Cordovans said bon voyage to one of our dearest community members last week as Virginia Lacy set her sights on Shelton, Washington, to be closer to her son Michael Noonan and other family members.
Her sendoff at the Reluctant Fisherman Inn hosted by niece Crystal DeVille was a purely festive and fashionable occasion, especially when Virginia’s dear friend Margy Johnson arrived with a box full of special hats from her collection. All in attendance enjoyed and savored the tradition of wearing hats again and did not hesitate to mix and match!
For those of you who may not know about Virginia’s rich and exciting history in Cordova, here’s a little background pulled from her own writings and presentations that she made at various occasions for the Cordova Historical Society and the Alaska Historical Society.
From her paper: “More Than Subsistence:”
“I feel fortunate to have been raised with a multi-cultural background. My grandmother, Matrona, was half Russian, half Aleut, and was born in Nuchek, in Constantine Harbor, some 50 miles from Cordova, and was one of the daughters of Chief Makari Chimoviski. She married August Tiedeman, a German sailor who came to the United States in 1900 with the German navy.
“Tiedeman jumped ship in Baltimore, Maryland, joined the United States Navy and served in the Spanish American War. Upon discharge, he sailed on the Coast and Geodetic Survey ship McArthur which was mapping the Alaska coastline. The ship stopped in Nuchek for supplies and history repeated itself when he again jumped ship after meeting my grandmother. They lived in Nuchek for a few years and then moved to Ellamar where he worked for the copper mine.
“When the mine closed, they moved to Alice Cover, about 13 miles from Cordova, and raised blue foxes and four children – two boys and two girls. My grandfather was raised on a farm and one of the first things he did was put in a garden. He grew lettuce, cabbage, carrots, turnips rhubarb, potatoes, radishes, horseradish roots and huge raspberries.
“He had a compost pile and mixed seaweed and fish with it and made his version of fish fertilizer. We all gathered clamshells from the beach and he burned them to make a soil additive. The grandkids loved to sneak into the garden and pull the young carrots and we would bring along sugar to sprinkle on the leaf lettuce. We blamed the rabbits for raiding the garden, but I don’t think anyone believed us.
“My father was a Bulgarian immigrant who came to Alaska in 1916 and was working as a logger in Sheep Bay, very close to Alice Cove. My mother and her sister both married loggers. I was born at Alice Cove with my grandmother and an aunt as midwives and lived there until time for me to go to school in Cordova. My two brothers were born in the local hospital but we still spent holidays and summers at Alice Cove.
“At first as babies we were given spoonfuls of cod liver oil, but soon my parents switched to Scott’s Emulsion, which is a thick, white, syrupy mixture containing cod liver oil. A friend at our elder’s sewing circle says she thought it tasted awful but my brothers and I like it much better that the regular oil. It is still being made as I found it on the Internet. Now it is also made in orange and cherry flavors, which they say is more palatable than the original flavor.
“In addition to the garden, my grandfather raised pigs, goats, rabbits, and pigeons. And of course, we had the subsistence meats – Sitka black tail deer which had been planted in the area by the Forest Service and goats as well as ducks and geese. We always hoped that the goat would be a young one as the old ones were tough and strong tasting.
“Deer meat was preserved by canning with a gravy and made a delicious dinner served over rice or homemade noodles. I much preferred it to the porcupine stew which my grandmother would make occasionally. Our parents insisted that we try everything so thank goodness, the stew did not appear very often and we could get by with a few spoonful’s. The meat was very lean and stringy and kind of sweet tasting. Not as good as the young black bear that we sometimes had. Bear roasts were cooked with onions and caraway seeds and served with a rhubarb relish.”
Next week: Virginia will share details about KLIM, Rollmops and Gumboots!
