by Jerry L. Van Marter
In May 2007 Sheldon Jackson College in Sitka, Alaska, conducted its last classes. On June 30, 2015, the storied Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)-related school officially ceased to exist and its board of trustees was dissolved.
Few would have guessed that the concluding chapter in the 137-year-old saga of the college (known to most simply as “SJ”) was anything but another sad ending in the annals of Presbyterian history.
As an SJ trustee since 2000, I’m here to tell why this news should not be greeted with “I’m sorry” but with “Wow! That’s wonderful!”
Sheldon Jackson College — initially known as the Sitka Industrial and Training School — was founded in 1878 by Presbyterian missionaries Fannie Kellogg and future Alaska Governor John G. Brady as a “training” school for Alaska Native boys. It nearly closed in 1882 — a threat that would repeatedly recur over the next century — after its original facility burned to the ground.
Legendary Presbyterian missionary Sheldon Jackson came to the rescue of the school, raising funds through a national campaign to construct a new building on the site of the present campus, one-half mile southeast of the center of town on the Sitka Sound waterfront. In 1910, after Jackson died, the school was renamed in his honor.
The institution added a boarding high school in 1917 and a junior college program in 1944, before becoming a four-year college in 1966. The high school was closed the following year. In 1972, the school was added to the National Register of Historic Places and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2001.
My personal history with SJ dates back to the 1960s when I was growing up in Tacoma, Washington. During those days SJ attracted more Presbyterian volunteers — through the “Volunteers in Mission” or VIM program — than any other mission in the denomination. All five members of my family were among them.
In 2000, with the college facing yet another financial crisis, the trustees met and the chair made a motion to summarily close SJ. The motion was narrowly defeated, and those who had voted in favor promptly resigned and walked out. David Dobler — executive for Yukon Presbytery and former General Assembly moderator — was elected chair by those remaining and began to rebuild the board. As a member of the national staff of the PC(USA) with longtime ties to SJ (and to David Dobler), I was invited to join the board.
I was one of a half-dozen new trustees. One of our first acts was a complete disaster. We hired a new president who completely failed to turn the college around. Though it was not entirely his fault, this setback sealed the fate of SJ. The board turned to Dobler, who gave up his Yukon Presbytery position to come on as president in the fall of 2005.
SJ was plagued by financial problems throughout its history. The isolation of Sitka (on Baranof Island at the western edge of the Gulf of Alaska), the harsh Alaskan climate and the economic poverty of Alaska’s native population always made the school marginally sustainable. SJ, the oldest institution of higher education in the state, was further weakened by the growth of the University of Alaska system, which eventually opened a campus in Sitka in 1962 and greatly expanded it in 1987.
At the end of the 2007 school year, SJ closed. The school had $7 million in assets (all real estate), $7 million in debts and no cash. Once again, many of the trustees resigned, and those of us left came to be called, improbably, “the magnificent seven.” We chafed at the moniker but were determined to see Sheldon Jackson College’s affairs through to a noble end.
We are:
- Shirley Holloway (chair), a noted Alaska educator and former state education commissioner;
- Arliss Sturgulewski, retired former state senator and matriarch of contemporary Alaska politics;
- Henry Fawcett, professor emeritus at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary and a Sheldon Jackson High School alumnus;
- Heather McCarty, a former fisher who is one of the world’s leading authorities on Alaska aquaculture;
- Rob Allen, a renowned Sitka entrepreneur, philanthropist and community activist;
- Gary Paxton, businessman and former city manager of Sitka; and
- me.
Beginning in the fall of 2007, our mission was simple: to keep the core Sheldon Jackson campus intact by selling peripheral properties to pay off the debt, to make sure all records and artifacts of the college were preserved, and to find a suitable entity to whom to pass ownership of the remaining core campus. To help achieve these goals, the trustees eliminated the president’s position and hired as business administrator John Holst, a longtime Sitka civic leader and former public schools administrator.
Over the next eight years, Holst and the seven trustees doggedly pursued these goals. A key component of the strategy was to preserve five campus-based enterprises that are an important part of the SJ legacy: the Sitka Sound Science Center (SSSC), a fish hatchery and aquaculture center that had been an important component of the SJ curriculum; the Hames Center, a recreational facility that had been the college’s physical education building; the Stratton Library, which contained a treasure trove of books and historical records and artifacts; an on-campus child care center; and Alaska Arts Southeast, an arts education program that included the Sitka Summer Fine Arts Camp, a program for kids of all ages that usually occupied the SJ campus during the summers. The independently owned Sheldon Jackson Museum on campus continues to thrive.
Between 2010 and this spring, every goal was achieved. SSSC, Hames and the child care center were sold to local groups at affordable prices; the State of Alaska purchased the library; and in 2011, after the last of the secured debts were paid off, the trustees gave the core campus to Alaska Arts Southeast. Since then, volunteers from Sitka and across southeast Alaska have contributed more than 40,000 hours of labor, resulting in a complete restoration of all campus buildings. The SJ campus looks the best it has in at least 25 years.
With the sale of the last parcel of peripheral property in early May of this year, the trustees, in their last act, established endowments of more than $100,000 for SSSC expansion and of more than $200,000 for Alaska Arts Southeast to fund summer camp scholarships for Alaskan children and youth. A plaque that will be placed at the entrance to the campus will forever remember the legacy of Sheldon Jackson College.
Holst achieved these goals with assistance from Barbara Stocker, a former business manager for the local school district. He summed up the events in a June 29 letter to the board of trustees: “I can say I never worked for a ‘tougher’ group of seven!” he said in the letter. “Not tough on Barbara and I, but just plain tenacious, dedicated and unwilling to give in or give up. “And having the opportunity to work with an incredibly talented attorney has been a real treat,” he said, referring to college attorney Cabot Christianson.
In remarks to board of trustees at its final meeting in mid-May, Sitka community leader Sam Skaggs praised the seven “for staying the course through the trials and tribulations of closing SJ and creating an opportunity for transition … to keep this 23-acre campus intact for this community, region and state.”
Fawcett told his fellow trustees, “As an alum and Alaska Native, it’s been a great inspiration to me personally to be with you and hear your concern for Sheldon Jackson College and for Alaska Natives and to have kept the faith, fought the good fight and finished the course.”
Allen, a Sitka native, reminisced that the SJ campus “was my playground — I have many happy memories but also painful ones of buildings boarded up.” Now, he said, looking around, “it feels like it did when I was a kid.”
JERRY VAN MARTER retired last December after more than 26 years with the Presbyterian News Service. He currently volunteers part-time at San Francisco Theological Seminary, where he serves as interim director of alumni relations.
