Sky Valley Messenger

What does Good Friday mean to you? To many it marks the day Jesus was crucified, followed by three days and then his resurrection, Easter Sunday. Odd, a day that represents the crucifixion, the suffering, and the death of Jesus, the son of God, is called “Good”. The goodness obviously comes from his resurrection three days later, but really, I think that the day could be called many other things besides “good”.

For Jews this day marks the Passover, the day of freedom from Egypt. In short, Good Friday is a holy day for many millions around the world.

Good Friday is sometimes referred to as Black Friday, a name I could more relate to when at the age of nine years old.

Good Friday, March 27, 1964 started out as a great day, after all, it was the last day of the school week. There were several other  reasons to feel good about this day, it was sunny, but cold, after all, Anchorage, Alaska is still cold in March, with plenty of snow still on the ground. Easter Sunday was three days away. Life was good on Good Friday, and then it wasn’t. At 5:36 P.M. I was just arriving at the back door of our home, after visiting with friends in our neighborhood. I was just reaching for the door when the ground began to shake, it was like huge waves of shaking. I tried to stay on my feet but soon realized that I couldn’t, so I just sat down on the ground right where I was standing. The shaking seemed to go on for ever ( I would later learn that it went on for over four minutes.) I had never experienced an earthquake before, and didn’t realize at that moment that that is what was happening. While sitting on the ground I began to wonder what was causing the ground to shake so terribly. My mind raced for some explanation. My brother and I slept in the basement, near a large furnace, we often imagined our fate should it ever blow up. Is that what had happened, did the furnace blow up? Mom and Dad were at work, but my brother and two sisters were in the house. I became frantic in my imagination, were they alright? The ground had not stop shaking when I jumped up and through open the door. I was nearly knocked over by our three dogs bursting out the door, Lady, Beauty, and Vicky, two Siberian huskies and a Doberman Pincher. they had been shut inside the mud room. The mud room was located at the top of the stares that led down to the basement, while another door led into the house. I couldn’t see anything looking down into the basement but darkness. After the stampeding dogs got past me, and with the shaking nearly stopped, I reached the door leading into the house proper. I through open that door and yelled, “Is everyone OK?” No answer came back to me, just silence, and a scene that I would never forget. Behind that first door was the kitchen, what was left of it. There was broken glass everywhere. Everything that was in a cupboard was now on the floor. I continued through the kitchen and into the living room, still hollering for my siblings. Like the kitchen the living room was a shambles, even the T.V. , with an open, built in stereo had fallen onto it’s face, nothing was upright. All that could be seen in a flash, but still no answer from my brother and sisters. The front door to the house was located on the far end of the living room. The door was flung wide open. I made my way through the ruble and out the door where I found my sisters and brother standing in the snow. Out of fear they had fled the house so rapidly that they didn’t have time to put on shoes, and were now huddled together, crying hysterically, not knowing what was happening or what to do, too afraid to return into the house. Thankfully, no one was hurt.

It is strange what children think when faced with a disaster that they don’t understand and can’t begin to . To us all we could see was our home. We had no idea that we had just experienced the largest  earthquake recorded in history, nor the extent of the damage caused through out the state and beyond. To us it was just our home. Moments after I joined my siblings a neighbor came running across the street. Out of breath, the man ask if we were alright, we assured him that we were, but now we had a much larger concern. In unison we told him that we were going to be in so much trouble from mom and dad when they get home and see what a mess the house is. We did not believe him when he said that they would understand and not be upset. As we turned to go back into the house, the sky had clouded up and a lite snow began to fall.

That was the beginning of Good Friday, 1964, and there would be no Easter Sunday for us or for anyone in the State of Alaska this year.

The Aftershock

It is important to note the sheer power of this earthquake. It was measured at 9.2-9.3 megathrust, equivalent to “400 times the total [energy] of all nuclear bombs ever exploded” until that time. It raised the land over 30 feet in some places. In addition it was followed by over 560 aftershocks and a tsunami wave run-up that was as high as 170 feet. The primary quake lasted for an astonishing four minutes and 38 seconds.

Meanwhile

While I and my siblings were experiencing the quake so were our parents. Mom worked in some capacity for the State of Alaska. She was a secretary, that was all that I knew about her job. Dad owned his own car shop, where he repaired cars and also built cars that he and mom raced on the Alaskan circuit. Mom had gotten off work at 5 p.m., and had stopped at the shop to visit Dad on the way home. The shop was only a few blocks from where we lived. At the time of the quake Dad had a car on a hoist about seven feet in the air while working underneath it. Mom was standing under the car talking to him when the car started rocking back and forth. Mom attempted to get out from underneath the car but was knocked in the head by the swaying car, knocking her to the ground back under the car. She got up only to meet the same fate. On the third attempt she was able to escape the swaying car with Dad and they got out of the garage. Strangely the car never fell off the hoist.

My memory is completely lost as to mom and dad’s arrival home, despite that lack of recollection I am certain that we were not in trouble over the state of the house, which must have been a great relief. I would have remembered if it were otherwise.

Other than the house being a complete mess, it was relatively undamaged, shaken but not broken. Many homes were uninhabitable, but somehow most of our neighborhood was unscathed. Still there was no water or electricity, so we were packed up and hauled to some friends of mom and dad’s, where we all stayed for a few days. To us kids it was now just one big adventure, a long sleep-over. They had children our age, so life was great. During the day we, (kids) would all walk around the neighborhood and look at all the damaged homes. We had no sense of how devastating the situation was because we were relatively untouched by the gravity of the disaster. Many lives were lost and the city was all but destroyed, with some downtown buildings completely swallowed by the shifting, and raising and falling of the ground, words and pictures can’t really describe how bad the destruction was.

What You Don’t Know

At nine years old I understood, kind of, what I was told about the earthquake, yet I didn’t really see what I was told, so I don’t think I really knew what had happened. I didn’t see death, and I didn’t see much of the destruction. I recall that when I first felt the swaying of the quake it reminded me of one of those nickle, (now fifty cent), rocking horses that you find in front of grocery stores, a fun ride, so I sat down and enjoyed it, until my little brain began to wonder what really was happening. I wasn’t in the house, so I didn’t share with my siblings the fear of seeing everything falling at the same time as the feeling of the ground moving, that which caused them to flee the house in terror. I never felt that, ever. That being said, the fact is, I was in the middle of the second worst earthquake ever recorded in the history of the world.

Find this in My Biography page