Alaska has the highest percentage of military veterans in the country, at 8 percent of its population.
In Wrangell, that figure is even higher – at 9.3 percent. That ranks the community eighth among 30 Alaska communities surveyed by the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development. [web: Its share of veterans is 4.3 percentage points above the national average.]
For Veterans Day KSTK’s Leilani Combs spoke with veterans in Wrangell about why they chose to make the town their home.
Retired military police officer Liz Roundtree moved to Wrangell in 2017 with her family after leaving the National Guard.
It’s quiet. It’s peaceful. You can go into your backyard and shoot a gun if you want to. It’s a tight-knit community where most people have each other’s back. That’s why we came here.
Roundtree joined the California National Guard at 17, wanting to follow in her father’s footsteps. When she found out that the Navy wouldn’t let women work on submarines at the time, she said she walked over to the Army recruiting office instead.
Starting off in human resources, she says she switched to the military police in 2007. A high school friend begged her to come to Iraq when he got deployed, saying they needed more female police officers, and she agreed.
After 12 years in the Guard and one deployment, she left the military to spend more time with her kids.
Obviously not all veterans in Alaska are transplants. Wrangell Police Officer Matt Nore served 20 years in the Alaska National Guard. His military service sent him twice to Iraq, once to Cuba and a final deployment to Kuwait.
I grew up here, so that’s why I wanted to move back.
Nore is now 43. But he also joined the Guard at 17 while still attending Wrangell High School.
With the support of his parents, he went to basic training the summer before his senior year of high School. [web: Nore returned home in August 2001 and turned 18 that Sept. 29]. Between returning home and turning 18, two hijacked airplanes were flown into skyscrapers in a city on the other side of the country, killing more than 2,700 people and reshaping the future of his military career.
I remember on September 11th, my parents woke me up. They’re like, ‘The planes hit the World Trade Center,’ and I’m like, ‘What’s the World Trade Center?’ Because I had no idea.
He says it took time for the gravity of that day to set in. He graduated and went off to college as planned, and that was when the National Guard units started to be activated for war.
On his second deployment, Nore ran into other soldiers coming from Wrangell too.
“There was Nick Howell who’s here around. I don’t know what he was doing. And then Zach Taylor was my gunner there, so that’s kind of neat,” Nore said.
Over two deployments, he says they had some close calls – his unit was shot at and had a series of near misses. But he says multiple times traffic or paperwork issues at checkpoints saved them from being blown up and delivered them home safely.
I like my experiences. I got to do a lot of cool things in the military. I Got to jump out of airplanes. I got to rappel and do all these cool things.
Now though, he says that he’s happy to be home with his daughters.
Roundtree and Nore are two of nearly 200 veterans estimated to live within the Borough. Whether they are from here or are transplants they are a part of the unique identity of this community.
–
