Alaska
The last woman in the bar: The 1961 murder of an Anchorage lounge singer
Part of a continuing weekly series on Alaska history by local historian David Reamer. Have a question about Anchorage or Alaska history or an idea for a future article? Go to the form at the bottom of this story.
The small clock on the wall revealed a somber reality of the dark, exhausting hours of the early morning. It was Nov. 20, 1961 and nearly 5 a.m., amid the last ticks of the long day at the Club 210, an Anchorage bar on East Fifth Avenue. There were four people in proper attendance, including bartender and co-owner Robert “Chick” Adams serving lounge singer Rose Dawn. The other two men were armed, eager to relieve the establishment of its cash. Three of those four principal actors survived the ensuing tragedy. Those readers familiar with either recent or distant Alaska history will be unsurprised. It was the woman who died.
Rose Dawn was a stage name, coincidentally also a popular brand of nylons back then. Rosemary Niedzwiecki was born in 1938 in San Diego and grew up there, attending Abraham Lincoln High School. She lived to sing, made it her profession, even at a young age establishing herself as a traveling act in destinations like Las Vegas. Meanwhile, as Anchorage boomed in the 1940s through 1950s, waves of new bars and clubs opened here, each viciously competing with the others for the right to raid local wallets. And one way they attracted business was by importing Lower 48 talent as B-girls, dancers and singers. As of November 1961, Rose Dawn was just 23 years old, a dark-eyed beauty working a standing gig for Leo’s Supper Club at the Forest Park Country Club. Forest Park was a golf course, just west of what is now the Westchester Lagoon, then the Chester Creek mudflats.
Club 210 opened in 1956, the name seemingly a bowling reference, as their address was 224 E. Fifth Ave. Joseph Miljas was an original co-owner. Miljas (1913-1979), also known as Papa Joe, later owned the notorious Spenard Road strip club PJ’s, hence the meaning behind those two letters. “Chick” Adams was born in Kentucky and had been in Anchorage for around a decade as of 1961. The smaller bars and clubs then took much of their personality from their owners, who were frequently the bartenders as well. So, the bar was also called “Chick n’ Joes,” or the place to drink with “Chic.” Consistent spelling was hardly a crucial step in getting drunk.
The fateful morning, Nov. 20, 1961, Dawn was unwinding after another grinding performance, verbally dancing with Adams in that expected pattern of bartender and unloading patron. She may have wondered, aloud or otherwise, about the progression or lack thereof in her career. Anchorage clubs in those days tended to pay well but weren’t the sort of prestige gigs that could advance a singer onwards and upwards. No one outside Alaska cared if you headlined the Buckaroo or Last Chance or even Leo’s Supper Club. Perhaps, just perhaps, that is why Dawn was the last woman in the last bar still open on a crisp, chilly night.
Two young men conspired at a table away from the bar, nursing drunks, both of them edgy and uncertain, eyes drifting about to soak in the details. Gerald Lee Cox and Terrance Wayne Brady were both 22 and residents at the Chinook Hotel. Nearing 5 a.m., the last customer besides themselves and Dawn left, prompting Cox and Brady to huddle around the bar. Cox stood and moved as if toward the restroom, only to turn around suddenly while holding an automatic pistol. “My friend wants to see how well you’ve done tonight,” the robber declared.
Cox guarded Dawn and Adams while Brady ransacked the cash register. It had been a solid night at the bar, producing a $250 score, roughly $2,700 in 2025, not counting the hundreds more in checks left behind. But the robbers wanted more. “You got any dough besides what’s in here?” they asked. Adams retorted, “You think I’d keep all that dough in the register if I had a safe?”
A storage room lay behind the bar, cold and drafty. Cox and Brady escorted Dawn and Adams into the back. They demanded Adams’ keys. “What for,” replied the barkeep. “So, I can lock the joint up when we leave,” replied one of the robbers. “We don’t want anybody to come stumbling in here and find you until we’ve had a chance to get away.” Adams grimaced at a sudden realization. His partner wouldn’t arrive to open the bar until 10, nearly five hours later, which should be enough time to let the criminals slip town. Still, he stared at their faces, willing their features into his memory. If given the chance, he wanted to remember them.
Seeing Dawn shiver, Adams argued, “Give the girl a break and let her have her coat. It gets damn cold back here.” One of the thieves responded ominously: “You’ll never feel it.” Then they struck the bartender over the head with a liquor bottle. He swayed toward the floor, dazed, then lost consciousness.
When Adams woke, he was gnawing on a cord wrapped around his head and pulled through his mouth. One of the bandits was trying to choke him to death. Nonetheless, he could see Dawn sprawled nearby, unmoving. As he struggled, two shots rang out in the small room. One passed through Adams’ neck. The other deflected off his skull and lodged near the junction with the spine. Of course, doctors later figured out all those specific details. As far as the robbers could tell, they’d shot Adams twice in the back of the head to massive crimson effect on the surroundings.
Adams was understandably woozy, in shock from the experience and wounds. Still, he recalled one of them talking, “Let’s get out of here. I got him right in the back of the head that time.” In one moment, they were there, standing over him, and in the next they were gone. Pained and growing cold, Adams scrabbled on the floor, moved himself by will toward a phone. With a heroic effort, he managed a single phone call for help, thereafter sinking back to the floor to await whatever came next. In his shaken daze, he had called the fire department, which dispatched an ambulance and subsequently contacted the police.
For a few minutes, Anchorage was shut down as the police sought to close off avenues of escape. They might not have bothered. Cox and Brady were arrested a few minutes later, just five blocks away from Club 210, albeit without gun or cash. They made for a rather conspicuous pair, two young men walking together around a freezing Anchorage at 5 in the morning right after two young men robbed a bar in the immediate vicinity. The officers on duty accomplished no incredible feat of policing when they put that particular two and two together. Because of fresh snow, it took a few days of searching, but the gun was eventually found tossed down an alley and the cash tucked away on a roof.
Given their age, both men had surprisingly lengthy rap sheets, but Cox in particular was well known to local law enforcement. In March 1960, he was arrested for robbing the Sears Roebuck store in Mountain View. After posting bail, he was arrested again that same day for an unconnected robbery. He faced additional charges after attempting to escape the local federal jail that May. In the summer of 1961, he robbed the Anchorage Transit System bus garage and was out on $10,000 bail at the very time he robbed Club 210.
When the ambulance arrived, Dawn was already dead. She had also been shot twice, once in the leg and again in the back of her head. Adams was alive but in serious condition. Doctors were unsure whether he would survive. A day later, he surprisingly improved and was able to identify Cox and Brady from his hospital bed.
As Adams continued to recover, establishing further clearance between himself and the grave, the outcome for the entire affair was carved deeper into stone. An injured living witness meant certainty, in the courts and for the imprisonment to come. There would be no clever legal maneuvers, no surprises. Cox, at least, understood this reality. At his arraignment, he told the judge, “Could you please appoint me (an attorney) so that I can begin proceedings and get this over with.” The waiting is the hardest part, he surely thought. Time to get on with whatever is next.
Adams indeed appeared at their preliminary hearing, pale but sure as he dramatically pointed out the killers, as if from a movie. After their indictments, Cox and Brady shaved a few visits to the courthouse off their lives and pleaded guilty. Their court-appointed attorneys — Ted Stevens represented Brady — argued for 20-year sentences, but Judge James Fitzgerald ordered life imprisonment without recommendation or parole. Fitzgerald described the murder as a “cruel and brutal killing, done with abandoned heart.”
The entire affair was featured in the April 1962 issue of “Official Detective Stories,” one of many pulpy true crime magazines then popular. “Without the Gun and the Money” appeared alongside other luridly titled articles, such as “Who Would Want to Bomb Congressman Green,” “Maybe Donna Had Too Many Friends,” “Human Bait for the Telephone Wolf,” and “I Want to Watch You Kill Me.”
Detective Earl Hibpshman worked the Club 210 case. An article on his 1974 retirement described the pulpy piece as “overdramatized, the old-timers say, and made Hibpshman and others who worked the case look like Columbo, Mike Hammer, and Sherlock Holmes rolled into one.”
Rose Dawn — Rosemary Niedzwiecki — was buried back in her hometown, at San Diego’s Holy Cross Cemetery. Alaska was her undoing, the end to any further career or fame. Or simply life. Alaska in general and Anchorage specifically are often touted as among the most dangerous places in the country for women, what with the dire rates of violence against women here. There are no trustworthy statistics for Alaska from the time of Rose Dawn’s brief tenure, but there is likewise nothing to suggest that it was a better reality. Again and again, a lesson learned, crime is no recent innovation in Anchorage.
[Trapped: The case of the 1951 Interior Alaska cabin fever murder that was solved and then retried]
[The great snoring assault of 1953 Anchorage and other snoring history]
In exchange for living in what is perhaps the country’s most beautiful state, Alaskans sometimes have to do without: professional sports teams, Trader Joe’s and, well, sunlight for half the year. But we make up for it with the Iditarod, reindeer sausages and chasing the aurora borealis. In other words, we often have to make our own fun. And by “fun” I mean “beer.” Those words are interchangeable, right?
Beer is a big part of life for Alaskans. We hike with it, camp with it, boat with it, cook with it and pair it with foods like the stuffiest of sommeliers. We throw it monthly birthday parties like the First Tap events at Broken Tooth Brewing Co. (otherwise known as Bear Tooth Theatrepub and Moose’s Tooth Pub & Pizzeria), complete with national musical acts like Modest Mouse, Clinton Fearon, and Norah Jones. We even occasionally do yoga with it (at downtown’s Williwaw Social). In other words, we take it everywhere and we take it seriously.
Beers from the state’s biggest brewery, Alaskan Brewing Co. based in Juneau, might already be in your refrigerator if you live in one of the 25 states where it’s available. Established in 1986 by Marcy and Geoff Larson, it was the 67th independent brewery to open in the country. With a steady line of signature brews, including their most recent “Wildness” beer, it’s the most well-established of all the state’s breweries. Expect seasonal specialties that incorporate ingredients like cranberries, raspberries, locally roasted coffee, locally grown white wheat from the Matanuska-Susitna area and even Alaska spruce tips. Ubiquitous around Alaska, this is our Papa Beer, if you will (I’ll show myself out).
But Alaskan Brewing is just one out of the more-than 50 breweries, distilleries, meaderies and cideries in the state (for an excellent list visit brewersguildofalaska.org). And while almost half of them are in Anchorage or within a short drive of our state’s largest city (including the relatively populous communities of Girdwood, Eagle River, Palmer and Wasilla), some of our most remote ports of call and tiniest towns are also in on the brewing action (I’m looking at you, Cooper Landing Brewing Company in Cooper Landing, population 231).
The ever-expanding Denali Brewing Co. in Talkeetna (population 997) may be a small-town hero, but it’s anything but small. Their four signature beers — Mother Ale, Chuli Stout, Single Engine Red and the ever-popular Twister Creek IPA, as well seasonal brews like Slow Down Brown and Flag Stop Milepost #3 — are year-round mainstays of summer barbecues and winter bonfires around the state.
This brewery is also home to the more recently established Alaska Cider Works, Alaska Meadery (featuring “Razzery,” a mead made with raspberries, sour cherries and apples) and Denali Spirits (featuring vodka, gin, whiskey, and “smoke” whiskey), because when you’ve fermented one, why not ferment them all?
(Denali Spirits’ canned cocktails, especially their blueberry mojito, have been so popular in Anchorage that at one time there was a Facebook page largely dedicated to tracking them down. Luckily, supply has since caught up with demand.)
Some breweries are even more remote. Ports of call and island hopping here can be one way to get your fill of hops. Breweries can be found in Ketchikan (Bawden Street Brewing Co.), Kodiak (Kodiak Island Brewing & Still, Double Shovel Kodiak Cidery, and Olds River Inn), Homer (Homer Brewing Co. and Grace Ridge Brewing Co. for beer, and you can also check out Sweetgale Meadworks & Cider House for hard cider and locally sourced meads featuring ingredients like nagoonberry), Sitka (Harbor Mountain Brewing), Seward (Seward Brewing Co. and Stoney Creek Brewhouse), Valdez (Valdez Brewing and Growler Bay Brewing), and Skagway (Klondike Brewing Co. and Skagway Brewing Co.).
Of course, many trips to Alaska begin and end in Anchorage. And if, during your travels, you’ve foolishly left some beers untasted, you can make up for lost time in our state’s biggest city which boasts — let’s face it — a ridiculous number of exceptional craft breweries.
Downtown’s Glacier Brewhouse specializes in oak-aged English and American West Coast-style beers, 13 of them, from blondes to stouts. Beneath the floor of the Brewhouse is a “Wall of Wood” comprised of casks of special release beers that are conditioned in oak barrels once used to age wine and bourbon. The history of the oak imparts “mother tongue” flavor characteristics, like vanilla and coconut, into these limited edition brews. Opt for one of these unique beers or choose from their flagship choices like raspberry wheat, oatmeal stout, imperial blonde, Bavarian hefeweizen or a flight that includes them all.
Down the street is 49th State Brewing Co., which expanded into Anchorage from its original location in Healy, at the edge of Denali National Park and Preserve. If you are unable to visit their flagship location, where you can sip beer while playing bocce or horseshoes on the lawn, you can catch up with them here. There’s a unique selection that includes beers like Smok, a smoked lager, as well as seasonal offerings like the Tiger’s Blood Sour, an homage to shave ice described as ”ferociously fruity.” Or there’s “Apple Fritter Ale,” with hints of cinnamon, icing, caramel, and vanilla. This location also boasts some of the best views in Anchorage and an expansive outdoor rooftop patio.
Just about all of the full-service restaurants in downtown Anchorage proudly feature some variety of Alaskan beers. In the heart of downtown, Humpy’s Great Alaskan Alehouse prides itself on a huge selection of beers, both international and local. Tent City Taphouse offers a diverse and carefully curated list of 24 rotating local brews, including their house beer, Tent City Tangerine IPA brewed by Glacier Brewhouse. Tent City regularly hosts “Taste of the North” beer dinners featuring Alaskan brewers. One, in collaboration with Grace Ridge Brewing Company, featured smoked salmon canapes with Black Pepper IPA, classic beef Wellington with an Oystercatcher stout and roasted honey lamb chops with a Winter Cranberry Ale.
If you have transportation around the city, treat yourself to a brewery tasting-room tour. Found in unassuming little side streets in the more industrial areas of Anchorage, some of our best beers can be sipped and savored at the source. Finding these funky little spots can feel like being invited to a secret party. And it’s a glimpse into Anchorage’s most authentic beer culture.
In midtown, Onsite Brewing Co. has unique, small-batch brews in a funky relaxed environment. Further south, King Street Brewing Co., Turnagain Brewing, Cynosure Brewing, Magnetic North Brewing Company, Brewerks, and one of our newest, Ship Creek Brewing Company are all within a stone’s throw of one another. If you’re lucky, you might run into one of Anchorage’s popular food trucks parked outside, so you’ll have something to wash down with your flights. Depending on the day, you might find reindeer sausages, pad Thai, cheesesteaks or pupusas. On the weekends, Anchorage Brewing Company features a top-notch in-house pop-up restaurant, called Familia, with a rotating menu featuring local Alaskan ingredients.
One of the newest and furthest south breweries, while still in the Anchorage bowl, is Raven’s Ring Brewing Company, which is a brewery/winery and meadery. From a traditional IPA to a Concorde grape wine called Grape Juice to a rotating Vintner’s pour like Sweet Peach Jalapeno mead, this ambitious operation is challenging the notion that you can’t please everyone.
Other Anchorage points of interest for non-hoppy but still home-grown adult beverages include Anchorage Distillery, Zip Kombucha, Double Shovel Cidery and Hive Mind Meadery.
If your travels are over and you still haven’t had your fill, check out the Silver Gulch Brewing & Bottling Co. inside Terminal C at the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport on your way out of town. An offshoot of the flagship Silver Gulch brewery in Fox, Alaska (about 10 miles north of Fairbanks), this location has a bar and restaurant, and a retail shop carrying growlers of their own brews as well as those of other Alaskan brewers and distillers. Last-minute souvenir shopping never tasted so good.
Before you start your great Northern beer safari, bear in mind that tasting rooms often have limited and varying hours, so always double-check before planning a visit.
Whether your travels take you to fine-dining restaurants, low-key alehouses or even rustic cabins in the woods, make like an Alaskan and fuel your adventures with one of our beloved, home-grown brews. When in Alaska, drink as the Alaskans do.
Mara Severin is a food writer who writes about restaurants in Southcentral Alaska for the Anchorage Daily News.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Coast Guard announced Thursday that the first two Arctic Security Cutters will be homeported in the State of Alaska. Anticipating delivery of the first Arctic Security Cutters by the end of 2028, the Coast Guard has begun planning to ensure necessary infrastructure and support are in place to receive two icebreakers. Ensuring these vessels are supported by trained and ready crews, and ready homeport facilities including housing, will be essential to delivering full, enduring operational capability required to meet emerging Arctic security challenges.
“Homeporting these two Arctic Security Cutters in Alaska is a decisive step forward in securing America’s Arctic frontier,” said Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin. “I want to thank President Trump for his bold leadership and vision in directing this critical investment, as well as Senator Sullivan and the entire Alaskan Congressional delegation for championing the funding that made these icebreakers possible. These vessels will deliver the enduring operational presence our nation needs to protect sovereignty, deter foreign adversaries, and safeguard vital resources for the American people..”
The homeporting of the first two Arctic Security Cutters in Alaska builds on the historic expansion of the Coast Guard’s icebreaker fleet and underscores an unprecedented investment in the Arctic. This announcement marks a national milestone in U.S. Arctic capability, following contract awards for up to 11 Arctic Security Cutters. Fueled by $3.5 billion in funding in the Fiscal Year 2025 Reconciliation Bill and facilitated by a groundbreaking Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the United States and Finland in October 2025, the acquisition of Arctic Security Cutters will fulfill President Trump’s directive to rapidly deliver America’s newest icebreaker fleet.
“Homeporting Arctic Security Cutters in Alaska underscores the United States’ leadership as a maritime power in the Arctic,” said Adm. Kevin E. Lunday, commandant of the Coast Guard. “By strategically positioning these state-of-the-art icebreakers in Alaska, the Coast Guard will maximize our ability to defend our northern border and approaches, while reinforcing America’s maritime dominance in a crucial region of strategic importance.”
Through contract awards to Rauma Marine Constructions Oy of Rauma, Finland, Bollinger Shipyards Lockport, L.L.C., and Davie Defense, Inc. of Vienna, VA, the U.S. will immediately benefit from our Finnish partners’ icebreaker expertise while coordinating the onshoring of that expertise and shipbuilding to the United States. Under the MOU, Finland will construct up to four ASCs for the U.S Coast Guard. U.S. shipyards will build and deliver up to seven additional ASCs. Delivery of the first Arctic Security Cutters is expected by the end of 2028.
Arctic Security Cutters will form the backbone of a revitalized U.S. icebreaker fleet, strengthening American maritime dominance in the Arctic. Fielding specialized capabilities, these icebreakers will defend U.S. sovereignty, secure critical shipping lanes, protect energy and mineral resources, and counter foreign malign influence in the Arctic region. A robust icebreaker fleet will enable the Coast Guard to control, secure and defend U.S. Alaskan borders and Arctic maritime approaches, facilitate maritime commerce vital to economic prosperity and strategic mobility, and respond to crises and contingencies in the region.
Acquisition of Arctic Security Cutters supports the Coast Guard’s ongoing modernization, through which the Service is transforming into a more agile, capable and responsive fighting force.
Memorandum on ASC Homeporting
###
Alaska
‘We never forgot her’: Friends, family of longtime Alaska teacher gather for 100th birthday celebration
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Phyllis Sullivan has certainly led a life worth celebrating.
Born in 1926, Sullivan moved to Alaska with her husband and three children in 1959 to teach, first in the village of Kwethluk in Western Alaska and later at Wendler and Mears Middle Schools in Anchorage.
All the while, she left strong impressions with countless students and acquaintances, some of whom gathered in the basement of Anchor Park United Methodist Church in Anchorage Saturday to celebrate Sullivan’s century of life.
“Education has been the primary thing in her entire life,” her son Dennis Sullivan said. “She’s always been a school teacher and she’s been one of the sweetest people in the entire world.”
As a slideshow featuring vintage photos from her life and time in Alaska played, Phyllis, wheelchair-bound but high in spirit, stopped to chat with every new person who entered the room, some of whom she hadn’t seen in years.
“It’s impressive that this many people are here,” she said. “That’s very encouraging. Makes me think maybe I did something right along the way.”
Aside from family members, most visitors were there because of the impression Phyllis Sullivan left on them during her many years in the classroom.
“She gave us this one assignment: to memorize a poem,” former Mears student Tina Arend recalled. She said Phyllis Sullivan was her 8th grade English teacher.
“And when she gave us the assignment, she said, ‘I’ve had students come back many, many, many years later and recite the poem to me.’ And we actually still remember the poem,” Arend said of her and her husband, who was also in attendance. They both went on to become teachers at Mears as well.
Matthew Nicolai, whom Phyllis Sullivan taught in Kwethluk, has similarly fond memories.
“The Bureau had ordered that teachers do corporal punishment for speaking Yup’ik,” Nicolai remembered. “Even though we spoke Yup’ik, she never did that, never cracked our hands. Other teachers did, but not her. That’s why we never forgot her.”
In addition to teaching, Phyllis Sullivan also found time to open her home to those in need. She and her husband once took in a family with seven kids who had been displaced by flooding in Fairbanks in 1967.
“It touched our heart because they bought us a lot of stuff that we needed because we lost a lot of stuff during the flood,” David Solomon, one of those seven kids, said. “We stayed there for over three years.”
Phyllis Sullivan said she is enjoying life and is doing fine.
“My mother made it to 103,” she said. “So, I’ve got a while yet.”
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