Members of the Alaska Air National Guard’s 212 Rescue Squadron carried out complicated pararescue jumps in remote parts of the state over Labor Day Weekend to rescue stranded. At one point, the same team jumped twice in less than a day to rescue two separate survivors of plane crashes.
The Alaska Air National Guard’s busy week started on Aug. 30 with reports of two plane crashes at roughly the same time. The first was in Skwentna, northwest of Anchorage, the other more than 200 miles northeast at Tok, Alaska. The 176th Wing of the Alaska Air National Guard sent a HC-130 plane from the 211 Rescue Squadron as well as two 210th Rescue Squadron HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopters and members of the 212th, known as the Guardian Angels, with them. One of the HH-160Gs, on its way back from Eielson Air Force Base, went to the Swetna crash site. The pilot was luckily uninjured and retrieved by the helicopter crew.
The rest of the dispatched Guardsmen went to Tok. Another plane crash, this one involving a Cessna 150, crash left two people critically injured and trapped inside the aircraft. The HC-130 passed overhead and members of the 212th jumped out, parachuting to the ground and freeing the survivors from the plane. They provided emergency medical care and then the HH-160G flew in, hoisting the survivors up from the crash site before flying them to medical centers.
“The patient’s extent of injuries versus the time and distance required to reach them, drives our tactics to respond,” combat rescue officer Maj. Dan Warren, who led the team that jumped to the plane crash, said in an Air National Guard release. “Parachuting is simply another means to expedite our access to patient care, which is why we train on it weekly.”
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According to Warren, the rescue teams were jumping and providing medical care in less than an hour after taking off from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.
Warren and that same team were back in an HC-130 and jumping out of it less than 24 hours later. Another plane had crashed, this time near McGrath, roughly 150 miles northwest of Anchorage. Warren’s team, carried on the same HC-130 and HH-60G as the Aug. 30th mission, jumped to the top of a 2,500-foot-tall ridge. The pilot was found dead. The Air National Guard helicopter picked up the Guardian Angels team and the body of the deceased man. According to Alaska public media station KYUK, the pilot is an Anchorage resident and the crash is under investigation. The HH-60G then was sent to pick up a lost hiker while on its way back to base.
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The missions were some of several rescue operations that the 176th Wing carried out over a five-day period including Labor Day Weekend. On Sept. 1-2, members of the Guardian Angels and the 210th Rescue Squadron rescued more hikers who were stranded in Denali National Park.
The remote nature of many of Alaska’s settlements, and the rough conditions that far north, means that planes are often used to travel between places. And when there are crashes, or people are stranded or lost, the Air National Guard is often called in to do rescue and recovery missions.
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The first Jesuit missionaries in Alaska sailed up the Yukon River in 1887. By the turn of the 20th century, the religious order of the Catholic Church had as many as 50 Jesuits in the state.
Now, only two remain. And by the end of June, there will be none.
The Jesuits’ nearly 140 years in the state was honored at an event at Bethel’s Immaculate Conception Church on June 16. A procession of priests wearing long white gowns with red hems walked down the aisle to open the event. The Bishop of the Diocese of Fairbanks, Stephen Maekawa, thumped the ground with a shimmering silver staff known as a clozier as he approached the altar.
Bishop of the Diocese of Fairbanks, Steven Maekawa, walks toward the altar at the Immaculate Conception Church in Bethel.
“My brothers and sisters, we gather together to celebrate this wonderful and blessed occasion to acknowledge the love of God and the work of God through the 139 year mission of the Society of Jesus of the Jesuit fathers,” Maekawa said to open the event.
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A traditional Catholic mass followed, with readings in both English and Yup’ik. During the sermon, Maekawa acknowledged the vastness of the Fairbanks diocese, and the tremendous amount of work done by the Jesuits to establish it.
“All of the 46 churches of the Diocese of Fairbanks that we currently have were established by either the Jesuit fathers or by direction of a Jesuit bishop,” Maekawa said. “We have a long history of the Society of Jesus’ presence and ministry here in all of Alaska.”
The Jesuits are an order within the Catholic Church, akin to the Dominicans or Franciscans. They have a reputation for taking on some of the Catholic Church’s most remote assignments.
That missionary spirit brought the Jesuits to the Yukon River in 1887, where they built churches, schools, and ministries. Without their work, Catholicism may not have taken root in huge swaths of Alaska, particularly among Alaska Native communities.
The Immaculate Conception Church in Bethel.
But the Jesuits leave a complicated legacy. Their methods of converting Native people to the religion, particularly in the first half of the 20th century, created generational traumas still felt to this day.
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Fr. Sean Carroll is the provincial of the Jesuits West Province, which oversees Alaska and nine other states.
Fr. Sean Carroll, provincial of the Jesuits West Province, speaks at an event recognizing nearly 140 years of Jesuit service in Alaska.
“Thank you for all that you have taught us about who Jesus is and how to love and serve Him wholeheartedly,” Carroll said. “I also thank you for your patience with us. For there have been times when we have sinned and when we have hurt you.”
Missionaries, including the Jesuits, forcefully converted and assimilated Alaska Native people into Western culture and religion. Students at Jesuit-run boarding schools were forced to abandon their Native languages and physically punished when caught speaking languages other than English. Native dancing and drumming were also banned.
The Jesuits West Province maintains a list of 150 Jesuits with credible claims of sexual abuse against minors or vulnerable adults. A quarter of the accused Jesuits served in Alaska at some point in time.
“I ask for your forgiveness for all that we have done that was not rooted in Christ and love for Him, and for when we did not value your culture nor recognize the presence of God in you,” Carroll said.
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Carroll gave the order to withdraw from the state last spring. A big issue was the recruitment of Jesuits willing to travel and serve in remote villages. He told the congregation that the Jesuits’ work would continue, just without a permanent presence.
Fr. Rich Magner, one of the two remaining Jesuit priests in Alaska, attends a ceremony in Bethel.
Fr. Rich Magner is one of the two remaining Jesuit priests in Alaska. His last day serving Chevak, Hooper Bay, and Scammon Bay is June 30.
“We all always knew coming in, or should have known, that we’re not going to be here forever. It’s going to be mission accomplished at some point,” Magner said. “And then we hand it off to the diocese that we’ve helped create, and so that’s a good feeling.”
Magner’s next stop is a Clinical Pastoral Education residency in Tacoma, Washington.
The other remaining priest, Fr. Tom Provinsal, first came to Alaska in 1968 to teach. A fond memory, he said, was meeting Elders that practiced traditional subsistence lifestyles.
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“Some of the grandmothers, their fingers were just all bent with arthritis and stuff like that, you know, their whole lives they’ve been working out in the cold and the wet, doing food, sewing, all that kind of stuff,” Provinsal said. “I’d say I just feel very privileged to have come when I did come and to see that.”
Provinsal returned in 1975 as a priest and has served in the region ever since. After moving away, he plans to take a five month sabbatical. What happens next, he said, is in God’s hands.
Two lines formed in the aisle for communion at the end of the mass. After taking communion, Bethel’s Parish Administrator Susan Murphy gave a final thank you.
“It’s difficult to say goodbye to people who have been a part of our lives for so long,” Murphy said. “We know that you have done what was yours to do, and have taught us to do what is ours to do. We are grateful.”
Jesuit priests form a row along the altar of Bethel’s Immaculate Conception Church as members of the congregation lift their arms and pray.
Dominic Hunt, a Yup’ik deacon that flew in from Emmonak for the event, led the congregation through a final prayer.
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“Bless them with your wisdom, that they may be a word of hope, a world in need. We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen,” Hunt said.
About 70 people posed for a photo on the altar – priests, deacons, parishioners, Elders and children — many of them smiling, some standing quietly.
The photo doesn’t tell the whole story. But it’s a moment when gratitude, grief, and memory all shared the same room.
Bishop of the Diocese of Fairbanks, Steven Maekawa, stands in the middle of a crowd waiting to take a photo at Bethel’s Immaculate Conception Church.
JUNEAU, Alaska (KTUU) – The Supreme Court of Alaska will be taking up the case of the State of Alaska, Division of Elections v. Daniel J. Sullivan, Jr.
The oral arguments will be held Monday at 10 a.m. via Zoom, according to an order and opening notice.
The document also specifies that a decision is expected to be made before noon on Tuesday.
According to documents from the Division of Elections, the state must start printing ballots at noon on the same day.
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This comes after an Anchorage Superior Court Judge ordered Dan J. Sullivan on to the ballot Friday.
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