Henry Kroll                                         

Soldotna, Alaska 99669

4/20/18

                                                HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF

I am running for State Representative District 31 Kasilof, Homer and Seldovia. I was born in Seldovia attended U of A, Sheldon Jackson University and University of Corpus Christi. I fished king crab 23 years in lower Cook Inlet and Kodiak delivering over three million pounds into Homer and Seldovia and an equal amount of tanner crab. In addition I tendered more than ten-million pounds of salmon into Seldovia, Homer and Kenai. I ferried ships from Seattle to Alaska.

My father Henry Kroll came to Alaska in the late 1920's. While trapping the Copper River Flats near Cordova he caught three live wolverines and sold them to Dock Chase for $900 apiece. He used the money to buy a plane in Marysville, Washington. After one flying lesson he flew to Alaska. He could land on mountain tops and got contracts from the mines to haul dynamite. His plane was too small to keep up with the demand so he gave the contracts to Bob Reeve. Henry would put the dynamite in gunny sacks and drop it on a side hill. Bob Reeve hired Bill Eagan was 16 at the time. Henry tied a rope around his waist as a safety precaution so he wouldn’t fall out while pushing the 100-pound sacks of dynamite out of Bob Reeve's Fairchild 51. Bill Eagan later became Alaska’s first State Governor. Bob Reeve’s Fairchild 51 and my father’s Curtiss Wright Jr. is in the Wasilla Museum.

After Roosevelt stopped all gold mining in 1933 Henry flew to Seldovia. Henry was the first to land a plane in Seldovia and was hired by US Marshal, Jack Fields. Bob Reeve flew for the Army at Fairbanks. After the war Bob and Tilly Reeve formed Reeve Aleutian Airlines. 

December 7th 1942 my parents were living in a two story apartment. My father happened to turn on his Zenith Transoceanic radio to hear a live broadcast direct from Honolulu Hawaii of bombs being dropped on Pearl Harbor. My mother ran downstairs to get Jack and Susan English who was Seldovia’s Post Master. They were the first people to know we were at war. The news spread like wildfire. Half of the town gather their guns and camping gear and climbed the mountain behind the town to fend off an impending Japanese invasion. After a months passed they came back to town all tired, cold, dirty and hungry.

During WWII there was food rationing in Alaska. The feds issued script, which was used to buy a little rice, sugar and flower at the store. People had to live off wild fish and game. I remember my folks talking about that. Everything was in short supply because the war. The government took everything for the war effort. My father needed lumber to build a house so he rode on a fishing boat to Seattle to buy secondhand sawmill parts to build a sawmill.

During World War II farmers in the lower 48 didn't have gasoline to run their tractors. Most of the young men were drafted into the army to fight Japs or Germans. The old folks had to figure out new ways to grow food. The federal Government distributed plans to build gassifiers so the farmers could power their tractors with wood chips. Wood smoke contains ethanol and methane. The smoke is filtered and ducted to the carburetor with a long hose. I have a copy of the WWII gassifier plans.

My mother used to cut the ends out of tin cans and flatten them with her foot to put into metal collection bins. At school, we kids were told to save all their foil gum wrappers to make bullets to shoot Japanese. The metal was to be used to make guns and bombs. Tons of scrap metal were collected to make the people feel they were contributing to the war effort. There were no facilities to process all that metal. They put it on a barge and dumped it in the ocean 110-miles southeast of Kodiak City. That same military dumping area is clearly marked on the marine charts today. You don't want to set your halibut ground line in that area for fear of snagging an old mine. I know because fished black cod west of that disposal area. 

Now if we get into a war or meteor hits the lower 48 or an Electro Magnetic Pulse from the sun or A-bomb detonated over the lower states or Yellowstone Caldera erupts or even a terrorist Jihad could disrupt most food production. Alaskans would be in big trouble. There are a lot more people living in Alaska now than there was during WWII. Only two percent of the food we eat in Alaska is grown in Alaska. Our State government put us in this very dangerous position by not abiding by the “Constitution Article VIII Natural Resources § 1. Statement of Policy: It is the policy of the State to encourage the settlement of its land and the development of its resources by making them available for maximum use consistent with the public interest.” One entire generation has passed with no action on this “POLICY.”

Nowadays we have four-wheel-drive tractors and four-wheelers making it much easier to homestead land than the pioneers of the 1940’s. I know because my father and I staked a Tuxedni Bay homestead in 1954. Many kids already own ATV’s to access remote parcels of land.

Government leaders of the past sold the resources to get big money and they used most of that money to build government. Now they want to take the people’s money and land to fund more government. This is unsustainable. We need to finish the road to Nome that was surveyed in 1944 to triple tourism. Then we need to get more land into private hands. Our Government has ignored the safety of the public with regard to food production. We need to make Alaska self-sufficient.”

I’m running for “State office because you can’t have a government without a CONSTITUTION. Some state officials are not abiding by their Constitutional oaths! Our children are getting criminal records because they are on the street instead of learning to farm. Hiring more police isn’t going to solve the crime problem. The police are part of the problem. Big government = more police = less freedom= more taxes and fees. Small government = more freedom less cost. It’s up to you. Vote!

Our State Constitution promised to get land to people. You can’t have freedom without land ownership. Our grandchildren have no future without land ownership. Only 1% of the land in Alaska is privately owned and only 2% of the food we eat is grown in Alaska. What if a WAR destroys farming in the lower 48? Self-sufficiency is the most important thing right now. Our children and grandchildren need to learn how to tend animals and grow food crops. This is the best kind of education.

The solution: check box on PFD to get one acre of land. You get one acre and the money would stay in the Permanent Fund. If it is Borough land the PFD money would go to the Borough. A family of ten could get 10 acres. After ten years they could have 100 acres. Or they could get five acres and five dividend checks. Getting more land into private hands would solve the Borough’s problems with a larger tax base and we would have increased food production.

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I don't think you can solve the crime problem right away because some of it relates to the economy. Hiring more police and putting more people in jail will only put more of a drain on the state budget. If we fix the economy by getting our kids off the street away from the temptations of drugs and have them take care of livestock and own land it will build a better way of life for everybody and also solve the food problem. We have to alter the knee jerk reaction proposed by hiring more cops. It doesn't work. If you read my book, MAKE ALASKA GREAT AGAIN the first two chapters cut and pasted off the internet clearly illuminates what's wrong with hiring more police.