Category Archives: Historical

How Pandemics Changed History

September 20, 2020HistoricalFlu, Pandemic, Pandemics changed history, Plague, Smallpoxadmin

How will the COVID-19 pandemic end? Will it change the world? Will some countries emerge stronger, while others appear weak due to their inability to handle the virus? Will the pandemic force long-term impacts on economies and cultures?

Wars carve our history. They lead to the downfall of some civilizations and the rise of others. Pandemics have also changed history, and pandemics and wars often coincide. Disease can weaken a strong civilization, allowing its lesser foe to prevail in battle. Also, many times over the millennia, marauding warriors have returned home from war bringing with them a terrible disease. Sometimes, an infectious disease gains a foothold during battle, and soldiers confined together in close quarters provide the perfect breeding ground for the virus to spread.

Around 430 B.C., Athens and Sparta went to war, and soon after, a strange disease developed in Athens. According to the Greek historian Thucydides, people in good health suddenly became ill with red and inflamed eyes and a bloody throat and tongue. Experts do not know what caused this epidemic, but they have suggested everything from typhoid fever to Ebola. As the deadly infection spread, the war raged. As many as 100,000 people died from the disease, and Athens finally surrendered to Sparta.

In A.D. 165-180, Roman soldiers returned from a campaign, carrying home a pandemic, known as the Antonine Plague. The disease, which might have been smallpox, killed over 5 million people. The epidemic caused instability and war throughout the Roman Empire, leading to the beginning of its downfall.

The Plague of Justinian from A.D. 541-542 was the bubonic plague, and it ravaged Constantinople before spreading to Europe, Asia, North Africa, and Arabia. This plague marked the beginning of the decline of the Byzantine Empire.

The bubonic plague also caused the Black Death from 1346-1353. This devastating pandemic wiped out over half of Europe’s population, but it also changed the course of Europe’s history in a positive way. Large numbers of laborers died from the plague, and those who remained demanded higher wages. The surviving laborers had access to better food, and the loss of cheap labor led to technological innovation.

In the 16^th century, European explores brought smallpox and other Eurasian diseases to the Americas, wiping out as many as 90% of the indigenous people in the Western Hemisphere and causing the collapse of the Inca and Aztec civilizations. After disease weakened the Incas and Aztecs, the Europeans easily conquered them.

While the previous examples stem from far back in our history, the 1918-1919 flu presents a more recent case. This pandemic began during WWI. Experts disagree about where the flu originated, but most agree the lethal virus spread quickly due to the cramped conditions of soldiers in barracks and the poor nutrition during the war. President Woodrow Wilson was so intent on boosting morale and keeping the country focused on patriotism and winning the war that he refused to talk about the deadly influenza virus spreading like wildfire among the troops. By the end of WWI, more soldiers died from the flu than on the battlefield. The 1918-1919 flu killed 675,000 Americans and between 50 and 100 million people worldwide.

In April 1919, just as the war ended, President Wilson caught the flu. When it was time to sign the peace treaty in Paris, an extremely ill and weakened Wilson caved to demands of the French for a punishing peace agreement with Germany. In return for conceding to the French on the tone and content of the treaty, the French agreed to Wilson’s wishes to form the League of Nations. Many historians believe the harsh treatment toward Germany at the end of WWI lead the country down the path to hyperinflation, chaos, nationalism, militarization, the rise of Adolf Hitler, and WWII.

A major world event such as a pandemic is bound to leave lasting impacts. We can already predict some changes in our lives. Online virtual meetings, education, and doctor’s visits have become more frequent and likely will remain so, even once the pandemic ends. Will a move away from working at the office toward working at home decentralize our cities? Will our hypervigilance over avoiding infection continue once we have a vaccine for COVID-19, or will we again display indifference in the presence of pathogens? Will our economy recover, or will we suffer a damaging and possibly fatal blow from this virus? How will other countries fare?

Perhaps the final chapter on the COVID-19 virus will not be written for decades when scholars can look back from a distance and see the effect the virus had on our lives, our cultures, and our countries. Other pandemics have caused the fall of empires. Will this one cause significant harm in the long run?

Robin Barefield is the author of four Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter, and Karluk Bones. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska, and listen to her podcast, Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier.

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Coronaviruses

September 6, 2020Historical, Living in the wilderness on Kodiak IslandCoronaviruses, Covid 19, Disease, Pandemicadmin

My series of posts on infectious diseases has, of course, been inspired by Covid-19, the coronavirus currently spreading to every corner of the world. What is a coronavirus, though, and what path will Covid-19 take? Will we tame it with a vaccine, will it mysteriously disappear, or is it here to stay for a while? We know Covid-19 is a novel virus, a pathogen never previously identified in humans. When Covid-19 began to spread around the world, no one was immune to it.

Coronaviruses represent a large family of viruses, including the common cold and other mild to moderate upper-respiratory tract illnesses. Over the past few years, three serious coronaviruses, causing severe illness and death, have emerged. In addition to Covid-19, these are Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). SARS appeared in 2002 and disappeared by 2004. MERS was transmitted by camels and first identified in humans in September 2012. MERS continues to cause localized outbreaks.

Covid-19 emerged from China in December 2019 and quickly spread throughout the world. Like the viruses that produce SARS and MERS, Covid-19 can cause serious illness and death, but its extreme virulence makes Covid-19 even more dangerous than its viral cousins. Covid-19 spreads easily between people who are in close contact when one person inhales small, infected droplets produced by the infected person. The droplets can be spread by talking, yelling, coughing, sneezing, or singing. Scientists still aren’t certain how long small aerosol droplets containing Covid-19 remain suspended in air or how far they can travel. Covid-19 can also spread when infected droplets fall onto a surface, and a person then touches the contaminated surface and subsequently spreads the infection to their eyes, nose, or mouth.

No vaccine for Covid-19 currently exists, but we all remain hopeful that scientists will soon develop one. Until then, we can only protect ourselves by following basic public health protocols. These might not seem like cutting-edge science, but they have been the best weapons used to fight infectious diseases through the centuries. By now, we all know them well: Wash your hands, maintain a physical distance from others, and wear a mask to cover your nose and mouth.

Infectious disease experts wait and watch this virus. We would like these experts to tell us what will happen next, but how can they possibly know? The Spanish flu virus mutated partway through its run and became much more deadly in the fall of 1918. Could this happen with Covid-19? Most experts believe it will again peak in the fall, but it shows no sign of slowing now as summer progresses and draws to a close.

We cannot yet write the story about Covid-19. How many people will get sick, and how many will die? How did it start spreading, and could national leaders have stopped it if they ignored politics and acted sooner? Most importantly, how can we better prepare for the next pandemic when it occurs? Will we take a moment and remember to turn around and study the past, or are we doomed to repeat the same mistakes with each pandemic we encounter?

I decided to write one more post about pandemics, and then I promise to move back to covering Kodiak wildlife and life in the wilderness. In my next post, I’ll discuss how plagues have changed history. While researching pandemics, I was fascinated to learn the many ways, both good and bad, that pandemics have shaped our history, and I began to wonder what lasting impacts Covid-19 will leave on the world.

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Influenza: The Flu

August 23, 2020HistoricalDeadly Flu Viruses, Flu, Influenz, Influenza Pandemic, Virusadmin

While the flu is something we would rather avoid, most of us don’t fear the flu virus. But maybe we should. Influenza viruses are complex, containing strands of RNA twisted together. When the strands untwist to replicate, they break and sometimes recombine with fragments of other viruses, resulting in new viral forms. Virologists cannot predict these mutations. Flu viruses reside in a variety of host species, and the virus can pick up nasty tricks as it moves from animal to animal, recombining with other flu viruses before moving on to infect a host of another species. By the time the virus reaches man, it might be highly contagious, extremely lethal, and nothing humans have ever seen before. The novel virus could quickly race around the planet, leaving destruction in its wake.

For those infected with the influenza virus, symptoms range from mild to severe. The most common symptoms include high fever, runny nose, sore throat, muscle and joint pain, headache, coughing, and fatigue. The influenza virus occasionally causes severe illness, including primary viral pneumonia and secondary bacterial pneumonia.

Three types of influenza viruses affect humans. These are known as types A,B, and C. A fourth type (D) has not been known to affect humans, but virologists believe it could. Influenzavirus A is the most worrisome of the four types, because wild aquatic birds are the natural hosts for influenza A, and the virus sometimes jumps to other species, causing massive outbreaks of infection in domestic poultry and creating pandemics of influenza in humans. Recent human pandemics caused by the influenza A virus include the 1918/1919 flu, the 1957 Asian Flu, and the 2004 bird flu.

Most experts consider the 1918/1919 flu (Spanish flu) pandemic one of the most baffling and terrifying pandemics of all time. Approximately 250,000 to 500,000 people worldwide die from the flu each year. The 1918/1919 (Spanish) flu, though, killed an estimated 20-50 million humans over the course of a year. Some estimates range as high as 100 million deaths. More terrifying yet, though, was who the virus killed. The very old, very young, or those with underlying health conditions usually succumb to the common flu, but the Spanish flu killed young, otherwise healthy adults.

Experts today still argue over why the Spanish flu killed the young and healthy, but many believe the virus triggered a cytokine storm, which is an overreaction of the body’s immune system. This storm proved particularly deadly for young adults with robust immune systems.

Historians and virologists also argue over where the Spanish flu originated, but everyone agrees it did not come from Spain. Since Spain remained a neutral nation during WWI, it did not censor its press, and reporters freely documented early accounts of the disease, causing many people to think the flu originated in Spain. Some experts believe the 1918 flu pandemic began in Haskell County, Kansas, and quickly spread from there to Fort Riley when an enlisted man went home to Haskell for a few days, became infected, and returned to the army base. In the overcrowded barracks on base, the flu quickly spread.

The Spanish flu suddenly burned out in the Spring of 1919. While this H1N1 influenza A virus has not returned since, epidemiologist fear it will reappear. This pandemic occurred over one-hundred years ago, so few people alive now have immunity to this strain, and it could again exact a nasty toll.

Flu experts study the world and watch carefully for the next possible flu epidemic. Infectious disease experts say it is not a matter of if but when the next flu pandemic will occur.

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Pandemics

August 2, 2020HistoricalAids, Cholera, Pandemics, Robin Barefield, Smallpox, Worst Pandemicsadmin

While Covid-19 is a novel virus, pandemics are nothing new in human history. In my last post, I wrote about the plague, and in this post, I’ll cover some of the other major pathogens that have not only inflicted disease upon humans but have caused pandemics affecting much of the globe.

Smallpox

For centuries, smallpox threatened Europe, Asia, and Arabia, killing three out of every ten people it infected. While smallpox menaced the old world for millennia, humans did not experience its full fury until European explorers introduced it to the New World. The indigenous inhabitants of Mexico and the United States had no immunity to smallpox, and tens of millions died. Anthropologists estimate smallpox decimated 90 to 95 percent of the indigenous population of the Americas.

The variola virus causes smallpox, and it is the only infectious disease humans have eradicated. Once they had a vaccine for smallpox, World Health Organization workers searched the most remote areas of the world, tracking down and vaccinating infected individuals and their contacts. The last natural case of smallpox occurred in Somalia in 1977. Unlike most viruses, smallpox only infects humans. No other species play host to the virus. Once all humans were vaccinated against smallpox, the virus had no place to go. Most human viruses can also infect other animals or insects, making these viruses impossible to find and demolish.

Cholera

Cholera is an infection caused by strains of the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, which attack the small intestine, causing watery diarrhea, vomiting, and muscle cramps. Cholera has wreaked havoc over the centuries and is the scourge of developing countries. Cholera is often spread through dirty drinking water, and it still kills nearly 30,000 people a year worldwide.

In the 19^th century, cholera ravaged England and killed tens of thousands of people. No one understood how the disease spread until a doctor named John Snow linked the illness to a Broad Street pump in London, where many of the citizens obtained their drinking water. While cholera is no longer a problem in stable nations, it still lurks in developing countries that lack adequate sewage treatment and access to clean water.

AIDS

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) causes AIDS. Experts believe the virus originated in chimpanzees and began infecting humans in West Africa in the 1920s. AIDS became a pandemic in the late 20^th century, killing an estimated 35 million individuals. Sixty-four percent of the estimated forty million people worldwide infected with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa. Medication can now control HIV, and most HIV-infected individuals with access to the medication can live an average lifespan.

In my next post, I’ll cover the flu, an illness we all know well and carelessly dismiss as a minor inconvenience. Influenza has caused terrible pandemics in our past, and the flu virus keeps epidemiologists awake at night. These experts will tell you, “It’s not a question of ‘if’ we will have another flu pandemic but of ‘when’ the next flu pandemic will occur.

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Wild Pets

September 27, 2015Bald Eagle, Historical, Kodiak Wildlife, Living in the wilderness on Kodiak IslandBald Eagle, Kodiak Island, Wild Petsadmin

The Munsey kids usually had domestic cats, but they also had many wild pets over the years. Today, Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) laws prohibit feeding and taming wild animals, but in the 1960s and 1970s, ADF&G not only allowed people to rescue wild animals, but ADF&G employees, themselves, often rescued animals and brought many of these animals to the Munseys to care for, nurse back to health, and re-release into the wild.

A few of these animals were good pets, but most were not. Mike remembers a baby bald eagle, rescued after falling out of its nest, being a particularly bad pet. Whenever anyone left the house, the eagle would chase them, demanding food. According to family legend, young Bob wore a red coat that the eagle found particularly attractive, so whenever anyone wanted to leave the house, they’d coax Bob to put on his coat and run the opposite direction. The eagle would chase Bob, and the other family members could escape the house unmolested.

Baby seals abandoned by their mothers were cute but often did not survive, and it is likely there was something wrong with the babies to begin with, and that’s why their mothers abandoned them. A few of the seals did make it, though, and I’ve seen 8mm footage of Pat in the water in hip boots, coaxing a baby seal to swim. Pat remembers the mess the seals made when the kids would sneak them up to their rooms.

Two of the favorite pets were birds. Tom Emerson with Fish and Game gave the Munseys a one-legged magpie that he had taught to say, “Maggie,” her name. Herbie was a seagull chick the Munseys raised, and he became very attached to the children. One time, just as Herbie was learning to fly, the Munseys were returning home by boat. Herbie was so excited he took off and flew toward them, but he hadn’t quite perfected the art of landing, and he crashed into the water beside the skiff. The kids scooped him into the boat and dried his feathers.

Red foxes are easy to partially tame with food, and at times, the Munseys had as many as eight foxes in the yard at mealtime. A man in Kodiak gave Park six raccoons, and Park released them at the Amook Pass home. The raccoons would join the foxes for meals, and sometimes the raccoons and foxes would enter the house, where the Munseys’ Siamese cats curiously watched them. As hard as it is to believe, these wild and domestic animals peacefully co-existed as long as there was plenty of food.

The Munseys soon realized that releasing the raccoons had not been a good idea. The raccoons began to breed, and since they are not native to Kodiak Island, ADF&G biologists became alarmed that these invasive predators would climb trees and eat the eggs of endemic birds. ADF&G hired a young woman to stay with the Munseys and shoot every raccoon she saw. Unfortunately, the raccoons were most active at night, when it was too dark to hunt, and how could she shoot these animals the kids considered pets? Eventually, to the relief of wildlife biologists, the raccoons died off and did not become a threat to the resident birds. I should point out that tempting as it may be, biologists now feel it is a bad idea to feed wild animals. The animals need to learn how to procure their own food, and human intervention, no matter how well-meaning, interferes with their survival instincts.

Mike, Bob, and their fellow crewmen rescued the eagle pictured at the top of this post when Mike was a college student, and he and Bob spent their summers working as commercial gill-net fishermen at Greenbanks, a fish site near the mouth of Uyak Bay. They found the eagle floating in the water nearly dead and picked him up and took him to shore. They threw a tarp over him, and the next morning, he was sitting on the tarp. He was tired, weak and looked terrible, but he accepted food and slowly gained back his strength. He devoured the fish the guys tossed to him, but he would back away when they tried to approach too closely. Finally, after two weeks, he flew away without a backward glance. Mike took the photo at the top of this post the day before the eagle departed, and a few years later, the photo graced the cover of Alaska magazine.

It was a magical childhood to grow up in the middle of the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge, surrounded by wild animals and even having a few of them for pets. I marvel that after all these years living in the wilderness, Mike still smiles when he sees a deer in the yard or a fox on the beach. He has never lost that childhood thrill of seeing a wild animal in its natural habitat.

Growing up in the Kodiak Wilderness

September 20, 2015Historical, Living in the wilderness on Kodiak Islandadmin

When I hear my husband and his siblings talk about their experiences growing up in the Kodiak wilderness, I envision a 1970’s Disney Movie, complete with wild pets and adventures in the air, on the sea, and in the woods. All six Munsey children grew up to be tough, self-reliant, and creative. They love nature, and I know they would all agree that they are more comfortable in the woods than they are in a city. Growing up in the wilderness is not an easy life, though. Your only close friends are your siblings, and your parents need and expect you to help with the endless chores that are required to carve out a living in the wilds. When you do move away to go to college or get a job, you may be ill-prepared to deal with the drastic lifestyle change, and none of your new friends understand what your childhood was like.

Bob, the fifth child in the Munsey clan, was born on a blustery March day in the middle of a storm, when the weather was too nasty for Park to fly Pat to Kodiak to the hospital. Pat somehow had a premonition the baby would come early, and she might not make it to town for the delivery. Since she was a nurse who had helped deliver many babies, she prepared an emergency kit and told Park what to do if he needed to deliver the baby. That day, Eddie Paakinen, the caretaker of a nearby cannery, stopped by to visit. When Pat went into labor, Eddie nervously waited in another room while Park delivered the baby. The delivery proceeded without a hitch, and the baby boy was christened, “Robert Amook” after Amook Pass where Munsey’s Bear Camp is located.

The Munsey children had numerous adventures, and every time the family gets together, I hear new tales. This summer during the family reunion, they were laughing about the time some young fisheries researchers were staying with them and built the kids a zip line. Apparently it was great fun, but there was no braking mechanism on the rope, so the ride ended abruptly by plowing into a tree trunk.

Mike and Bob helped their Dad around the lodge, and both followed him into the field on hunting expeditions as soon as they were old enough to carry rifles. Toni, Patti, Jeri, and Peggy helped their mom in the kitchen and around the house, but all the kids were proficient with outboards and knew how to handle guns.

Mike remembers miserable, stormy nights when he and Bob had to help their Dad keep the floatplane tied down and water pumped out of the floats. One late fall, the Munseys had put all their boats up on a ramp and were closing down the lodge, preparing to move to town for the winter. That night the wind howled, and when Park checked on his airplane in the middle of the night, he found the dock had been ripped apart by the storm, and there was no way to get to the airplane, which was tied at the end of the dock. He quickly woke Mike, who was twelve at the time, and they pushed a boat in the water and put an outboard on it. They quickly raced to the end of the dock, and Park got in his plane and told Mike to head back to shore. As soon as Mike started for the beach, the engine choked and died, and the wind began to blow him away from shore. He repeatedly tried to start the outboard, but it wouldn’t turn over. Park began yelling for him, and Mike was terrified as he continued to pull the cord. Finally the outboard roared to life, and Mike made it to shore.

In the winters, the Munseys usually moved to Kodiak for a few months, and the kids had to transition from being home-schooled to attending public school. Even more difficult, they had to learn how to interact with other children and fit in with “town” life.

Life in the wilderness is often not a Disney movie for a child, but as I sat at the table at the recent Munsey reunion and listened to their stories and laughter, I knew not a single one of them would have traded his or her childhood for a more conventional one.

Amook Airways

August 2, 2015Historical, Living in the wilderness on Kodiak Island, UncategorizedAmook Airways, Flying in Alaska, Kodiak Island, Munseyadmin

Munsey Family is greeted by the Governor of New Hampshire

Park Munsey became a pilot in the late fifties, and in the 1960s, he started Amook Airways, a small air-charter business. His wife, Pat, was his dispatcher, and their home in Amook Pass was their base of operations. Park not only flew his hunting clients, but he also flew for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and delivered mail and supplies around the island. Over the years, he owned an Aeronca Champ, a Tri-Pacer, a Cessna 180, a Cessna 185, a Twin Seabee, and a Grumman Widgeon.

Park bought the Tri-Pacer in 1961, and that winter, he, Pat, and the children flew in it from Kodiak to New Hampshire to visit relatives. In preparation for the long flight, Pat got her pilot’s license, so she could help with the flying. When the Munseys reached New Hampshire, they presented the governor of that state with a gift from Bill Egan, the governor of Alaska.

Pat remembers one harrowing day when the crankshaft broke on Park’s Cessna 185, and he was forced to land on Olga Bay in heavy seas. The hard impact of the landing caused the floats to rupture, and as the floats filled with water, the plane flipped upside down, and Park climbed onto the floats. When he didn’t return home and didn’t call on the radio, Pat contacted the Coast Guard, reported him overdue, and braced herself for the worst. As the waves lapped over the pontoons, the floats slowly filled with water, and by the time the Coast Guard arrived, they found Park straddling the sinking floats, writing a last letter to his wife and children.

Park sold his last plane, the Grumman Widgeon, in the mid 1970s, and he and Pat began spending winters in Hawaii. Mike purchased Munsey’s Bear Camp from his parents in 1980, but Park continued to guide bear hunters during the spring and fall hunts.

Never content to sit idle, Park bought a boat in Hawaii and started a SCUBA diving business. He taught SCUBA classes, and he and his boat could be

chartered for diving trips. In 1982, Park competed in the famous Iron Man Triathlon in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii and finished eighth in his age bracket. The following spring, at the age of 54, he collapsed while guiding a bear hunter out of an interior-lake camp near Spiridon Bay. He died a few days later from a cerebral hemorrhage.

Pat remarried in 1984, and she and her husband, Wally, still live in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, where Pat works in real estate. This summer (2015), Pat, Wally, Toni, Patti, Jeri, Bob, Peggy, spouses and several grandkids all visited our Amook Pass home, where we celebrated Pat’s 85^th birthday.

Munsey’s Bear Camp

July 26, 2015Historical, Living in the wilderness on Kodiak IslandAmook Pass, Kodiak Alaska, Munsey's Bear Camp, Uyak Bayadmin

By the1960s, the Munseys spent most of the year at Munsey’s Bear Camp, their lodge in Amook Pass, where Park guided bear hunters in Uyak and Spiridon Bays. He soon established another hunting camp at the south end of Becharof Lake on the Alaska Peninsula, where he guided bear, moose, and caribou hunts. Park was a registered guide and eventually became a master guide, holding master guide license number twelve.

Munsey’s Bear Camp was not just a lodge, it was a home. Pat cooked for the hunters and then held school for the kids in a corner of the living room. Mike and Bob assisted their father during the hunts as soon as they were old enough to climb the mountains. Toni, Patti, Jeri, and Peggy helped their mother in the kitchen, and all the kids learned how to safely run boats and shoot rifles.

Fish and Game employees and others often brought the Munseys sick or orphaned wild animals to nurse back to health or to raise. I’ve seen 8mm-movie footage that shows Pat, dressed in a raincoat and hip boots, standing in the ocean gently urging a baby harbor seal to swim. The pup had been abandoned by its mother soon after birth, so Pat assumed the maternal coaching responsibilities. Other pets included foxes, a magpie, and even a bald eagle that had fallen out of its nest. Their favorite pet, though, was a seagull they named Herbie. Once Herbie mastered flying, he would often fly out to greet members of the family when they returned home in their skiff.

During the March 27^th, 1964 earthquake, Mike remembers walking to the generator shed with his father when the first jolt hit and sent him sprawling. They returned to the house and switched on the single-sideband radio, where they heard people yelling for help. The marine operator told listeners that there had been an earthquake and to standby for a tsunami warning announcement. Park and Pat gathered supplies and led the children up the hill behind the lodge, where they sat, huddled in sleeping bags, and waited for the water to subside.

The Munsey children have all carried remnants of their unique childhood into their present-day lives. Cooking is Toni’s passion, and she owns The Rendezvous, a bar and restaurant near Kodiak. On her menu, you will discover a few items that were inspired, at least in part, by recipes she learned from her mother at the lodge in Amook Pass. Patti and her husband, Rick, are both captains and have spent many years running large yachts. Their busy schedules have taken them to the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, and the South Pacific, among other places. Jeri and her husband, Mark, are also captains and operate a number of tour boats as well as a beautiful, 57-ft. sailboat on the island of Maui in Hawaii. Bob is a commercial fisherman and fishes a gill-net site at Chief Cove in Uyak Bay. He also guides bear, deer, and goat hunters alongside Mike. Bob’s wife, Linda, is a nurse. Peggy lives in Oregon with her two, beautiful children. She is a nurse like her mother, but she now operates a dog kennel and an animal sanctuary.

Mike and I still run Munsey’s Bear Camp. In 2016, the business will be sixty years old, and for fifty-eight of those years, Munsey’s Bear Camp has been in Amook Pass in Uyak Bay. Mike and I have expanded the activities at the lodge to include wildlife-viewing and sport fishing. Both Mike and Bob are master guides, and they still guide bear, deer, and mountain goat hunts in Uyak and Spiridon Bays.