This is Tongass Voices, a series from KTOO sharing weekly perspectives from the homelands of the Áak’w Kwáan and beyond.
Malin Babcock, treasurer of the Gastineau Historical Society, has lived in Juneau for more than 80 years. Her personal history is deeply intertwined with the history of the city and the state.
From the traumatic loss of her grandparents in Juneau’s 1936 landslide, to her long career studying salmon across the state, Babcock reflects on her life in Southeast Alaska.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Malin Babcock: Well, my name is Malin Babcock, and my grandparents Hugo and Hilja Malin Peterson were both killed in the building. And my mother who was Lillian Peterson Babcock survived.
She was probably one of the first ones that was rescued, because she was on the south end of the slide and right at the very edge when she was hit by the mudslide coming down. And it was the worst disaster that has ever occurred within the City and Borough of Juneau.
My mother was in the hospital for two weeks and then released from the hospital. She talked about it very rarely.
My grandparents were Finnish immigrants. There’s a lot of stoicism that goes throughout that culture. So they emigrated to Juneau late in 1913. My uncle Elmer, and my grandfather were miners, and they both worked for the AJ Mine.
My mother was born on November 9th of 1914, and grew up here, went through high school here. And she obtained a secretarial job with a fella by the name of Frank DuFresne, who was the head of the Alaska Fish Commission at that time. And he did all the arrangement for the funeral and everything else for her parents, which was absolutely amazing.
She later married of fella by the name of Doug Babcock, my dad, who was an early member of the Territorial Sportsmen, plus being one of the first Taku River Rats. And he notably helped in some of the early experimentation for salmon and salmon eggs that led to DIPAC.
Years later – years later – when I went to school at Oregon State and then up to Fairbanks for my master’s degree, where I took ichthyology and fisheries courses, our textbook was by Frank DuFresne. And it was called Alaska Fishes. I mean, it’s absolutely amazing, the webs that we turn that we find out later, you know, and that end up surprising you.
So I went to work at the Auke Bay Lab in 1969. There were not many women biologists, I think there were two when I started to work there. And I spent many, many a summer up in King Salmon in Bristol Bay. And I spent seven years walking the beaches of Prince William Sound working with with the effects of hydrocarbons after the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Anyway, it was just kind of a neat career and I’m very proud of myself.
