. And this is just the “short list” of the many roles Dale played on the Alaska stage.
First and foremost Dale was dedicated to his hometown of Seward. Although he and Carol Ann have other places they stay and could have left Seward behind as their business empire grew and prospered, that is not the kind of people they are. As I sit in my office and write this column I can look at the two-foot by four-foot picture of Seward that Dale gave me several years ago to remind me that Holland America Line plays an important role in Seward’s economy, and he didn’t want to see that change. Some might maintain that Dale wouldn’t leave Seward because of the fishing, and there is no question that he spent many happy hours each summer chasing silver salmon around Resurrection Bay and the surrounding ocean habitat through which the fish migrate each year. I suppose that it was spending time with Dale on his boat the “Forty Niner” that I got to know him best. He graciously hosted my family and me many times, and it was on the “Forty Niner” that our daughter Natasha acquired her love of fishing. However, I grew to realize that these trips were about much more than fishing. There were usually several of us on board (sometimes Paul Laird and Becky Gay, among others), and there was always plenty of time to talk about the issues of the day and about the state’s future. As much as Dale loved to fish, I really believe he liked the discussions on state policy and politics more. He had very strong feelings about the many issues confronting our state, and, although we came from different political persuasions, we shared remarkably similar views on issues such as fiscal policy, resource development, government red tape, and taxes, and a variety of other issues. The more I got to know Dale, the more I understood that Dale knew that behind most successful men is a great woman and, for him, Carol Ann was that woman for over 53 years. The word “partner” does not begin to define her role. She was the anchor in any storm, the wheel when the ship was headed off course, the winch when the sails needed to be taken in a bit, and, to the very difficult end of the voyage, provided the warmth and comfort of a snug cabin on a cold and wintry day.
As I mentioned at the RDC conference several weeks ago, Dale once told me, somewhat facetiously I assume, that at one time he had been only one more failed gold mining investment from a divorce. However, although risk taking was as much as part of Dale as his infectious smile, he never made that one more investment. Carol and his family were much too important to him.
My family and I were in Seward in September and stopped by to see Dale and Carol Ann a couple of times. As always we talked about Seward and Alaska and Dale’s hopes for the future of both. At the end of our last visit my wife, daughter and I came in from harvesting some of the Lindsey’s excess raspberries to find Dale pounding away on the treadmill. Thus, it is fitting that my last memories of Dale involve both his generosity and him charging ahead and not giving an inch to what became the unbeatable foe.
Now that my friend is gone, one of my hopes for the future is that somewhere in Alaska we are growing a few more like him. We really need them.
View Dale Lindsey Obituary
