by Hank Nuwer | Oct 24, 2025 | Alaska Tales
Last Frontier Tales Overnight Success? Not Hardly By Hank Nuwer “Overnight success” for Alaska artist Fred Machetanz and his author wife Sara took a “mere” 15 years of struggle and penny-pinching. Ever after Fred’s 1962 one-artist show at an...
by Hank Nuwer | Oct 18, 2025 | Alaska Tales
Our story thus far: Made a widow in a World War Two dirigible accident that killed her young Airman husband, Sara Burleson Dunn came to Alaska for a postwar vacation. In 1947 she wed Unalakleet children’s book author Frederick (Fred) Machetanz. By Hank Nuwer Fred and...
by Hank Nuwer | Oct 9, 2025 | Alaska Tales
by Hank Nuwer, Cordova Times Sara Burleson Dunn’s world came crashing down on May 16, 1944, when a U.S. naval air station dirigible slammed into a hangar on a training mission and plunged 258 feet to a concrete runway. The tragedy occurred at Lakehurst, New Jersey,...
by Hank Nuwer | Oct 8, 2025 | Alaska Tales
Last Frontier Tales By Hank Nuwer When a short list of 20th Century Alaskan legends is discussed, chances are Merle K. “Mudhole” Smith is somewhere up at the top of the heap. After all, the one-time barnstormer and bush pilot served as president of...
by Hank Nuwer | Sep 30, 2025 | Alaska Tales, Travel Reviews
Last Frontier Days Polar Attraction: A Bear-Watching Trip to Utqiagvik (Polar bear photo by Gosia Nuwer) Review by Hank Nuwer (I’ve spliced together two different published newspaper stories, one from Cordova and one from Randolph County, IN–HN) ...
by Hank Nuwer | Sep 30, 2025 | Alaska Tales, Hank Nuwer Autobiography
Last Frontier Day “Aunt Jean”: An Unforgettable Alaskan Artist By Hank Nuwer It was 1980, in northern Colorado, when I chatted with Martha Jean Shadrach for the first time. A contributing writer to Denver Magazine then, I accepted an invitation from Jane, my...
