"Pinning Down the Past"



One of the rarest Fur Rendezvous pins is this 1941 season ticket purchased originally by Virgil O. Dahler.

PINNING DOWN THE PAST

JANUARY 2011

With one phone call last summer, Josselyn O’Connor, the development director for the Kenai Watershed Forum, fielded a donation offer that set off an unexpected chain of events.

O’Connor, who works to raise funds for her 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, was accustomed to hearing from people interested in giving to the cause, but this turned out to be no ordinary donation.

The phone call resulted in a face-to-face meeting with the donors, which led to some quick intra-office discussions, which prompted a flurry of research, which revealed a number of surprises, including a rare item dating back nearly 70 years.

On the other end of the phone line that first day was Jean Brockel of Soldotna, who, along with her husband, Clayton, had long supported the Kenai Watershed Forum’s role in maintaining the health of watersheds throughout the Kenai Peninsula through education, restoration and research. Jean and Clayton wanted to make an appointment and discuss a donation.

“At the time, we were in the middle of a very big capital campaign, raising money for the renovation of the old Soberg house, to move our headquarters in,” said O’Connor. “I guess I anticipated a cash donation. I just wasn’t sure. When someone says that, they usually want to come in and donate cash. Every dollar is very important to an organization like us.”

But the Brockels were not offering cash—at least not directly.

Instead, they were offering a collection of Alaska memorabilia that had belonged to their son, John, who had died in January 2008. The collection consisted largely of Fur Rendezvous collector’s pins, including most of the pins made and sold throughout the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s.

Also in the collection were more than a dozen Fur Rondy booster buttons, ranging mainly from the early 1970s to the early 1980s; a special commemorative moose-antler pin sold in 2000 to mark Rondy’s 65^th anniversary; and a commemorative bronze coin minted in 1970 to mark Rondy’s 35^th anniversary.

The Brockels did not bring the collection with them to the meeting—just a list of the items and associated dates—but they described the set to O’Connor and let her know that they believed it had “some value.” They hoped that the Kenai Watershed Forum could accept the pins and sell them, directing the proceeds to the financial needs of the organization.

O’Connor knew that the Kenai Watershed Forum board was interested in shifting toward the acceptance of endowments and planned giving—accepting gifts of real estate, for example—to allow for diversification in the collection of contributions. Moreover, she recognized that the Brockel donation was a step in that direction.

“Still, this donation was unique, and it kind of helped us expand our wings a little bit and get the board thinking about unique gift opportunities for us,” O’Connor said.

In their initial inquiries with lawyers, collectibles experts and accountants, O’Connor and members of the KWF board learned that the Brockel donation came with complications. As a non-profit organization, they were not set up to appraise, sell off or auction donated items. They quickly began to realize that they would need to seek a third party to make the transaction, and so one of the board members, David Wartinbee, set out to photograph the collection.

In her preliminary research, O’Connor called the Fur Rondy headquarters in Anchorage and learned that its website featured a pin gallery—photos of nearly every collector’s pin ever made—and a collectibles value chart. In part because of an error in reading the date on one of the pins—believing a 1962 pin was a 1952 pin—her initial assessment of the value of the collection was somewhere between $9,000 and $10,000.

She was uncertain even then, however, because of the undetermined value of the oldest pin in the collection—a fairly plain-looking round metal pin with one gold and one green ribbon hanging from the back. On the white front surface of the pin it said: “5^th Annual Fur Rendezvous, Anchorage, Alaska. Season Ticket, Feb. 18-22, 1941.” On the line above the words “Season Ticket” was a black line, and, on the line, a name: “Virgil O. Dahler.”

On the Fur Rondy value chart next to the pin for 1941 there is an asterisk that directs the collector’s attention downward on the page, where it says: “Prices vary. Very few known or sold.”

In fact, during O’Connor’s first phone call to the Fur Rondy headquarters, the man she spoke to expressed surprise and disbelief when she told him that a 1941 pin was part of the collection.

“He said, ‘So you’re telling me you have a ’41 pin?’ And I said, ‘That’s what it says on the list these people gave me.’ And he said, ‘Are you sure?’ And I said, “Well, I don’t know. I haven’t seen it, but I’m pretty sure. That’s what they said.’ And he goes, ‘Well, let me just give you a clue of what you might be in for. That pin, the ’41 pin, was recently traded for a Super Cub airplane.’”

O’Connor was so surprised by the ramifications of that comment that she was temporarily thrown off. She had already been “flabbergasted” by some of the other pin values, but this news astonished her. “Okay,” said to herself, “this is serious. This is not just a couple of pins that might be worth a little bit of money. This is a significant gift to the Kenai Watershed Forum. This is big.”

Actually, there was a little bit of “maybe” in that exchange with the Fur Rondy representative. Although the story of the pin-for-plane exchange has been around for years, according to Fur Rondy’s executive director, Susan Duck, Fur Rondy officials have never been able to verify its authenticity. It’s possible that it’s apocryphal—merely an urban legend—but the story continues to persist.

Meanwhile, a firmer sense of the 1941 pin’s value was about to emerge.

As summer turned into fall, a first offer on the collection came in: $3,200. Kenai Watershed Forum officials knew immediately that the offer was too low.

In order to learn more about the true value of the collection and to see whether there was any further interest in purchasing the items, O’Connor placed the following notice on the Fur Rondy online pin forum on Nov. 18: “We have been offered the proceeds from the sale of these old Fur Rendezvous pins as a donation…. We are not in the pin business and need help. Any advice or suggestions on how to sell these pins would be most appreciative. We have photographed the pins and they can be seen at this link...”

Shortly after the posting appeared, Duck called O’Connor and urged her not to jump at any low offers.

One of the people most interested in seeing the Brockel collection was Charlotte Jensen, Fur Rondy’s long-time board member and chair of the Merchandising Committee. Jensen had been on the board since 1989, and O’Connor said she

got the impression from Fur Rondy officials that Jensen was seen as sort of a “pin guru,” a leading authority on Rondy pins. After she heard about the 1941 pin—an item she had never before seen in real life—and had viewed its image online, she estimated the value of that pin alone at $10,000.

Suddenly, the value of the entire collection was pushing near $20,000. O’Connor decided that she needed to put the collection in the hands of Fur Rondy officials and have them act as sellers and negotiators.

On Monday, Dec. 12, she visited with the Brockels. After a pleasant conversation, the Brockels pulled out an ordinary looking cardboard shipping box and handed it off to O’Connor. They didn’t even open the box at this time; in fact, O’Connor didn’t look at the pins at all until she took them out of the box the next day at Fur Rondy headquarters.

Instead, she placed them in her car and drove home. She left the box out in her car in her garage all night, and the following morning she drove to Anchorage on a day on which the temperatures were below zero.

O’Connor felt a little panicky about what the cold might be doing to some of the more fragile materials used to make the older pins—strips of fur, glued-on eyeballs, tiny daubs of paint. As soon as possible, she drove to the Fur Rondy headquarters on the corner of D Street and Fourth Avenue downtown and strode inside with box in hand.

And there she learned that Charlotte Jensen had passed away three days earlier.

The Virgil Dahler Angle

When Anchorage resident Virgil O. Dahler hand-printed his name above the thin horizontal line in the center of his white Fur Rendezvous badge in February 1941, he could hardly have imagined the commotion that badge would cause nearly seven decades later.

The badge—a metal disk with a sharp pin affixed to its back so that it could be attached to a Rondy-goer’s winter coat –served then as a season ticket to all the Rondy’s events occurring between Feb. 18 and Feb. 22. That season ticket is now referred to as a collector’s pin, and the 1941 pin is one of the rarest ever distributed in Fur Rondy history.

Dahler, who was only 22 years old in 1941, may have enjoyed the Rondy festivities that season, but he likely had little time to dwell on the significance of a celebration that was then in only its fifth year. Since arriving in Alaska in 1939—coincidentally the first year that Rondy pins were ever issued—Dahler had been working on the Alaska Railroad and helping to build Elmendorf Air Force Base. With boyhood buddy, “Big Jim” Bergsrud, he had ventured north intending to stay just for the summer, but the two of them hadn’t left.

In fact, the only thing that ever caused them to leave Alaska was the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Shortly after the United States declared war on the Empire of Japan, Dahler and Bergsrud enlisted in the U.S. Army at Fort Richardson. Dahler served in the Battle of Iwo Jima and in the Aleutians at Attu, and after his discharge in 1946, he and Bergsrud returned to Alaska and decided to homestead on the Kenai Peninsula.

Virgil Dahler with a friend at the Bear Den bar in Soldotna in the late 1950s.

They claimed adjacent properties down a road that would eventually bear a combination of their names—Jim Dahler Road, directly across from Forest Lane, at Mile 89.5 of the Sterling Highway. Dahler spent that first winter in a tent and melted snow for his water. Before the highway was completed, he and Bergsrud had to walk 16 miles each way to Kenai to buy groceries.

Eventually, Bergsrud plied his carpentry trade, and Dahler operated a bulldozer on projects as diverse as Anchorage International Airport, the Seward Highway through Turnagain Pass, and the Wildwood military station.

Bergsrud passed away in 1972, and Dahler lived until Sept. 19, 2001, when his yellow 1979 Mercedes 300 was struck by a white 1989 Ford LTD Crown Victoria that crossed the center line and struck him head-on. The accident occurred just before noon at Mile 90.7 of the Sterling Highway, 1.2 miles from his own road.

At about Mile 89, on the same side of the highway, was a driveway leading at that time to the home of Brockels, whose original homesite abutted Dahler’s homestead and who had known Dahler for decades. “He was our Norwegian bachelor neighbor,” said Jean Brockel.

John Brockel, 2006.

The Brockels’ only child, their son John, had also been a good friend of the old homesteader. He had enjoyed visiting with Dahler and helping him around his place. John, too, had a collection of Fur Rendezvous pins, and after Dahler’s death he bought the 1941 pin from Dahler’s estate.

Through all of his years and many activities, Dahler had saved that pin and kept it in remarkable condition. “Virgil collected everything,” said Jean. “He seemed to have at least two of everything in the world, which I think is partly from being a homesteader. You never know when one is going to break down, so you have to have another one for a back-up. When things are not handy, right around the corner at the store, you tend to do that.”

John Brockel, who died three years ago from congenital heart disease, certainly knew that the 1941 pin was special. It became, by more than 20 years, the oldest pin in his collection. John likely also understood that the 1941 Fur Rondy pin was only the third such item made, although the Rondy itself had begun in 1935.

In John’s startlingly well-preserved Fur Rondy collection, most of the other items—33 collector’s pins, 13 booster buttons and one commemorative coin—had been purchased and saved by Harold and Inez Loftis, who had begun the collection after moving to Anchorage in the early 1960s.

Inez, who was the sister to Clayton Brockel,  had worked initially as a secretary for a colonel at Elmendorf, but later she stayed home after Harold was hired to work for Union Oil. Eventually, Harold’s job brought them to Kenai, but they continued collecting Fur Rondy pins throughout the 1960s and into the early 1980s.

“The fact that they were kept in very good condition was typical of Aunt Inez and Uncle Harold,” said Jean. “They were the kind of people who took care of things. If they were going to have a collection, they weren’t going to let it get ratty or dusty or anything like that.” With no children of their own, they were especially fond of John, whom Jean termed “their very favorite Alaska nephew.”

Harold died in December 1982, followed by Inez in March 1999, and on May 16, 1999, John purchased the pin collection from the Loftis estate. To the collection, he added a collector’s pin and a special commemorative pin from 2000, and booster buttons from 2000 and 2004. It is unclear whether he added any of the late-1980s pins that were issued after Harold’s death.

According to Jean, John had planned to place the pins in a special display case he hoped to build one day. “He was thinking of making like a coffee table, and having a glass top on it, and then the pins would be displayed in there so he’d be able to enjoy them on a daily basis.”

But the table never got built, and the pins, after John’s death, were relegated to a cardboard shipping box in his parents’ home.

Last summer, Clayton and Jean decided to put the collection to good use. “We knew that it had to be worth a certain amount of money,” said Jean. “We also knew that neither Clayton nor I were going to pursue it in any way. There it would be. And after we were both dead, what if somebody just looks at it and throws it out? We made a list of organizations, and thought, ‘Maybe one of these organizations would be interested in taking this and translating it into money.’”

KWF officials were interested in the donation and promised to do all the grunt work.

Working with officials at Fur Rondy Headquarters in Anchorage, KWF development director O’Connor determined that the collection could be worth $20,000—especially given that the 1941 pin alone had been recently valued by a collector at $13,000.

Duck and the other Fur Rondy officials were astonished by splendid condition of the collection. O’Connor laughed as she recalled how they had been so eager for her to open the box and show them all the pins.

“They couldn’t wait,” she said. “They’re sitting there, and I’m telling them about the Brockels and the pins and the estate and the support of the Watershed Forum, and all the time they’re waiting. Then we got to the pins. I just opened up the box and starting pulling random pins out, whatever was on top. Every pin that came out, they just got more and more excited about it. Before you knew it, the entire table was full of pins, and they’re looking at them and passing them around. And the ’41 pin—when that came out, it was”— O’Connor made a gasping sound to illustrate their surprise.

KWF and Fur Rondy officials have determined that the best means to divest themselves of the collection and fulfill the Brockels’ wishes for a donation is to offer the collection via consignment, with Fur Rondy (as the seller) taking a cut of the proceeds. The donation will be made “in memory of John C. Brockel, and Harold and Inez Loftis.”

There is still hope among these officials, however, for a sort of “dream scenario,” in which a corporate sponsor purchases the collection for the Fur Rondy, meaning that the entire collection can stay with the organization, while the full purchase amount is then passed on to the Brockels so that they can make the donation to the Kenai Watershed Forum.

From the festivities and the signature of Virgil O. Dahler at the 1941 Fur Rendezvous and the 20-plus years of Rondy visits by Harold and Inez Loftis to the careful collecting and preserving of the memorabilia by John Brockel, these Alaska collectibles have journeyed far and may finally be going home again.