Isn't it funny how as we grow up and become the adults, the parents, and the grandparents, we begin to realize how lucky we were to have certain people in our lives, and thier importance to the formation of our personalities, and character, that they actually had.

Who do I start with? There were quite a few my Dad, my maternal Grandfather, my Dad's best friend, who was my adopted Opah, are the main male characters in my upbringing and all have my appreciation now, even if they didn't while i was growing up.

Dad, now there was a strange, wild, and rowdy character. He was raised on the Blackfoot Reservation until he was nine years old and then his parents moved the family to Bremerton, Washington so that my grandfather could work at the shipyards as a pipefitter for the war effort. My grandmother worked as a cook at an elder care center and they had a farm where they raised goats, bred, raised and trained doberman pinchers for the military. When Dad was 17 his father died of a heart attack while building thier brick house. Dad finished the building and he soon ran away from home to join the Army. He said being a soldier was easier than being a cowboy any day.

Dad was a gruff man given to fits of temper, but as soon as his anger flared it was gone, and he wouldn't even remember what caused it in the first place. When he was older it was discovered that he had diabetes and I think that was a major contributor to his temper. He didn't know how to raise children so we were his little soldiers. When my brother and I were younger we even had little Army uniforms that mom sewed copies of Dads patches onto. We would go to work with Dad and train with his men. My personal favorite was jump training.Mom used to get grossed out if we told her about the various foods we ate during the survival training courses. The funniest time being when we ate Tarantula roasted on a stick. After that when ever she asked us what we wanted for dinner one kid would holler a food item, and one would start to holler "on a," and we'd all holler "stick."

Dad now there's the type of man one should never marry, or be his daughter, if you had no self confidence. He was a major flirt. But all through my growing up he treated mom like she was the sexiest, most beautiful, female on the planet earth. It was a little embarrassing when i got to be a teenager. But then what teenager accepts thier parents as people? He was horrible at raising daughters, we trained with his men as much as our first brother. When one of us would ask him if we looked pretty his usual answer was " Yep, perty damn ugly." But then he'd turn around and brag that he had the best looking kids in the world and he should leave his sperm to science when he died.

One of the things Dad taught me was that you could tell alot about a man, not just by who his friends are, but by who his enemies are as well. He was full of this odd wisdom that he could use when dealing with other people, but not with his own kids. He usually gave us bits of soldiers wisdom and when he and my mom would argue about any of us kids his basic argument was that we needed to be trained well. Mom's was you raise kids you don't train them. The hardest parts about being his kids were:

1. You had to be a self starter. He'd tell you he wanted something done you had better get it done and do it right.with out any supervision. If you did the job with bad results he's make you start over again. If you said you couldn't do it he'd ask you "What do you need me to draw you a picture?"

2 .You had to be independent at as young an age as possible. He was always being sent to places that we couldn't go as a family and we had to rely on ourselves and each other to keep the family going. I got my first job at 14 and have never really stopped working until now (but raising my two youngest boys is a job i wouldn't wish on any other woman)

3. You had to be tougher than any of his men, even if you were a girl, but outside of the training you had better look and act like a lady. You never knew who you would meet in your travels.

4. You had to speak proper English, and speak more than one other language.fluently, so that no matter where we were sent we could grasp the local language quickly and become fluent within a couple of months of living there.

5. You had to be Universal in your belief system and tolerant of the various religions because you never knew where you'd end up living, and each place on this planet has it's own belief system.

6. You had to be adaptable. You never knew what the living conditions were in the places we moved to, but no matter what it was your job to make you and the families life better

Opah, Gerhardt Reinert, now there was a gentleman beyond measure. I never knew exactly how Dad and Opah met, all I knew was that they were best friends, and inseperable outside of work. As tight as any brothers and as goofy as any pair of friends could be.

Opah was a much older man than my Dad and had survived the camps in WWII. Before Hitler took over Germany he had been an officer in Der Kaisers Army, and a World Chess Champion. He was engaged to a Jewish girl and when Hitler took over both of thier families were thrown into the camps. He told us of Germany before the war and the camps during the war. How they were given grewl made of rotting vegetables and how they farmed land as forced laborers. Sticking potatoes in the engines of tractors to cook them and eat them while out in the farm fields. He and his fiancee' decided to escape the camps and one night they tried. He watched as a soldier shot her climbing over the fence. he occupied his mind by learning as many languages as he could. By the time the war ended he spoke ten languages fluently and was an interpreter at the Nuremberg Trials. Out of both of the entire families only he and his younger sister survived. He became a truck driver for BMW. He taught us that we could live through anything and still help to improve the welfare of others.

When it came to us kids Opah had three favorite hobbies, teaching us chess as soon as we were able to hold actual conversations (about three years old). Taking the family on mini vacations to resorts around europe. Mixing up the holidays, on Christmas we could get dyed eggs, on Easter we could get fire works, and on our birthdays maybe candy canes and cookies. Of course everytime Opah showed up at the house he would have little gifts stashed away in pockets all over his clothes.

Christmas with Dad and Opah was a major production with the rule that we had to recite a piece of poetry, or sing a song, before each present that we opened. With six kids in the family that could take all day.

Grandpa Mogg was a stern but loving man. Half Scot and half Eskimo born and raised on one of his fathers whaling ships. Sent to boarding school as soon as he was old enough and taught to be a proper gentleman. He married my Auka sometime after his first wife died and together they had eleven children two who died while still babies. He didn't speak Eskimo and yet he was one of the founders of the Eskimo Scouts or the ATG, Alaska Territorial Guard, Now the Alaskan National Guard. The great white hunter Major Marston later wrote a book about thier adventures in which he portrayed my Grandfather as an ignorant, non english speaking, clown. Not to long before Grandpa died he admitted to the family that he was actually a member of the O.S.S, the organization that later became the C.I.A..

Grandpa taught us organizational skills. He ran for territorial Governor before Alaska became a state, was a founder of the Moose Club and the Dog Mushers Association in Nome. He was also the founder of the Arctic Native Brotherhood. A couple of years ago he was post-humusly recognized as the first Native American Film Maker.