Jim Shook: Statewide Trooper

I was born in Glendale California in 1941. WW2 started, I must have upset someone. My mother was Rosie the Riveter making fighter planes and dad was a welder making navy ships during the war. My parents then moved to Stockton California where my dad worked in a warehouse. He always wanted to come to Alaska and one day he noticed an ad on the wall for an opening in his job description at Fort Richardson and that was the end of it. We bought a brand new 53 GMC pick-up truck. Mom, dad, my sister and I got in the front seat with our dog and up the Alcan we came.

It took two weeks. The road wasn’t in good shape. A lot of the streams and rivers didn’t have bridges  so you were forging streams and trying to...

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