Hello! Katie here. I’m the Kansan turned sailor and now recent acquisition of the Port Alsworth office here at Lake and Peninsula Airlines.
I wanted to update you because exciting things are afoot in our Anchorage office! To help you understand why I’m so excited, we’ll have to go back a little farther in my life to give this story some context.
I grew up in Kansas since I was about ten years old. I didn’t always quite fit in. One thing that I loved to do after school was to run down to the creek behind our house and play in the mud with the frogs and pretend I was escaping from the long arm of the law. Search “every farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse,” well you know the rest.
Every day at school I would ask a friend to come “creeking” with me. There was this one girl who would actually go with me. She was tall, slender, and graceful unlike me. My approach in life at that time was generally one speed and black and white. Even though she was on the delicate side with milky white skin and a habit of ending up in the hospital she always agreed to follow behind me in the mud, jumping over rocks and peering into large drainage pipes looking for snakes and other creatures.
We grew distance as our paths diverged into different high schools and overseas (her to Italy, me to Greece) for years. Yet in college we somehow found each other again in the sea of rushing people, pressing issues, distance dreams and immediate desires of success. I still didn’t quite fit in. My wardrobe a bit too outdoorsy for the Kansas scene, words too blunt, and hanging out with the misfits in the swing dancing club. She was still tall and graceful. Driven in her job, multi-lingual and still with a large penchant for safety.
Yet somehow our friendship worked. No, we didn’t go “creeking" anymore. But I dragged her out swing dancing and thrift store shopping. Class met brass and we made the best team.
We finished college. I went to work on a schooner. She stayed in Lawrence, Kansas to become the general manager of the gym she had worked at for years. She was consumed but focused. Then a few months later I came back to the flatlands, took a “short” vacation to Alaska and never returned.
She never forgave me for missing our lunch plans that following week, so… I asked her to come work at the new and wonderful place I had found in Lake and Peninsula Airlines. “My bosses are literally the coolest and kindest people I have ever met!” I gushed on the phone to her. “I live in an actual national park!”
She was looking for a change, but not quite the bush-living, moose-eating, snow-shoeing, berry-picking, four-wheeling, watch-out-for-the-pack-of-wolves change I had made in the last year.
Thankfully there was an opening in our Anchorage office!
And you won’t believe it but Lyle and Heidi saw all the wonderfulness and talent I had known for so long, and offered her the job!
So be sure the next time you stop by one of our offices in Anchorage or Port Alsworth to give our latest dispatcher, my dear friend and adventure buddy, Molly Fister a warm welcome to Lake and Peninsula Airlines!
You’re welcome to say, “You’re not in Kansas anymore, are you?” at you’re own risk. :-)
