Racing Toward Recovery. Lew Freedman
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Many people who used to drink share their stories and feelings, but Mike went beyond that. He took it to a much bigger audience. He has carried signatures in his sled many times because he believes in the Sobriety Movement. He is totally tenacious in that regard. He paid a price because of alcohol in his family. He experienced tragedy, as many people do. Sobriety is one part of the message of recovery.
Mike understands the level of effort and attention that is required to get people to pay attention to the problem of alcohol in the Bush. He knows and he has never quit. I can always totally rely on Mike if work is needed. He is just very well-known for his tenacity in helping people.
When you think about the lives of Alaska Natives getting better, you think about Mike. You think about the good that he does and there is lots of good.
—Doug Modig
Alaska Sobriety Movement leader
INTRODUCTION
The first time I met Mike Williams he was bundled up in a parka standing in a pile of mushy snow a short distance from Fourth Avenue in Anchorage, Alaska, awaiting the start of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
At the time I was the sports editor of the Anchorage Daily News and Mike was an entrant in the thousand-mile race between Alaska’s largest city and the old Gold Rush town of Nome on the Bering Sea Coast.
I had written about the race and Mike had mushed in the race, but he was upping the ante. He had decided that to shed light on one of Alaska’s greatest threats to the health and future of its Native people he would carry in his sled pages—pounds worth—of signatures of people who had pledged sobriety. A Yup'ik Eskimo, Mike saw how alcohol could devastate people as surely as if they had contracted a deadly flu.
It was a cause close to his heart because Mike was the last surviving brother in what had once been a large family. Only each of his brothers had succumbed to alcohol-related accidents, incidents, or illnesses. He recognized alcoholism as a disease with terrible consequences that had wrecked his family. It had also almost claimed him, but he had righted himself.
Through religion, loved ones, and sustained determination, Mike Williams shed his own dependence on alcohol. That would be enough of a victory for some people, but Mike committed to spending much of his time working for the welfare of Alaska Natives by involving himself with committees, commissions, and tribal government.
A somewhat roly-poly man of about 260 pounds with a mustache, a dry sense of humor, and a love of laughter, Mike is an engaging fellow to spend time with and yet he is also a very serious man concerned about the issues of the day and overlooked problems in the Alaska Bush. Besides working so hard behind the scenes in meetings, besides committing himself very publicly to matters of serious import, Mike also involved himself in what for many others is a full-time endeavor—long-distance dog mushing.
For some entering the Iditarod is a once-in-a-lifetime event. For others, racing in the most prestigious dog-mushing competition in the world annually is a career. Mike somehow managed to compete in the Iditarod year after year at the same time as he was flying around the state, traveling to Washington, D.C., and attending regional meetings in Seattle, or wherever his responsibilities took him.
This was no mean feat, not only because of the time required, but because Mike’s home is Akiak, Alaska. This is no metropolitan hub. No roads lead to the community in Southwest Alaska. Travel is possible by water on the Kuskokwim River, when it is not frozen solid in winter, and if someone is in no hurry. Air travel is the only way to move around swiftly, but departing from Akiak most likely means flying in a four-seater plane, taking off from a gravel runway. Then a traveler transfers to a jet in Bethel about twenty-two miles away, transfers to a jet in Anchorage, and then onward via another jet to Seattle, perhaps Chicago, then possibly to Washington, D.C., a somewhat frequent destination for Mike.
This is a guy who has been known to acquire frequent dog-mushing miles and frequent flyer miles equally.
Akiak has a population of about 350 people, predominantly of Yup'ik Eskimo heritage. The bounty of the Kuskokwim River provides much of the fish to feed the people who rely heavily on the water and surrounding land, fishing and hunting, for subsistence. Akiak’s history dates to 1880 when it was established as a small town for wintering purposes among those who spent summers along the Kuskokwim River. The community is surrounded by the river and trees and driving from one end to the other takes only minutes. A common method of travel is by four-wheeler.
One characteristic of Akiak—an important one for Mike Williams—is that it is a dry town. Possession of alcohol is banned. In some ways Akiak is more advanced than other small Alaska Bush villages. The local school is modern and impressive looking. There is a clinic. There is a modern water-treatment plant and septic system. Housing in Akiak, as it is in most Alaska villages where the temperatures are severe in winter, where the wind buffets the walls, and the snow piles high, is sturdy, with rougher exteriors and warmer interiors, both in temperature and living style.
Although he has an office in a government building, Mike’s main office is his kitchen table. He has a laptop computer and a cell phone that connect him to the outside world and from a kitchen chair he conducts business of all manner, routinely speaking to people thousands of miles away each day.
Mike’s dog lot is a few hundred yards away, down the block, really, but the Williams kennel is chiefly run by Mike Williams Jr. these days. Son Mike spent many of his formative years helping his father feed, raise, and train his huskies. Now, with Mike Sr. in his sixties, Mike Jr. is the main racer in the family. Currently, Mike Sr. spends time helping feed, raise, and train the dogs for his son’s efforts.
Mike Sr., now gray-haired, has competed in the Iditarod fifteen times, the last time in 2013. He may be retired, but rarely is that a sure thing with the Iditarod. At the least he is on a break from the demanding race, investing more effort into cheering for Mike Jr., who has put together a superior record in a short time.
A member of the Alaska Native Community and the National Congress of American Indians, Williams is the father of five children and grandfather of many, the number increasing annually.
The more time I spent talking with Mike Williams the more I enjoyed his company and gained respect for his efforts to improve the lives of those in rural Alaska who have suffered with alcoholism, a high suicide rate, below-standard plumbing and other infrastructure that most Americans take for granted. Although he was never a top contender for the Iditarod title, only once breaking into the top twenty, Williams was a fixture in the race, and a competitor whom everyone cheered.
Once, he was the only Yup'ik Eskimo musher, a symbol to all Natives around the state. Many years he carried those signatures, focusing attention on a troubling, seemingly intractable problem. Williams gained national attention, being profiled by CNN and Good Morning America. Sports Illustrated has taken note of his achievements. Fellow Iditarod competitors have voted him the most inspirational musher.
Although he never came close to recouping the costs of what it took to pull together an Iditarod team from his prize money, Mike was always there, one of the most popular entrants. As the years passed Mike and I became friendlier and I realized even more what an extraordinary man he was.
Williams deserves to have his life story told, the hardships and difficulties overcome, his rise to Iditarod prominence as one of the race’s key, admired individuals, and for the causes he symbolizes and fights for.
A unique person, one who hunts and fishes and mushes dogs, the same activities his ancestors participated in, Mike lives far from the mainstream of daily American life, four hundred miles from Anchorage, nearly two thousand miles north of Seattle. But he is also someone heavily dependent on a computer and a telephone.
Mike Williams is a man of many parts, a sports figure, a government figure, a leader of his people, a husband, a father, and a Native man with one foot firmly planted in the twenty-first century and another firmly planted in the roots of a culture that dates back 10,000 years in Alaska.
—Lew Freedman