Alaska Film Archives

Alaska Review 18
Alaska Review 18
In the first segment, Mark O. Badger reports on the safety of air taxi operations across Alaska and the desire by many that the Federal Aviation Administration establish a more effective accident prevention program. Those interviewed include: Gene Morris, FAA accident prevention coordinator; Jim Dodson of the Air Carriers Association; Bill Bauman, air charter pilot; Jake Johnson, member of the Alaska Transportation Commission; and Dean Karrel of Alaska Travel Air. The program contains views of Alaska airports and airplane wreckage sites. The second segment, "The Homestead Initiative: Free Land?" is a repeat broadcast from another Alaska Review program (AAF-4959). The program also contains Public Service Announcements (PSAs) about forest fire prevention and carpooling.
[Jeanie of Alaska – original reel 1]
[Jeanie of Alaska – original reel 1]
This film includes scenes of Bud and Connie Helmericks traveling with their young daughter, Jeanie, throughout northern Alaska. The date of 1952 was confirmed by Jean (Jeanie Helmericks) Aspen in 2015. Detailed summary information was provided by the filmmakers. According to these notes, the films include scenes of Bud, Connie, and their daughter Jeanie (just turned two years old) walking toward their airplane; an airport in Montana; the family en route to Alaska; scenes from Takahula Lake, including the Helmericks’ log cabin home in the Brooks Range (Jeanie had never seen it before); Connie lifting Jeanie out of an airplane; Jeanie’s first view of the Arctic following a five-day flight from the U.S.; Jeanie wearing a factory-made brown alpaca parka with a hood; the next day, Jean on her tiny snowshoes watching her daddy cut a hole through the four-foot ice of the lake; Ice-fishing; Connie in rubber boots carrying Jean through water to get out on the lake ice in May; Bud gassing up the airplane; ice on Takahula Lake getting slushy and treacherous, and so they must go north because the airplane’s landing field on the frozen lake is disappearing; arriving at the still-frozen Arctic Ocean, 300 miles directly north of the cabin; Bud setting up an Explorers Club flag on a staff; pitching a tent and making a polar camp; Jean watching from a gas can seat dressed in a new caribou fur parka; a dog team driven by a friend arriving from the shore by arrangement; Jean walking on her snowshoes; hunting seals; Jean helping her mother fetch a bucket of snow for melting; on sunny days, camp gear and bedding hung out over the airplane to dry out the dampness of living on the salt ice; Connie hanging child’s diapers to dry on the airplane prop; Bud stalking and killing a polar bear; Jean and her toy seal; ice getting dangerous; on shore again after two months; Oliktok Point, on the north coast of Alaska, changing the landing gear for summer flight; inside a tent – Nannie, Martha, and George; a summer evening on the Koyukuk River and an aerial view; a trading post at Hughes for mail and supplies; over the Brooks Range; a sunset rainbow over Takahula Lake in summertime; building a dock and steps to the cabin; planting a garden; Bud hanging moose antlers up on a gable; Connie and Jeanie paddling through the waters of Takahula Lake in a seven-foot homemade kayak, which was very tippy; on the Arctic coast in summer - the Helmericks family camping with a tent; mosquitos on Bud’s back; Point Barrow - a tractor pushing off a boat; two views of the polar ice pack as it looks in summer; a walrus hunt; a bull walrus charging the boat; and a walrus being harpooned and butchered.
[Jeanie of Alaska – original reel 2]
[Jeanie of Alaska – original reel 2]
This film features an airplane in flight from underneath, showing the floats; the word HELP written on the ground at remote Anaktuvuk Pass in the Brooks Range; Chandler Lake people, dressed in summer parkas, are worried about a very sick baby (Bud flies the baby to the nearest hospital at Point Barrow - not shown); a view of landing on Takahula Lake; the family examines a new electric generator weighing 800 pounds which was flown in 100 miles from the trading post; painting the big yellow canoe; Jeanie crawling over an ancient mastodon tusk on the lake shore; Bud motoring up the Alatna River in the big yellow canoe; caribou and sheep; Bud felling a giant spruce tree; Bud hoisting an enormous eight foot log on his shoulders and carrying it; Bud filling a 20 gallon water tank inside the house; Connie at her twin aluminum sinks inside the cabin with piped water; Jeanie sampling the pie dough; Bud cutting moose steak from a moose Connie shot in the fall; Connie, author of books on the northern wilderness, at her typewriter inside the cabin; the cabin at treeline is used as a base for northern explorations as much as for a home; Jean sleeping in her little sleeping bag; outside, the first snow of winter begins to fall; barricading the cabin and lying a plank with spikes in front of the door to ward off bears; Bud and an unidentified man at Hughes, the trading post, pulling a plane from the Koyukuk River by tractor; ice cakes running in the Koyukuk; flying through Anaktuvuk Pass over the Brooks Range once more to the Arctic Ocean to meet with commercial fishing partners and friends, George and Nannie; landing on sand beach of the Colville River delta and waiting for the Arctic Ocean to freeze for ice fishing; friends looking at the power generator brought for them; their old house and a view of their new frame house (lumber was ocean-freighted from Point Barrow, 240 miles to the west); Connie pulling 12-year-old Lydia and Jeanie on a sled across the new ice of the Colville River channels; Apiak, the oldest son, pulling another sled; George, the father, using an ice chisel to work at a fishing hole; sculpins, or “Irish Lords,” inhabit all the oceans and are a great nuisance to fishermen - they are worthless, covered with spines, and it takes valuable time to disentangle them from nets; tossing fish into the sled lined with a caribou skin to hold them; skinloads of fish are upset onto the ice, making piles of frozen fish all over the river delta to be picked up at will; Jean with George and Nannie, her “Eskimo grandparents,” inside the new frame house - looking at the Sears catalog is a popular pastime; Nannie and her sewing machine; grace, taught by Presbyterian missionaries at Point Barrow, is said before a meal with all participants seated on the floor; Bud draining the oil out of the “Arctic Tern” when the temperature turns 30 below zero; Jean and Lydia in their warm caribou parkas playing house in the discarded airplane cowling as Bud works; Bud’s tool kit - he must do all work on the airplane and make all checks himself without the benefit of a CAA inspector, for the nearest repairs or authorities are 520 air miles away in Fairbanks; Jean scrambling about in her double parkas - the outside parka she wears over caribou is of fancy grey rabbit – she also wears caribou pants, caribou stockings, and caribou booties; the instrument panel upon which the lonely pilot depends; the airfield at Barrow is marked by two lines of empty oil drums on the snow; scenes at Point Barrow: a tractor is used to haul Arctic Ocean ice (fresh) for drinking water for the village - lakes can’t be used because they are too distant and are tainted with salt from the ocean - but ocean ice “turns” fresh when it is over one year old; a sign for Barrow Theater - there are three motion picture houses in Barrow at this time, all owned and operated by an Eskimo businesswoman - the theaters run 24 hours a day, and fresh films are flown in daily from the U.S.; a panorama of Barrow shows a city without sidewalks or streetlights - garbage and sewage disposal is by truck and sled, carrying the city’s refuse out on the Arctic ice to be carried away - permanently frozen sub-soil makes a flush system impossible; Barrow Post Office and children getting mail; polar bear cubs in Barrow await shipment to some zoo; Ice blocks are stacked for the year’s water supply beside the school; a panorama shot of Barrow village, ending with the white framed Presbyterian church whose diocese covers an area the size of England and the British Isles; an Eskimo businessman who owns much stock in the cooperative Native Store enterprise; an American flag; Connie, Jean, and Bud walking through the snow in full winter dress consisting of two parkas; and The End (written in the snow).