Facilities At Woody Island Expanded
To Assist In Safety In Air Travel
By Yule M. Chaffin
Time changes everything. The
years roll on; and in the name of
progress the old and familiar
gives way to the new and more
efficient. The Federal Aviation
Agency Flight Service Station at
Woody Island has not been an ex
ception. The changes here have
not only been in personnel and
facilities, but also in housing, in
landscaping, and in the communi
cations system itself.
During World War II many new
F.A.A. Flight Service Stations
were added to the growing net
work of communications all over
Alaska. The Woody Island Station
was one of. these The stations
were formerly known as C.A.A.
Airways Communications Stations.
The primary purpose of such sta
tions—many of them, scattered
throughout the United States and
Alaska—was to aid in maintain
ing the safe and orderly separa
tion of aircraft along the airways,
and to furnish weather and other
aeronautical data to pilots.
Built in 1941, the Woody Island
Station was at first manned by a
meager staff the men mostly un
married, in a small building now
used for other purposes. No hous
ing was provided for families.
There were originally only four
houses in which the employees
“batched”. About 1944 two more
houses were built, as well as a
dormitory, a mess hall, and a new
and bigger Operations building.
With the expanded housing de
velopment some men with families
were employed, although most of
the technicians, communicators,
and mechanics were single men
and women. Even with the coming
of the man-and-wife communicator
teams in 1944 and 1945, family
quarters were not available for all.
Dormitory quarters had been pro
vided for about sixteen or twenty
of the single men and women.
Married couples were also requir
ed to live in the small, cramped
dormitory rooms and eat at the
mess hall. There were three shifts
or watch changes, one at 8:00 a.
m., one at 4:00 p.m., and one at
midnight.
Since houses were not assigned
to anyone without children, one
couple solved their problem by
moving across the island into an
old deserted Navy building. Here
they possessed only the most meag
er and barest of necessities-beds
—homemade chairs and a table—
hot plate and outdoor storage
cabinet in place of stove and re
frigerator. These inconveniences
did not daunt those pioneers. Here
they had at least the quiet, se
clusion, and privacy not possible
in dormitory quarters. More cou
ples saw the advantages of private
quarters and followed the example
of the first couple.
Those were the busy war years,
and the Communications station
hummed with activity. Technici
ans, maintenance men, and com
municators w'ere all working a
seven-day week. The all-important
radio range must maintain a steady
signal to guide aircraft. Days and
nights blurred into one another;
seasons passed without notice;
Sundays, holidays—all days seem
ed the same. There was a war to
be won—and Woody Island was
subject to the hardships of a
strategic spot virtually on the fir
ing line. 11
As many as seven to nine air
craft communicators were needed
on each of the three shifts. Often
a communicator would sit before
his "mike” ‘bug”, or hand key and
typewriter sending and receiving
messages as fast as he could work
—for hours at a time without so
much as tasting the plate of hot
steaming food which grew cold be
side him. Tape piled up in snarled
heaps beside the “301” operators.
They often grew headachy and
nauseating from watching and
transcribing the boudot tape fly
ing before their eyes. Teletypes
clattered and banged, sometimes
sputtering spasmodically, now one,
now two, then all together in a
frenzied cresendo. Telephones
rang; loud speakers blared—“Kodi
ak Radio. This is Nan Charlie 7126
over Rocky Point at 2130z cruis
ing at 7000, estimating your station
at 2200z. Request Kodiak weather.”
Yes, those were the busy war
years. Employees at the station
grew to the number of forty. More
quarters were sorely needed. In
1948 a large Navy building on West
Woody was converted into an a
partment house with seven units.
Then in 1949 two new apartment
houses with five units each were
bui'lt. One by one the unmarried
communicators, technicians, and
mechanics were transferred else
where and their places were filled
by men with families. A small
community grew up on West
Woody two miles across the is
land from the Station on East
Woody. Each area was provided
with utility rooms equipped with
washers, dryers, fans, and other
facilitities for family laundering.
Each area also had its own walk-in
deep-freeze and recreation hall.
Increased numbers of children
created an educational problem. An
old Navy building on West Woody
served as the first schoolhouse.
transferred later to a small base
ment recreation room in one of the
new apartment building in 1951,
a new one room school building
was erected; soon two teachers
were needed to accomodate the 27
children enrolled. Again, a recrea
tion room in the basement of one
of the apartment buildings had to
be utilized, until in 1957, another
room was added to the school build
ing.
me nisi residents on ine
island were lucky if they had trans
portation to and from the island
to the town of Kodiak once or
twice a week. The white canvas
bag became the mark of a Woody
Island shopper. Newcomers soon
learned that paper bags and paper
sacks had a habit of disintegrat
ing in the rain, scattering shopp
ing items along the dock or into
the water. In order to board the
C.A.A. boat at the dock, personnel
had to climb up and down a lad
der built on the side of the dock
for that purpose. Groceries and
other supplies were unloaded from
boat to dock with a hand-operated
winch. Under such conditions mail,
groceries, and other articles were
sometimes dropped overboard and
had to be fished from the sea.
Now and then some daring soul
would grow careless, lose his foot
ing, and have to be pulled from
the icy waters. Children were hand
ed from man to man up and down
the ladder. Sometimes small ba
bies were carried in baskets which
were handled in the same way.
Transferring from a rocking boat
and climbing a f5-foot ladder at
low tide during high winds and
storms was no easy feat. The sick
were placed in wire stretcher
baskets and lowered by winch to
the deck of the boat. Woody Is
land’s expectant mothers must
have been lucky. Only one baby
was born on the Kodiak dock while
the mother was enroute to Griffin
Memorial Hospital.
Today's Woody Island residents
have it much easier and safer than
iuiJii “vOai a0 O
They step off the F.A.A. boat to
a f.oat and walk up a ramp which
leads from the float to the top of
the dock. The F.A.A. boat now
makes at least one trip and some
times two each day of the week
except Saturday. Many of the is
land’s families even have their own
small skiffs or cabin cruisers to
use for pleasure boating, fishing,
or trips back and forth to the town
of Kodiak.
Many changes took place in the
Communications building, itself,
over the years. From the small
original station situated on the
cliff, the communications set-up
was moved into a much larger and
more modern building close by.
The many circuits and positions
needed to maintain communica
tions with other stations all over
Alaska and with aircraft flying
the airways were consolidated. A
console-type air-ground operation
position made possible by improv
ed automatic equipment needs
only one to three men to do the
work formerly done by six or
seven.
Turn-over in personnel was grea
ter in the early years than at pre
sent. Former Woody Island C.A.A.
personnel are scattered from
Kotzebue to the Panama Canal
Zone and from Korea to Wake Is
land. Almost to a man, all former
Woody Island C.A.A. employees,
wherever they are and whatever
they are doing, carry with them
nostalgic memories of the peace,
the seclusion, and the beauty of
the little island they have left be
hind.
Woody Island F.A.A. families in
more recent years have a tendency
to remain longer than they former
ly did. Some of them have been on
Woody Island as long as five or
six years; one family holds a record
of sixteen years in residence. What
b;g attractions have held these
families for long stretches of time
on an island rather remote from
civilization? Good working condi
tions, job satisfaction, and security
have played their part in retaining
employees m the F.A.A. service,
but Woody Island residents will
admit there is more to it than that.
Today, living conditions on
Woody Island are good, and cer
tamly a far cry from those experi
enced in "dormitory” or “West
Woody” days. Each apartment is
comfortably furnished. The old
dormitory building on East Woody
has been renovated and equipped
to make an attractive and comfort
able recreation hall in which
families gather for various activi
ties.
Neat white houses now stand in
place of the drab olive-green and
grey buildings of war-time years.
Rolling green lawns cover most of
the housing area. Each spring in
the many plots and flower gardens
hundreds of crocuses poke through
the cold ground to brave the blus
tery storms of March. Daring daf
fodils in bonnets of white and yel
low follow closely behind. Fra
grant hyacinths add their pure
bright colors to the early spring
flowers flanking houses and lawns.
Each summer banks of stately
white Shasta daisies, pink and
purple bachelor’s buttons, golden
glowing poppies, vivid anemones,
fuzzy rananculus, graceful astilbe,
columbines, and flowering shrubs
ornament the grounds. Fluffy
dahlias, bowed down from the
weight of their own huge blooms,
are backed by the rainbow colors
of the tall gladioli. Bees buzz from
cup to cup, up and down the tall
ofnivc of the Canterbury bells. Bri’
lant orange and yellow calendulas,
marigolds, and nastertiums 'o’
attent’on at t^e foo* of
hued sweet pea<P %imTner <j' -
-opt O
fie’ds of w Id "’over ?o rn;n
•»
the delicate scent of roses and
weet alyssum.
Each fall the many gardens pro
duce ^ll the things so sorely miss
ed by those earlier residents—red
raspberries, juicy strawberries,
crisp lettuce, sweet cabbage, pear
ly cauliflower, snappy radishes,
onions, chard, potatoes turnips,
rutebagas, beets, parsnips, broc
coli, and other vegetables.
If the old-time F.A.A. residents
of Woody Island look back to their
days on the island with nostalgic
regret, people living here in recent
years must indeed experience a
great sense of loss upon leaving
the island. Snug in their modern
apartments, surrounded by do
mestic flowers and gardens which
are set off and complimented by
springtime’s- purple lupine and
summer’s flashing fireweed, by
black rocky cliffs and dark green
spruce, by the distant enchant
ment of a blue - green sea, the
present residents of Woody Is
land say they have never had it
so good. They realize that both in
comfort and in beauty the F.A^A.
Flight Service Station at Woody
Island has come a long, long way
since those earlier years.
(Pictures found in Historical
Section)
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