Chuck

Chuck Sassara’s blood flows with wanderlust and a willingness to act decisively on impulses and desires. He was born Charles Jones Sassara on October 19, 1930 in Detroit, Michigan. Six months later, smack dab in the middle of the depression, the family moves to Los Angeles. His mother, Kathleen waits tables and makes pies at home to sell at the restaurant. Pappy, Chuck’s dad stays home and takes care of him and his newly born brother Dick. But his dad is restless.

In 1935, the family moves to Miami, Florida because Chuck’s father, an electrician thinks he can find work there. There is a an airport nearby and Chuck is fascinated by airplanes that he sees flying overhead. His first airplane ride is in some sort of Tandum two seater when he was six with his brother Dick, who was three and forever after Chuck is hooked.

Before Christmas, Chuck worries to his mother that Santa isn’t going to come because there was no snow in Miami and how was Rudolph going to land and get his presents to him. His mother, tells him to relax because Santa will fly an airplane into Miami and deliver presents.

Chuck’s second flight takes place in a Sikorsky flying boat to Havana, Cuba in 1940. From there, they take a ship to Panama, where his dad Pappy has secured a job. His mother Kathleen loves Panama and becomes one of the leading socialites of the Canal Zone.

Life in Panama is sweet for the young Chuck. He finds the wildlife and darkness of the jungle enchanting and loves that everyone carries a machete and shotgun. He also builds a small boat which he and his brother Dick sail in the canal and try their best to avoid the passing ships.

Chuck is with his father when they get the news that the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor. Pappy’s job is to keep the electrical grid up and running until they can get more troops to the canal in case of an attack.

Pappy enlists in the Navy and the family becomes military dependents and are shipped to New Orleans and spends the remainder of the war in Pittsburgh.

After the war, Pappy buys a 1948 Ford Sedan which they drive to Florida. From there, the drive back up to Pittsburgh, then to Seattle and down to Los Angeles where they buy a duplex. Chuck goes to University High School and plays on the football and swim teams.

After Pappy’s friend, Jack dies from electrocution while working with him, his father is depressed and wants to move back to Panama. They did, but Chuck stays in Los Angeles to finish high school.

In 1950, Chuck meets Ann Baackes, who is three years younger than him. She is the girl of his dreams and four years later they marry. Chuck, by then is a pilot in training and starts out in the difficult to fly, Luscombe. He logs nearly 150 hours in this little plane.

Ann works as a secretary at Century Fox Studios. As part of her job, she escorts movie stars and celebrities around the studios. She is a favorite of Earl Warren, then Governor of California and later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and she is sent flowers by Clark Gable after showing him around the studios.

In 1954, Chuck buys a Volkswagen Van. He is studying at UCLA and working for the Rand Corporation. One of his fellow researchers has been to Alaska and tells Chuck about the glaciers, mountains, fish, moose, bears and the freedom and opportunity.

When Chuck graduates from UCLA, he quits his job with the Rand Corporation and Ann quits her job with Century Fox. They head north to Alaska in the Volkswagen Bus, following Pappy and Nona in a truck with a camper.

Anchorage, Alaska is 3400 miles from Los Angeles. The first 2000 miles were not bad but in Dawson Creek, British Columbia the newly built Alcan highway was a muddy, rocky, buggy 1400 mile adventure. They fix numerous flat tires and break an axle near Whitehorse and roll into Eagle River after the two week drive where they set up camp.

The next day they go into Anchorage and pass by Merrill Field where the sky and field are dotted with small aircraft. They go to Lake Hood and Anchorage International Airport where Chuck gets a job with Pacific Northern Airlines. He sees a sign that says, Aircraft have the Right Away on Roads. Chuck knows Alaska is where he wants to be.

Chuck shows up the next morning at six and writes tickets and checks in passengers for the Seattle flight. His job entailed everything but flying and turning wrenches on the Lockheed Constellations, one of the world’s most lovely airplanes.

During Chuck’s ten months of working at PNA, a pregnant Ann and him live in a house on Nugget Avenue behind where Chilkoot Charlie’s is now and his father works for the Civil Aeronautics Administration, while his mother is holding down the Big Lake Lodge they had just bought for 25,000 dollars, which includes a liquor license issued by the Territory of Alaska.

Charlie was born on July 20th 1956. He wasn’t a junior and he wasn’t a Chuck. Pappy and Cathleen were immediately telling Ann not to spoil them. Pappy wanted little Charlie to start boxing as soon as possible. Pappy and Nona constantly worry that Chuck and Ann will spoil their kids and make them soft.

He works 10 months at PNA. It is one of the few regular jobs he ever had. After PNA, he works for himself for the rest of his life, generally buying and selling. After about a year in Anchorage, Ann and Chuck move out to the newly named Yacht Club at Big Lake which was busy with airplanes on floats or skis depending on the season. Big Lake is twenty-five miles from Anchorage as the crow flies and the perfect place for a fledging pilot to fly to.

Chuck buys a Taylorcraft on floats. His first airplane turned the 80 mile drive from Big Lake to Anchorage into a twenty minute jaunt.

The Yacht Club bustles with small airplane traffic. Three runways are plowed on Big Lake so there are options for landing depending on the direction of the wind. Chuck generally runs out to the porch when he hears an airplane approaching and watches it land. There are many accidents and Chuck learns a lot from watching others mistakes.

In 1957, Chuck is selling Radio and TV commercials for KENI AM and TV. Ann is in California with baby Charlie. One day, after the long drive back from Anchorage in the Volkswagen Bus, his Mother tells him she had bought an airplane. Cathleen didn’t know what she had bought but it was pretty and big and Chuck didn’t sleep much that night and headed to Anchorage early the next morning. Much to his delight, his mother had bought a Aeronca 15AC Sedan. This was a four seater and mounted with skis and quite the upgrade from the Taylorcraft.

Charlie’s brother, Richard is born on January 18, 1959 on the same month and year as Alaska achieves statehood. After around six hundred hours of flying the Aeronca, he sells it to Fred Notti and buys a Bonanza 35, one of nearly 200 aircraft that Chuck owned and flew in his life.

Ann has gone from Hollywood glamour to Alaska backwoods survival and had her own custom made 30.06. She looked for a moose to shoot or chase a bear off the porch. As remarkable as it may seem, in one short year Ann went from lunching with the likes of Clark Gable in Hollywood to skinning an illegally shot moose at Red Shirt Lake.

Business was booming at the lodge, but Chuck hates the bar. He can’t stand drunks or slurred speech. The nearest trooper is 35 miles away in Palmer. There were lots of fights at the bar and Chuck weighs 235 pounds and punches out many a drunk, but the writing is on the wall. Ann and him has two young boys that need to go to school so they sell the lodge and buy a large log home on an acre and a quarter lot on Bannister Drive in Roger Park, a new subdivision in Anchorage.

Chuck needs a way to put food on the table. He leases land on Merrill Field right across the street from Peggy’s Cafe and puts up an office building and sticks poles in the ground where he hangs flags and banners announcing Airport Auto Sales. He sells cars, trucks and airplanes. The business was a success from the beginning.

Airport Auto Sales demanded airplanes and the airplanes were all in the lower 48. Chuck often had to drive down to the states and then ferry airplanes back to AK. He ended up driving the Alcan nearly fifty times in his life.

Pappy and Ann still had the same wanderlust they passed onto Chuck and they weren’t going to retire and grow old after they sold the lodge and they decide to take a long vacation in Europe. Chuck, Ann and the boys figure they should join them before they were tied down by the boys’ schooling.

They land in Paris and the first thing they do is eat lunch at the Eiffel Tower. Two friends live in Bern, Switzerland and they visit them. Chuck leaves the family there and takes the train to Munich where he buys a four door black Mercedes Benz Sedan.

The Sassaras have no travel plans and they roll across Germany, Austria, France willy nilly and down the boot of Italy where they take a ferry to Sicily to visit the birth place of his mother’s parents in Campo Felice where the whole village comes out to greet them.

After Sicily, they load the Mercedes on a freighter to Tunisia and travel across north Africa. Algeria was the crux because the US embassy won’t give them a visa to drive across Algeria because the Algerian Revolution is going on. The Mercedes rolls across Algeria dodging bullets, bandits and at one point a car full of rebels chase them, guns a-blazing all the way to the Moroccan border.

After Morrocco, the family ferries to southern Spain where Chuck hands the keys to his parents and the family flies back to Alaska where Charlie starts school.

Chuck’s first experience in politics was when Governor Egan appoints him to an advisory board for the SBA (Small Business Administration) and it helps Chuck as he positions himself to run for political office.

In October of 1962, a black sedan rolls into the Airport Auto Sales parking lot. Governor Bill Egan jumps out the car and runs into Chuck’s office. Chuck, grab Ann and your kids right away; there may be a war starting. The Russians are putting long range missiles in Cuba, aimed at the United States. Get your family out of here. Find somewhere safe to ride it out.

Chuck has a Cessna 170B ready to go parked outside his office. Ann and him discuss what they would need to survive for six months. They know where to go. Polly Creek is on the west side of Cook Inlet. It has fresh water, sandy beaches and thirty foot tides that brings up the clams and flat fish. Firewood and straight trees to build with are plentiful.

The Russians back off, war was averted and the Sassaras miss an opportunity to go camping.

At 5:36 PM on March 27th 1964, the floor in Chuck’s office starts shaking, then rolling. Chuck moves to the doorway and holds onto the jam. Out the window, planes are bouncing up and down. The windows across the road at Peggy’s are bursting and breaking. The great Alaska Earthquake shakes the ground for five minutes and is the second most powerful earthquake ever recorded. 139 people die from the earthquake and subsequent tsunamis.

Chuck is sworn in to the Alaska Legislature in July of 1965 to a new Congress that includes commercial fishermen, lawyers, bush pilots, doctors, teachers, heavy-equipment operators, miners, a liquor salesman, hunting guides and a native whaling captain. Chuck likes and admires these people and their friendships survive a lifetime. Many of them were pilots and include Ted Stevens, Jay Hammond, Lowell Thomas Junior, and a few others. Sometimes they would fly their planes around the state for meetings to explain issues to Alaskans.

Governor Egan had regular informal meetings with congressmen at night in his office. Chuck would show up as a member of the house finance committee. The conversations would always end up being about 104 million acres Alaska was promised by US Congress in the Alaska Statehood act. The governor selected Prudoe Bay as one of the parcels because he was told there was oil there. In 1969, the state auctions off parcels of land for the right to look for oil. The auction brought in 900 million while the state was currently operating on a 200 million dollar budget.

In the Alaska Legislature, Chuck and Ted Stevens used to argue vehemently and whip the whole body into an arguing frenzy and then sneak off and have a friendly dinner together.

Chuck starts a youth football league in Anchorage with funding from First National Bank of Alaska.

In 1965, Ann’s parents are nearing the end, Chuck and Ann pull up stakes and move back to Southern California to help out. The Watts riots happen when they were there. Chuck lives in Juneau when the legislature is in session and travels to Anchorage often. After her folks pass they move back to Alaska and they stay with Ted Steven’s family three or four months before they buy a home.

Chuck is a Democrat and what you would call today, a liberal, but fiscally conservative except for with the oil money. Alaska needs airports, roads, schools, and all the other things a growing state needs and Chuck is willing to use the oil money to achieve this. He quickly becomes Majority Leader and Finance Chair and champions the University of Alaska, Anchorage, the Equal Rights Amendment and legalizing abortion, which Alaska did in 1970, three years before Roe vs Wade was legalized in the United States.

Chuck serves three terms in the house. In his last term, Gene Guess and a couple other Democrats form the first coalition government with Republicans to deny Chuck the speakership. He is heart broken and for a while lost his almost unshakable optimism—maybe for the first time. He runs for Lieutenant Governor and loses. Ann loves Chuck and is supportive in every way and the family lore is that she put a hex on Guess and he died a few years later of a heart attack. Chuck and Ann are disillusioned with Alaska.

The Sassaras move to Florida where Chuck sells airplanes and flies cargo to the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Columbia, Haiti, Cuba, Mexico, Belize, Brazil,Panama, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, British Virgin Islands, Honduras, and Canada, to name a few countries. The Sassaras spend three and a half years in Florida and then return to Alaska. Chuck misses out on the real estate boom and once again needs to feed his family and buys into a flight service and continues buying and selling planes.

January 16th 1976, Chuck is working as the chief pilot for Christiansen Air Service in Bethel. They were operating twelve different planes and he needs to get a 206 to Anchorage for a new radio. He tells the crew he’ll be back in a day or two. Dave Fritzwater, nicknamed Fish Water, a drifter, shows up looking for a ride to town. A few minutes later they take off headed for Anchorage. Chuck has flown this route many times and the weather reports are good. At Merrill Pass he could see no clouds or weather and they flew through here easily. When they reach Chakachamna Lake he hugs the south shoreline and it starts snowing. This is no problem until he reaches the end of the lake where it’s dumping snow. The window to Anchorage is closed ahead and Chuck turns the plane around. He thinks out his options and decides the best thing to do was put the plane down on the west end of the lake. Chuck cuts the power, he can’t see anything—only snow. He keeps the plane level and they come down hard which spins the plane around. Neither Chuck or Fish Water is hurt, but they have no radio and no ELT because it had been swiped for another plane and Chuck knows he screwed up because he didn’t check to see if ELT was there. It snows for six days and they have no food. There isn’t much firewood around and they burn the airplanes’s tires to stay warm. Six days after the hard landing, the clouds lift and soon after Chuck hears a plane. It is a De Havilland Beaver with Gene Wieler at the controls and his wife Ann in the passenger seat.

Chuck and Ann live a wild life. Adventure was always part of the deal and basically Ann is always on board. Chuck as an aviator flew commercial, multi-engine and was an IFR rated pilot that flew 175 different types of aircraft, logging over 25,000 hours in planes as small as the Breezy to as large as the four-engine Lockheed Constellation. Often, Ann is copilot. As a sailor he crossed the Atlantic, made passages from Miami to Los Angeles, solo from Seattle to Whittier and made several dozen trips to the Bahamas and beyond, finishing with an offshore passage from Florida to the Carolina Outer Banks with son Charlie, nephew Rick and friend, Michel Bourquin in 2015.

Ann is quite the card too. She drove a 1975 Rolls Royce for a while and wore white driving gloves. She said, a girl ought to own a Rolls at least once in her life.

Chuck was fascinated by almost everything. He raced both sled dogs and ice racing cars at Fur Rendezvous. Ann and him homesteaded property at Point Mackenzie, which their son Charlie, still owns today.

Chuck still buys and sells airplanes, cars and whatever he thought he could make some money on. He even got a real estate license. His motto is buy for one dollar and sell for three dollars. He buys a lot in Girdwood and his son Richard builds his parents a home. Anna and Chuck became close friends with trooper Mike. Ann was driving a Jaguar Coup at that time and occasionally she would call trooper Mike Opalka and see what section of the Seward Highway he was patrolling and she would go the opposite direction and put the pedal to metal.

Chuck loses a run for Lieutenant Governor, he’s done with politics. This story is getting too long and I’ve only hit the high points. Chuck is the most accomplished man I know of in Alaska. I’m awed by the width and breath of his experiences and I need to get this story finished.

One more story though, sometime around 1976, Mark Norquist reads an ad in the Anchorage Daily News for a used house trailer. He calls the number, Chuck answers, they discuss the mobile home, Mark’s interested. Chuck tells him to meet him at his office. Where’s that? Mark asks. A window seat at Del Mundo’s coffee shop on Benson Boulevard. Mark ends up buying the trailer, but the story lasts his lifetime.

Ann and Chuck are blessed with three grandchildren, Tyler, Rachel and Annalyssa from Richard’s marriage. Ann wants to be near them so they buy a house in Dalles Oregon. She tells them they will never get in trouble at her house and the kids love their grandparents.

Ann has a stroke. Chuck moves her into a home in the Dalles, Oregon. She has another stroke and another and Chuck moves her to a home in Tacoma. Ann’s only there for a couple of months before she dies in Chuck’s arms on December 9, 2010. The family spreads her ashes in Babbling Brook, a tributary to Glacier Creek in Girdwood.

Chuck finds the low point of his life. He’s confused, as well as heart broken. He stumbles around for three months and then one day he takes stock of himself and knows Ann wouldn’t like this version of Chuck and he dredges up the old optimist, Chuck Sassara.

One day, as a disillusioned writer sitting in City Market New Sagaya drinking coffee hoping some young girl admirer would find me and tell me how good my books were and how cool I was, but instead this rather big man with white hair approaches me and says, Jim Sweeney, I’m Chuck Sassara. Can I sit down?

He sits down, his elbows take over most of the table and he says, Charlie says I should talk to you, because I’m writing a book and the word is that you wrote a good book with no prior background in writing.

Why do you want to write a book? I ask and Chuck starts telling stories.

Chakachama Chicken soup gobbles up ten minutes and the Cuban missile crisis and Governor Egan’s response, then he and his wife Ann are in the Volkswagen Bus and they’re driving to Alaska. Chuck doesn’t stop for twenty minutes, I can’t get word in. I’ve been writing full time for eight years and there’s nothing less creative than telling your story instead of writing it.

CHUCK!, I say, interrupting him. Don’t tell your stories, write them. You’re beating a dead horse.

Sheepishly, he looks at me and says, That’s what Charlie says, too.

I tell Chuck what I’ve learned about writing. Read like you’re possessed. You only need three things, action, dialogue and description to write your story. Read Stephan King’s book, On Writing. Love your characters.

We have a great conversation. I can feel that he wants to tell me more stories. We exchange phone numbers and I tell him, you have great material. Write your damn book.

A couple of years later, I hear Chuck has written his book,.Chuck Sassara’s Alaska Propellers, Politics & People. His son, Charlie paid for it and made it happen. I meet up with Chuck and we trade books.

Chuck wrote a good book. He’s getting lots of press and it’s good press. Todd Communication published his book, so he has book events at Barnes and Noble and Costco. He’s interviewed by the Anchorage Daily News and Alaska Public Media.

I see Chuck at a David Stevenson reading and Charlie takes a picture of David, Chuck and I. For some reason he is honored to be hanging with two other authors.

I’m back living in Hope and volunteering at the Library again. Susan tells me she wants to invite authors to sell their books in a tent between the Hope Library and Gift Shop during Wagon Days. I call Chuck and he agrees to come down.

Hope is busy during Wagon Days. I’m at the library early. Behind the tent where the authors are going to sell their books, a dome camp tent is set-up. I open the library and see that Susan is in the gift shop. After a few minutes, Chuck and Maxine Rader walk across the library parking lot.

Maxine is Alaska royalty and was married to John Rader who was one of Chuck’s cronies in congress. I saw both Chuck and Maxine at Marjorie Nyman’s funeral and celebration of life last year. Maxine and Marjorie were good friends and Maxine used to get after me for getting David Nyman in trouble in the mountains.

Is that your tent? I ask Chuck. Yes, it is. I go ask Susan if it’s okay that they camp there? Susan doesn’t get bothered by much and she has no problem with it, but it’s really funny that these two Alaska icons are camping together at the Hope Library.

Chuck sells a bunch of books and Sourdough Dru tells me to get Chuck to come over and sell books on her front porch on Main Street that evening. Chuck heads over there and I check on him. He’s selling books like hot cakes and harassing some local kids for being worthless bums.

The next morning Chuck’s up early. Sam has a coffee cart out in front of the library and Chuck and Maxine have coffee. He asks Sam how to get to Doug Pope’s house. Chuck tells Maxine he’ll be back in a few minutes and grabs one of his books and heads down Second Street towards the Turnagain Arm. At B Street he takes a trail to the right and has to walk a plank over a Little Resurrection Creek and past the Trimmingham’s horse stables where Joe, a big white horse, tries to get Sassara’s attention, but Chuck is on a mission. The trail ends at Third Street and he turns into the driveway on the right. It’s around eight a.m. He starts hollering, Doug Pope! Doug Pope!

Doug is awake, but still in bed. Beth, his wife, stirs as Doug gets out of bed to see what the racket is. Doug looks out his east facing window and there’s Chuck standing in his driveway waving his book in his left hand.

Doug hustles downstairs and invites Chuck in. Chuck stops as he steps into the living room, mesmerized by the view of the Turnagain Arm and the mountains beyond through the big windows. Chuck doesn’t stay long, Maxine is at the library. He hands the book to Doug and Doug looks for the price and counts out the cash. Chuck has a pocketful of money. He sold 36 books in Hope. I’d say his trip was a success.

Chuck was a star for a year or so and he played the part well. His son, Charlie paid for everything, was the force behind getting it published and made sure Todd Communication gave Chuck one thousand books to sell on his own and Chuck was flush with cash. Plus, Charlie helped immensely with this story.

I see Chuck a few more times. Charlie would bring him around. He always had a fire in his eyes and a smile on his mug.

Chuck and Charlie

Chuck has no retirement of any kind. He receives a monthly Social Security check. Charlie takes good care of his father and he lives in a condo downtown and hangs out with his buddies at Fletchers in the bottom of the Captain Cook Hotel and at City Market New Sagaya.

Charlie tells me about Chuck’s last few hours. He has a date, but he needs a burger first so he stops at Carl Jr on C Street between Northern Lights and Benson Boulevard. He gets it to go. He pulls out onto Cheechako Street and after 100 feet turns left on Benson Boulevard. He passes Dawson, Eureka, Eide, Park and C Street and the lights are all green and he turns left on A Street and is met by a red light at Northern Light Boulevard. He takes a bite of his burger and sets it down when the light turns green. After he crosses over Northern lights he pulls into the Speedy Gas Station on the right. He pulls up to the pump and uses his debit card to pump gas. While his Toyota is being filled he opens his door and grabs his burger. He takes a bite and collapses. A passerby calls 911. Chuck Sassara dies Friday afternoon September 25, 2020.