Top: Ouzinkie from the air, courtesy of the estate of Yule Chaffin, from Alaska’s Kodiak Island, 1962. Bottom: the Ouzinkie Packing Corporation cannery from across the bay, in this composite of three photos, also from 1962.

A New Home Port for the Evangel

Left: the Evangel tied up at the oil dock at the old cannery, between the Cape Cheerful (left) and the GPC 21. Right: the Evangel at the same dock in the summer of 1961, with lots of nets on the railings. The Evangel’s home port was Ouzinkie from 1958 through 1964.

Rare color photos, restored from overexposed slides, give a view of Ouzinkie’s “downtown” in the pre-Tidal Wave days.

Top: This composite picture is one of the few color photos of the center of Ouzinkie, taken from the cannery dock. The store is the white building at the left. Bottom Left photo: Where the dock ends and the village begins, west side. From left: net building, the old Pestrikoff house, pool hall, Chichenoffs, cannery home, cannery workshop. I am not sure what structure is between the net building and the Pestrikof place.  None of these buildings survive today. Bottom Right: This photo shows a cannery home (right), with the cannery store barely visible in the background. Only the cottonwoods (center) still survived into the 2000’s. The above photos were taken in 1959.

A New Home Village

As a new resident of Ouzinkie (rather than previously as only a frequent visitor on the Evangel), I am very pleased with my new home. It would be hard to exaggerate the charming appearance of Ouzinkie in these pre-tidal wave days. Every house is different from its neighbors, and our new home of Baker Cottage, built in 1937, is still one of the newest buildings in town. Situated less than twenty miles from the city of Kodiak by water, Ouzinkie is physically so very different from Larsen Bay and the other “South End” villages. For one thing, Ouzinkie has spruce trees! In fact, much of the village seems to have been built in a forest. The homes of a couple hundred souls are spread randomly around a little bay on a peninsula on the northern end of Spruce Island, near the narrow channel separating it from Kodiak Island.

Pleasant and inviting boardwalks crisscross the center section of town, where swamp-loving alder and cottonwood trees proliferate beside ancient log houses with gray-weathered clapboard siding. A large, angular three-classroom schoolhouse is at the center of this part of town. Listing yellow his and hers outhouses in the schoolyard can be reached by plank pathways across land so soggy that it often resembles a lake. A large platform built of thick planks on pilings gives the students a place to play above the mud.

Beside the church and along the bluffs on the eastern side of the bay, a collection of houses sit like sentinels among the tall spruce trees, guarding the bay below. These homes, accessible by narrow wooden catwalks staked into the often unstable hillside, have the best view of the cannery on the opposite shore and the beachfront seaplane landing on the wide sandy beach below the church hill. Below them along the shoreline several homes with gabled attics and large modern plate-glass windows look out on beachfront property strewn with small service buildings on rickety pilings, spread out between sandy mounds with tufts of tall beach grass.

Across the bay, built into the harbor and against a round, wooded hillside, stand the buildings of the Ouzinkie Packing Corporation cannery, a random collection of corrugated tin and war-era clapboard buildings connected by narrow walkways and supported by ancient, shaggy pilings. The Filipino bunkhouse is perched on the side of the hill above the boiler room, and a homelike gray and white cookhouse perches on spindly pilings just this side of the power plant. The trash disposal for the cookhouse is a short chute that empties onto the bay below. One day the cook tells me about how she had been so flustered that she put an empty can in the cooler and dumped a fresh lemon meringue pie down the chute by mistake!

The original Grimes-built cannery is fairly small as canneries go, and has added only a handful of small outbuildings since the early 1940’s, yet it is a cheery maze of dark interior tunnels and narrow, twisting passageways. It quickly becomes my favorite cannery, more interesting and more accessible to me than broad and symmetrical layout of the enormous Larsen Bay cannery. The sights and sounds of cannery life are well familiar to me as a seasoned island traveler, and I soon scout out the great hiding places, impressive lookout spots and secret shortcuts.

I also learn, the hard way, where not to go with a rowboat. The underside of a cannery is a distinctly dangerous place, especially in these days before environmentally correct disposal methods. I once nearly get dumped on when I pass beneath the two “nooshnik” restrooms that are located in the middle of the main cannery building. It would be a lot more fun to get hit by that missing lemon meringue pie!

On a small bluff overlooking the center of town, with its south side facing the bay, stands one of the most appealing of all the Russian Orthodox village churches, the Church of the Holy Nativity. Whereas Old Harbor’s church seems overly simple, and Karluk’s seems formal and cathedral-like to a small child like me, Ouzinkie's little church seems inviting and friendly, with its broad boardwalk bridge and its flank of dark spruce trees creating an instant postcard view for half the village.

The main access to and from the cannery is a long dock with an equally long, low net storage building running alongside it. Every spring the men can seen be out along this stretch inspecting and restringing their nets, and soaking them in pungent blue preservative solution. One bored local fisherman once got his dog drunk just to see how far down the dock past the net building he would go before falling into the water.

In the bay itself, and clustered randomly wherever there was open dock space, the small fleet of seiners and tenders bobs merrily. Originally owned by the cannery, many of the seiners go by their original Grimes Packing Company designations, (GPC 18, GPC 21, etc.) sometimes even after being bought by local families. Most of the boats with original names, such as the Betts, the Bonnie, the Cape Cheerful, the New Hustler, the Judy M. and the Fortune, for example, all trace back to the original GPC fleet. Local boys pick favorites based on paint job, hold capacity, speed, and family loyalties, and dream of joining one of the crews.

Centrally located along the shore, and connected to the main cannery by a narrow causeway, is the store and post office. The building has cheery display windows and bright white paint with green trim. Part village meeting site and part company store, it sports a dry goods wall, a butcher shop, racks of canned goods and sundries, and a charming little black stove in the center of the room. This and the narrowly grooved enameled paneling of the walls and the high, formal counter where business is transacted gives the place the look of something by Norman Rockwell on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post.

Old-timers enter the store, chatting in a local language that is part Russian, part Alutiiq. I am amused when they suddenly slip into English to mention a brand name or some other untranslatable word. All winter long, townspeople pay their bills by using “slips,” carbon-copy receipt books that sometimes mean that you really could owe your soul to the company store, as the old song says. This credit system probably helps insure that the cannery has a loyal group of fishermen every season. As a new kid in town, it takes me a little time to get used to the “slip” system. My hesitant little speech at the counter on my first trip to the store to get something for Mom is transformed into a teasing chant by some of my new friends: “Timmy Smit’...put it on the slip!” My favorite purchases at the Ouzinkie store are Ludens Honey Licorice cough drops (eaten as candy) and Big Hunks, slapped against the nearest railing to break them into bite-sized pieces.

Past the cannery and store, beyond the central swampy area, is the higher western section of town, where boardwalks give way to spruce-shaded footpaths, kept park-like in drier seasons by the fact that the only wheeled traffic is from bicycles and wheelbarrows. Pleasantly shabby village-style houses with peaked roofs, fake-brick tarpaper siding and long side porches called “kellydoors” peek out through the often dense spruce forest. (Continued below…)

A Photo Gallery of Pre-1964 Ouzinkie

Left: the fish elevator of the old cannery on a foggy morning, with two seiners and the store beyond. The OPC dock in the wake of the Evangel, around 1958.

Ouzinkie My Home

By Timothy Smith, 1999, latest revision in February, 2020

Ouzinkie, My Home: 1958-1976

A Photo Album and Article About the Village of Ouzinkie, Alaska

From 1958 to the mid-1970’s

For more on the village of Ouzinkie, including many more historic photos, please follow the links  in the photos below.

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Introduction

When our family returned to Alaska after spending the 1957-1958 school year in Washington State, we moved from Larsen Bay, on the southwest end of Kodiak Island. We were reassigned to a new home base in the village of Ouzinkie. Baker Cottage, the fourth Kodiak Baptist Mission children’s home, had recently been vacated there, and the facility was a logical site for the continuation of the Evangel Ministry. As a result, the mission boat Evangel was based out of Ouzinkie for seven years. (See The Evangel Visits Ouzinkie for photos and comments on Ouzinkie in the 1950’s)

Ouzinkie was (and is) a beautiful community, but when I moved there in the years before the Tidal Wave its form had changed little since the 1930’s. Most of the features have changed since then, and this description is from the perspective of a young resident of the village, who enjoyed its quaint old ways, but lived through the tsunami disaster and was there to see the beginnings of rebuilding. With fewer and fewer folks around who lived in the village before the Tidal Wave, I will spend a lot of my text on that early time in the village.

Four 16mm movie frames of the Ouzinkie cannery and harbor.

Top to bottom: the long net building with folks arriving on the Evangel walking down the dock.

Below: two seiners in the bay (Fortune and Fawn?) and a cannery home beyond.

Next: the GPC 22, KFC 5, and Cape Cheerful at the oil dock with nets on the railings.

Bottom: the “face of the dock” with the Gugel house (later the Panamarioff house) beyond. In the two bottom frames, people from the village are on the dock waving goodbye to the Evangel.

Baker Cottage (“The Mission”) – Our Family Home, 1958 to 2006

Baker Cottage (“the Mission”) sits in the middle of the most ancient stand of spruce in the area , bordered on three sides by some of the largest spruce trees in the village. The front corner of the building faces a main trail sloping down toward the dock and the center of town, giving the building the appearance of a white mansion in a forest at the top of a high hill. Visitors coming up from the dock see the white clapboard walls and emerald green roof of the three-story former children's home through the branches of the tall, magnificent “Fat Tree,” so named by village children who know it as the best climbing tree in the area. The main trail to “Otherside” beach, the popular picnic spot behind the village on the Afognak side, runs literally past the back porch. In a village that builds fences only to keep out the wandering wild cattle, property lines are blurred and people walked naturally past each other's back doors to get from place to place. We get to see who was coming and going, and they can almost see what we are having for dinner! We usually wave; it is expected.

The Baptists built three homes in Kodiak and built a fourth orphanage in Ouzinkie in 1938 after fire destroyed the main building on Woody Island. In the late 1950’s, the Baptists made a decision to vacate the place and move the children to the main facility in Kodiak. The availability of the building and the unsuitability of our housing in Larsen Bay has led to the mission board's decision to move the Smith family to Baker Cottage. For me, a more radically different village living environment could not be imagined.

Gone are the tarpaper shack, outhouse, water buckets and folding rubber bathtub. In its place I find myself in a modern three-story, seven-bedroom house with two full baths, hot and cold running water, and city electricity (albeit of uncertain voltage and a daily schedule of 7:00 AM to 10:00 PM). The building has a fully stocked kindergarten classroom, an enormous collection of books and toys, several large storerooms, a dining room and living room, two attics, and a charming, varnished chapel addition to the basement. Two long flights of stairs connect basement and laundry room to kitchen hallway to upstairs bedrooms. Befitting its 1930’s heritage, every room sports different combinations of wall and trim paint and linoleum, and bare bulbs sprout from art deco sockets in the ceilings.

How utterly luxurious Ouzinkie seems to me after the rural, remote austerity of Larsen Bay! I quickly fall in love with the trees, the trails, the beaches, and the whole environment. We have daily electricity for the first time in my Alaska village life. Never mind that the power goes off at 10:00 PM, signaling bedtime or kerosene lamp time, or that the 7:00 AM start-up of the electric well pump (when the cannery power comes on) is guaranteed to awake everyone in the house. However, electric clocks are unknown, a small electric space heater will send the ancient diesel into convulsions, and the power is often barely enough to keep the freezers operational. This is because much of the village power lines are literally strung through the trees, and the line loss is enormous.

Line voltage sometimes dips to the nineties, making record player tenors sound like baritones with colds, and helping light bulbs last for decades. Tube amps get fuzzier and fuzzier as the voltage drops, while newer transistor stuff soon fries out and dies. But here I join the electric age! Lights, sewing machines, vacuum cleaners, projectors, record players, and a score of other accouterments of civilization become routine items to me instead of rarely used luxuries. And the nightly return to the dark ages at 10:00 PM serves as an involuntary curfew, a mutually understood signal for quiet across the whole village. Older folks and night owls will gather around smoky kerosene lamps and battery radios, but the cannery lights-out always seems to be the symbolic ending of the day.

Another welcome luxury in Ouzinkie is running water and indoor plumbing, although only “the Mission” and a handful of mostly cannery-built houses have it yet. Flush toilets are such a delight after a life of “nooshnicks” by day and “honey buckets” by night! Imagine not having to worry about which side of the slanting outhouse to prop your flashlight, and not wondering what critter was poised to crawl up your backsides while you hung delicately over a mountain of unmentionableness. Of course, Baker Cottage is served by a distant well and an ancient cast iron pipe, and for years I think that running water is supposed to be brown, but it certainly beats the multiple trips to the well with heavy, sloshy buckets that had been our daily lot in Larsen Bay. The big electric pump comes on whenever the pressure gets low (provided the power is on), and of course when the power is off, so is the water. But the whir-bang, whir-bang of the pump every morning is a natural alarm clock, and acts like a heartbeat as the great house comes alive each morning.

From a kid's eye view, the house is a wonder. Having been an orphanage, the great house was left fully stocked with toys, books, craft supplies and leftover materiél of all kinds. (Even after living there a decade, I could still open a closet, pull out a box or check a corner of an attic and discover a new treasure to offer me amusement). But I am still a good missionaries’ kid, so very few of the items I use are considered mine. They are part of my parents’ missionary work. I also learn early to take good care of everything, because trips to the stores in Kodiak are rare, catalog orders are expensive.

(Side Note) In the summer of 1996, when I returned to Baker Cottage for the first time in two decades, we found an unused scrapbook celebrating the 1939 World's Fair, unopened Crayola boxes from the early 1960’s advertising a first-ever crayon sharpener right in the box, and mint condition puzzles featuring pictures of 1940’s actors and cartoon characters, all hidden within three feet of the door to the laundry room. This is not to say that my parents were poor managers of the equipment. Its just that to take inventory of all the material in that house would have left no time for anything else. They used what they found, and throughout the years, we were often surprised at what the old house would mysteriously provide when we needed it. (Continued below…)

Being so large, it is unrealistic or impossible to efficiently use all corners of Baker Cottage, and the most-used portions are soon the best organized. We soon convert the two main floor bedrooms into a playroom for village kids and an office for Dad, and we expand the kindergarten room by removing a folding wall, since the extra bedroom is no longer needed. But Rev. Norman and Joyce Smith and family are not there to be caretakers of a big house, and it is not long before the building hums with near-constant activity. Mom begins serving as a nurse for the village, and the living room frequently serves as a waiting room. She begins a kindergarten class that will continue to the third generation of Ouzinkie youngsters. The two large dining room tables are filled almost every afternoon with various clubs, and kids sipping Kool Aid, eating cookies, listening to a Bible lesson from Dad. The tables are also the site of our Wednesday night Bible studies, with Dad reading verses and the others present also reading them from as many different translations as we can find (there are about five available to us).

The outside stairs creak constantly, it seems, with people needing one thing or another or perhaps bringing us a fresh-caught salmon or hunk of deer meat. On Sundays there are two services in the chapel, plus Sunday School for all ages, and there are regular film nights and parties and games in the big basement room and chapel. There are kindergarten and club presentations in addition to popular holiday programs that often draw half the village. It is a busy place, and there's rarely a dull moment. I really like my new village home.

A Photo Gallery of “Mission” Activities

NOTE: I chose a few photos, out of hundreds, that show popular Mission activities and have nice (or humorous) poses. I’ve decided not to include names, because in the age of Internet searches, that can be invasive. If you’re a Ouzinkie kid of a certain age, you’ll get a kick out of seeing so many people you know, who now have grand kids, no doubt!

Kindergarten Photos

Top: The 1961-62 Kindergarten class. Middle: The “Itsy-Bitsy Spider” is performed at one of the many popular programs. Bottom: the class of 65-66 poses on the Mission’s front steps.

After School and Evening Club Groups

Right: A 1966 club outing at Otherside. Below: an outing in the woods, 1973 or 74, Rev. Norman and Joyce Smith in the back. Center: two clubs from the mid-60’s pose in the chapel. Bottom: a club group in the Mission’s living room in 1962 seems to be enjoying themselves!

Christmas at the Mission: A Community Highlight

Top Left: My Mom, Joyce Smith, and my sister Robin open a package of clothing for giving out at Christmas while I look on in 1959. Top Right: Piles of boxes containing Christmas gifts collect in the basement of the Mission, ready to be opened, sorted, wrapped, and labeled. The middle and bottom photos are from Christmas Eve, 1965. The clubs are presenting their well-practiced songs and poems.

Churches from all over the United States sent gifts and toys to the Mission for the village, in such quantities that Mom and Dad were able to give every person in town a Christmas gift. Sometimes the kids got spectacular gifts from savvy South 48 shoppers who scooped up bargains from closeouts and going out of business sales. It took us weeks to wrap all those presents! The gift giving was a highlight at the close of our meaningful and kid-centered Christmas Eve programs. Each club had songs and poems to share, and the parents always seemed delighted to watch their kids perform!

Easter Sunrise Service and Community Breakfast

Easter Sunrise Services, From the Top:

The villagers begin to gather at “Pan’s Beach” on a clear Easter morning.

The Sunrise Service begins. Rev. Norman Smith leads the hymns: “He Lives,” and “Christ the Lord is Risen Today!” By the time Easter rolls around, sunrise is already too early for us to get up, so “early morning service” is a better name!

The worshippers make their way toward the Mission for a breakfast of kulich (Russian Easter Bread), hard boiled eggs, and hot cocoa.

Betty Gugel, a Ouzinkie-raised lady visiting from Kodiak, holds a tray of hard boiled eggs, then helps to serve the breakfast, with Rev. Norman and Joyce Smith.

A table full of kulich loaves, many baked in coffee cans to resemble the Orthodox church domes. (Above photos from 1968).

Larry Ellanak, at the end of the table, is a guest of honor at the Easter breakfast in 1971.

Bottom Left: an Easter scene with the empty tomb, drawn and colored by me, graces the altar in the chapel in 1969. Bottom Right: a 1976 scene I created, with Jesus facing the bay in Ouzinkie, and the words, “I Am the Living One!”

The young lady sitting in the chair in 1976 was Debbie Sullens, my fiance at the time, and my lovely wife since 1977. The “I Am the Living One!” drawing stayed up over the altar until Mom’s death in 2006. A covering of blue butcher paper protected it during other seasons. (See the photos of my parents at the end of this article).

Disaster! Ouzinkie Goes Through (and Survives) the Tidal Wave

The story of Ouzinkie in the Tidal Wave of Good Friday, March 27, 1964 is fully covered in my article at this site, “Tidal Wave Memories 1964.” But below are a few more photos that didn’t fit in the original article, followed by photos of the recovery and rebuilding of Ouzinkie. A quick view of the before and after photos of the shoreline and the bay tells a lot about what happened to us, and how we coped and recovered.

A Few Ouzinkie Tidal Wave Photos

NOTE: All of the photos below are in color, but were shot with poor-quality cameras. I did my best to restore them, and they manage to illustrate what the village went through in that disaster. All across the northern Gulf of Alaska, communities mark their history as before or after the Tidal Wave, because it changed their towns that much!

Baker Cottage Baptist Mission, an orphanage from 1938 to 1958, and our home from 1958 to Mom’s passing in 2006. Left: 1968 snowstorm. Right: 1971 view through the spruce trees. Below Left: The view out of the dining room window, 1967. Trees have grown and blocked the view today. Below Right: same window, looking right, shows the Otherside trail in 1968 (with snowflakes).

Tidal Wave photos from the top:

The morning after shows the Cape Cheerful, which had been up on the “ways” with its windows covered, now blocking a trail.

Two smaller cannery buildings were towed to shore. The one on the left, which still had its platform, was salvaged.

“Pan’s” beach with an unbelievable collection of logs, building parts, and miscellaneous junk, which collected with the tides after the tsunami.

Bottom: cannery buildings slowly disintegrate, and the tide comes up higher than ever before due to the subsidence of the northern Kodiak Island region by six feet during the great quake.

Thankfully, Ouzinkie began to recover in the months and years after the Tidal Wave. Several attempts to bring a permanent cannery into the village ultimately failed, as the photos below demonstrate. But the village put forth a valiant effort to survive, and it survives to this day, with even more impressive changes since I moved away, such as a small boat marina, a new airstrip, and a new ferry dock.

Ouzinkie Recovery Photos, 1965 - 1968

Part One: The Houses That Survived

The photos in  this section are of houses that survived the Tidal Wave and were still standing many years later, as pockets of the old village among new home and business construction.

Above: the Eric Bulmer house, named for a superintendent of Ouzinkie Packing Corp.,With the Holy Nativity Russian Orthodox Church on the hill behind.

Top photo was featured in Yule Chaffin’s Koniak to King Crab in 1967 as “taken by Timmy Smith of Ouzinkie.” The bottom photo is from my attempt to capture the same scene by moonlight (about a 15-minute exposure!)

Four old homes in the center of Ouzinkie that survived into the 1990’s. All were gone by the time I visited in 2004. The bottom photo, taken from the Kadiak Fisheries dock, was illuminated by floodlights from an oil tanker.

Three More Survivors. Left: The old Haakanson house peeks out from between the spruce trees in this photo from the west end of Ouzinkie. Center: Ernest Lashinsky’s home on the far side of the bay from the store and Kadiak dock. Lower Right: the Delgado home in Corbett’s Cove.

Not So Lucky: These two photos were taken on the northeast corner of Spruce Island, in Pineapple Cove in 1974.

The subsidence of the north end of Kodiak Island slowly took over this old homestead. Notice the interior shot: the walls remain, but beach rocks have replaced the floor, almost burying an old washing machine. Stories like this were repeated all over the north end of the Kodiak Island region.

Ouzinkie Recovery Photos, 1965 - 1968

Part Two: New Construction and a Parade of Canneries

As the village recovered from the Tidal Wave, new homes were built (mostly charmless but comfortable modern replacements for the picturesque old structures that were destroyed. The Ouzinkie Packing Corporation, now owned by Kadiak Fisheries, built a dock, store, and warehouse in the fall of 1965, with the hopes of bringing in a floating cannery. And meanwhile, investors (including many from the village,) began construction of Ouzinkie Seafoods, across the bay.

After a water rights fight and two attempts at bringing in floating canneries, Kadiak abandoned its quest to build a cannery. Meanwhile, Ouzinkie Seafoods began full operations, and in the mid-70’s, brought in their own floating processor to supplement their operations, none other than the famous Puget Sound ferry, the art-deco inspired Kalakala. But the Kalakala soon moved to Gibson’s Cove, between Kodiak and the Coast Guard base, and Ouzinkie Seafoods suffered a devastating fire, burning down to the pilings. There have been no further attempts to bring in seafood processing operations in Ouzinkie. The photos I have posted below provide all the documentation I have of that ultimately sad saga.

Information from this site can be used for non-commercial purposes with attribution. The text of all the articles on Tanignak.com and TruthTexts.com are copyright 2020 by Timothy L. Smith (see the “About Tanignak.com” link). The photographs are copyright the estate of Rev. Norman L. Smith, or are copyright Timothy L. Smith unless otherwise attributed. Many thanks to the people who have shared their stories and those who have allowed me to use their photographs on Tanignak.com!

Top: October, 1965 – a pile driver builds a platform for the Ampac floating cannery. Left: the cannery arrives in early 1966, but stays only one season. Below: Ouzinkie Seafoods cannery is built as the M/V Akutan floating processor operates from the Kadiak dock across the bay, probably fall, 1967.

Left: the M/V Akutan in full swing, with the Ouzinkie Seafoods  cannery nearing completion across the bay.

Below: Ouzinkie Seafoods cannery in the summer of 1969 (Travis North photo).

Above: the OSI cannery from the Kadiak dock on a windy day in 1968. Top Right: OSI cannery at dusk. Right: the  M/V Western Pioneer arrives for the first shipment of shrimp from the new cannery. Below: the Kalakala in Gibson’s Cove at twilight, 1976. It spent only about a season tied up at the OSI dock before moving to Kodiak. Bottom: The remains of the OSI cannery after a devastating fire. It was not rebuilt.

The Town that Survived! Two views of Ouzinkie’s shoreline circa 1968. In 2020, perhaps only one of the visible buildings survives besides the wonderful hundred plus year-old Russian Orthodox Church on the hill. So what is the next phase in Ouzinkie’s life? If you wonder whether the village will survive and grow, look no further than how it scrambled back after the Tidal Wave, and place your bets on success!

In Memoriam: Rev. Norman and Joyce Smith

Norman and Joyce, my parents, were of course the only reason that I got to grow up from age five to my early twenties in Ouzinkie. As Christian  missionaries with a non-confrontational, servant-based ministry, their impact in the almost half a century that they lived and worked in Ouzinkie can’t be measured in this life. But I am sure that their impact is enormous.  I am proud to be from Ouzinkie, happy to have this website to share these wonderful photos and (hopefully interesting) stories, and especially proud to be the son of Norman and Joyce Smith. –Timothy Smith, February, 2020

Top Left: One of the last photos of Dad, in his work clothes, standing in the chapel of the Mission in the summer of 1996. He passed only a few months later, in the village, while delivering packages from the mail plane to the Post Office. I like that Dad was still on the job when he was called home! The chapel altar has blue butcher paper covering my 1976 Easter artwork. I’ve always loved that painting. The detail shows that Jesus is leading the children into the city, to do His work there.

Top Right:  A photo of Mom in the chapel of the Mission, Easter 2004, when I got to help her with the Easter celebration. Behind her is the mural that I painted for Easter in 1976, preserved and still in use. Mom passed away in 2006, at the age of almost 90, within weeks after being the keynote speaker at Camp Woody’s Fiftieth Reunion. She died at home in Ouzinkie, surrounded by friends. She had been kindergarten teacher to three generations, and was one of the first Village Health Aides when the program was begun.