This is Jeff, originally from North Dakota but now Anchorage, who works Otis Elevators. He flew the first leg of my trip to Greenland with me, from Anchorage to Minneapolis/St. Paul. A lady from Texas who thinks so highly of Sarah Palin that during her visit to Alaska she took a trip special to Wasilla so that she could photograph her house, asked him how long he had lived in Alaska. Sixteen years, he answered. “Do you like Alaska?” she asked. “Well, I’ve been here 16 years, so I guess I do.” He likes to get out in the country to hunt and fish, but (and I do not understand this at all) sometimes the mountains and the trees cause him to feel claustrophobic and he has to go back to North Dakota for a couple of weeks and soak up all that flat country. He works for Otis Elevators and hopes to soon go to Barrow to install the elevators in the new hospital being built there. He has never been to Barrow before, but is excited for the chance.
Update - August 26, 2010: I have received a comment from a grandmother that has convinced me that I must delete the second part of this post and all comments related to it. I am in a big gathering, doing this update with my thumbs on my iPhone. I will better explain later.
Update 2 - August 26, 2010: To better explain, this post originally included images and stories of two people that I met enroute from Anchorage - Minneapolis - Amsterdam -Copenhagen, where I overnighted before continuing on to Nuuk, Greenland. That is something that I enjoy doing - getting images and little stories of people that I meet along the way as I travel here and there.
I have removed the second, which included two images and a story about the fellow that sat next to me between Minneapolis and Amsterdam. He was quiet for most of the trip, but in the final hour he told me a very compelling story that began in a torture horse operated by agents of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, then moved on to Minneapolis where he told me had fallen in love, married, that he and his wife had two children but that she had been killed in the infamous bridge collapse.
The story was so compelling that I asked if he would mind if I put it on my blog. He said that would be fine.
In retrospect, I should have got on Google to see what kind of news reports I might find regarding his story, but I reached Copenhagen in a state of extreme exhaustion - for I had been exhausted before I left Wasilla and had not got even one minutes sleep on a trip that took over 24 hours total. I put up a short post before I went to bed. After I got up the next morning, I wanted to get the story up before I moved on, so I took the man on the plane at his word and wrote it.
Later, a commenter who had seen the story in the news said that the man and his FORMER wife had been divorced at the time of her death. A couple of other questions and challenges to the facts as he had presented them to me and I had written were raised.
Then today, I received a comment from a woman who identified herself as the grandmother of the two boys. She stated that the boys were not the children of the man who had sat next to me on the flight and made some serious allegations as to how he had treated those boys during the very short time that he had been married to her mother.
Given those allegations, I decided it best that I just pull his story, pictures, and all comment related to it. To the grandmother and all those that the story may have brought pain to, I apologize.
Grandmother of the boys, may you and all who have been impacted by this terrible tragedy find peace.