Daily Sitka Sentinel

SAFV to Honor 4 Women of the Year at Gala Event

 Lynne Brandon

Michelle Putz

Renée Trafton

 Emily Davis

Four Sitka women are to be honored at the annual Sitkans Against Family Violence Honoring Women Gala 6 p.m. April 20 at Centennial Hall. This year’s Women of the Year are Lynne Brandon, Emily Davis, Michelle Putz and Renée Trafton.

Summerfall will provide live music. Dinner will be catered by Our Town Catering. Also planned are a no-host bar, silent auction, entertainment, slide shows of the honorees, and the award ceremony.

Tickets are available at Old Harbor Books or online at www.safv.org. SAFV is accepting items for the silent auction. For more information, call Martina at 747-3370. 

The awardees are:

Lynne Brandon

Lynne Brandon arrived in Sitka in May 1979, one week after graduating from Colorado State University with a degree in outdoor recreation/park management, to begin a job at Sitka National Historical Park. 

By the early 1980s, Brandon was immersed in the community, volunteering as many hours per week as she worked. She helped teach dance fitness and run the Sheldon Jackson pottery studio, while also working with the first team of volunteers who established and ran the Alaska Raptor Center on Sheldon Jackson campus. She was the full-time volunteer general manager or vice president of the organization for eight years.

While working for Alaska State Parks, she, the Sitka Advisory Board and many volunteers, worked on major capital projects: Castle Hill improvements; Halibut Point Recreation Site Bridge, main shelter and the park host program; planning and funding the Starrigavan trail system; and the legislative establishment of two of Sitka’s State Marine parks. 

Brandon has been volunteering to teach dance fitness with Kristi Coltharp at the Hames Center, three days a week, year-round for 35 years. Dance, music and exercise are her space for cathartic release. Dance fitness and helping at her sons Gavin and Kevin’s classrooms were her volunteer activities. She earned American Council on Exercise personal trainer and group fitness certifications while she stayed home with her sons and ran “Wildpots,” her pottery business, which featured stoneware pottery with wildlife designs. She also deepened her gardening knowledge by landscaping her large, glorious yard on Sandy Beach. Experimenting with landscape materials to establish what cultivars endure the Sitka climate, she, at one point, had 70 different species of ornamental trees and shrubs in her yard.

Landscaping was also a large part of her position as the city parks manager, which began in 2002 when her sons were in middle school. She worked with the Tree and Landscape Committee, secured grants and completed plans to improve landscapes downtown and around city buildings and schools. Plantings at Moller Field and around the Centennial building are two of her favorites. Other city parks projects that she teamed with volunteers to develop, plan and fundraise include: Kimsham multiuse fields, Turnaround skate park, Herring Cove trail, the Sea Walk, the Cross Trail, and improvements to non-motorized facilities for pedestrians and cyclists along Sawmill Creek. 

After leaving the city in 2015, she became the executive director of Sitka Trail Works and secured all grant funding for the Cross Trail’s last phase, and completed all the permitting and project planning. The project will be done by 2021, completing a planned, non-motorized path paralleling the entire road system.

Since 2015, Brandon’s latest volunteer gig became the Sitka Community Playground. Not working for the city, she was able to begin in earnest, making sure an inclusive playground at Crescent Harbor was made a reality. With the dream team, Sitka Community Playground Steering Committee, she wrote the grants while the rest of the team planned and executed the myriad of details involved in a successful million-dollar project, 95% volunteer built and funded. The result is the epitome of her personal joy: seeing Sitka’s children playing and being active in an engaging, healthy, outdoor space. 

Currently, Brandon spends her “spare” time gardening, dancing, hiking and biking, creating quilts with wildlife designs and spending time with her family and friends. With retirement not too far off, she plans to focus most of her volunteerism by continuing to promote health and outdoor recreation, teaching Zumba, doing art work, spending time with her family and exploring exotic water and mountain destinations, here and around the world. 

Emily Davis

Emily Davis is a small business owner of a fitness studio, The Studio by Emily. She is a longstanding community member and has contributed to the betterment of our small community in many ways over the years.

The journey to owning her own fitness studio has not always been an easy one, but she credits her growth and commitment to the lessons learned from the past.

Davis’ “crazy” diverse upbringing are the source for the strong and independent woman she is. 

Davis was brought up by a single mom along with two other siblings. She was born in Minnesota, but she will always have her roots in Sitka. Growing up in a low-income household kept her family close and bonded. The family moved a lot throughout her childhood and trying to fit in was always a challenge.

“I was always known as the new kid,’’ Davis said. ‘‘While living in Florida, I was known as the new ‘white kid.’ Kindergarten through third grade, I was bullied and made fun of for the wrong colored skin. I was called yankee, white trash, etc.”

At a young age, she found her grit. She had to fight to park her bike, and fight not to cry in school. She became numb. In the following years the family moved back to Minnesota to live with grandparents, who were true believers in alternative medicines and self-healing. They were known as the crazy health nuts. Now, at the age of 85, they continue to live a healthy life, doing what is right for their bodies. Thanks to her background, Davis has a great appreciation and understanding of healthy lifestyles and community mindedness. 

Her fitness journey started in 2002 when she began teaching pilates and kickboxing classes. Her energy and passion for helping people also started there, but it was tough. She learned a lot from the people who came to her classes. Exercise and teaching she discovered is more than fitness, choreography and music. People attend her classes for many different reasons; while it is a kick-butt workout for everyone, it is also a social network for some and a source of healthy mental clarity for others. One thing they all have in common: they are all benefiting by getting fitter and stronger. Davis’ energy, encouraging words and individual attention make a huge difference. What a journey it is! Her joy for life is addictive.

Fast forward 17 years, four amazing sons and an ever-growing fitness studio, Davis continues to motivate and enable a healthier community, happier people and an ever developing network of supportive neighbors. She has brought in dieticians as well as trainers and instructors to discuss and share their wealth of knowledge. In addition, Davis donates fitness classes to local organizations, mentors women and holds fundraisers for families and people in need.  

She is sharing more than fitness, she is generously sharing a life journey of self-discovery and growth. Davis reminds us all to step out of our comfort zones.

‘‘Participate in that Spartan Race; run that triathlon,’’ she said. ‘‘Never stop growing physically, mentally or spiritually. Pass the passion on to our children and to the world.’’

Michelle K. Putz

Michelle K. Putz was born in a suburb of Chicago to German immigrants, Heinz and Waltraud Putz. Her family moved to Worthington, Ohio, in 1975. Later, she studied wildlife biology at Ohio State University and graduated with a bachelor of science degree in 1990. She eventually noticed a guy, Perry Edwards, in ecology class who, eight years later, became her husband.

While attending OSU, Michelle and Perry volunteered for the U.S. Forest Service on Prince of Wales Island doing fisheries and wildlife work. This led to temporary and finally permanent jobs doing wildlife, fisheries, and eventually environmental planning with the Forest Service in Idaho, Minnesota, Oregon, California, Colorado and Sitka.

One of Putz’s favorite projects in Sitka is partnering with the Sitka Tribe of Alaska and Pacific High School to teach people about growing and sustaining Maria’s “Tlingit” potato. Putz loves the agency’s mission – helping people find ways to use renewable resources while sustaining them for future generations. She feels this should be all of our missions.

Prior to Sitka, Putz volunteered at the raptor rehabilitation center at OSU, and in Idaho with the Grangeville Arts Council. In Sitka, Michelle did a short stint of volunteering with the Alaska Raptor Center. But after watching the movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” and assisting in care of her dying mother-in-law, Putz felt compelled to do something more. She started volunteering with the Sitka Global Warming Group in 2007. As a volunteer and later leader of SGWG, she assisted with or led projects ranging from the conversion of two vehicles from gas to electric to reusable bag libraries to 10 years of recognizing and thanking sustainability efforts at local businesses through the Sitka Green Business Awards. 

Putz’s desire to reduce Sitka’s carbon footprint led her to become a board member and vegetable gardening educator with the Sitka Local Foods Network and most recently, a volunteer with Sitka’s chapter of the Citizens Climate Lobby and CO2 reducers group. She hopes to see the Energy Innovation Act passed in Congress to combat climate change and is particularly proud of the group that started a carbon offset program for Sitka travelers (www.sitkacarbonoffset.com) to support lower income families in Sitka.

Putz was elected to a one-year term on the Sitka Assembly in 2012 and later appointed to a second nearly-one-year term. She still hopes to be president some day! Since 2011 Putz has also provided end-of life support with Brave Heart Volunteers. For fun, she creates – and sometimes shares – art and teaches wine-making to community members.

Currently Putz is working with other volunteers who are concerned about the effects of plastic on the environment and on people. The group, Bags for Change, provides reusable bags and teaches Sitkans about alternatives to one-time-use plastics. Over the next year, the group is working on bringing forward a disposable plastic bag ban for a vote in Sitka. Putz says her goal is to try to find creative, workable solutions to the problems she sees in the world. 

Renée Jakaitis Trafton

Renée Jakaitis Trafton comes from a multicultural background. She was born in Eschenbach, Germany, on May 18, 1984. Her father, Ron, was a major in the U.S. Army. He was born in Lithuania and came to the United States, through Ellis Island, when he was 6 years old. Trafton’s mother, Marta, is from Panama, and she and Ron met while Ron was stationed in Panama.

Trafton and her sister Michelle grew up in a household where both parents regularly were on the phone to their respective families, speaking different languages. The family also experienced the culture and food of both Lithuania and Panama. Ron and Marta enjoy traveling, and took their daughters on trips all around the United States, Panama, and Europe. 

When Trafton was about a year old, her family moved to Boulder, Colorado, where she would spend her entire childhood. Growing up, she participated in various activities including swimming, basketball, tennis, and horseback riding. She was in a youth horseback-riding organization called Westernaires for 10 years, and graduated off of the top team, Varsity Big Red. Trafton loved riding her horse, incidentally named Alaska, and was, in addition to precision drill, on the trick riding team. She trained Alaska to ride ‘‘at liberty’’ performing drills, over jumps, without a saddle or bridle.

Trafton attended Fairview High School in Boulder and participated in various activities including Student Conflict Hearing Board and the International Baccalaureate Program. Upon graduating from Fairview, she went off to study philosophy at Oberlin College, which had a profound impact on her worldview. While Trafton had always been interested in social justice issues, at Oberlin these topics of discussion rose to the forefront. Oberlin made her aware not only of social and economic inequalities, but also that the individual can take real steps to make a lasting impact on the world. At Oberlin, Trafton became vegan and then adhered strictly to that diet for five years. And it was also at Oberlin where she discovered her love of cooking. She was part of Harkness Co-op and learned to cook a weekly dinner for 110 co-op members.

After Oberlin, Trafton moved to Ithaca, New York.  She worked at several restaurants there and became interested in the local foods movement. 

She decided it was time to advance her career and move to New York City to learn about cooking and fine dining from the best. In New York City, Trafton learned about hospitality, commitment to excellence, and consistency. She worked at two different Michelin-starred restaurants, both in the kitchen and the front-of-house. At Oceana, Trafton learned every station in the kitchen, and also learned how to butcher many types of fish. These skills serve her well at Beak today. At Del Posto, Trafton was first a back waiter, and then a food runner. The attention to detail and consideration for the guest’s experience has also informed her vision for Beak.

In January of 2014, Trafton moved to Sitka from New York City to be with Math, now her husband. She immediately found work cooking in the kitchens for Mt. Edgecumbe High School and the Alaska Public Safety Academy. She has built a very happy life in Alaska, forming a loving family with Math, Zoë, and their pets. Renée and Math were married in June of 2016.

After living here for a few years, Trafton began to feel that there were a few gaps in the food scene that she could fill, so she began plotting out her vision of the restaurant that would eventually become Beak. At the time, there was no restaurant specializing in local fish and Alaskan products. Trafton had been concerned about the perception of the hospitality industry as often temporary and less respectable as a career. She was also particularly concerned with wage inequality in the typical restaurant setting and felt that if she was going to open a restaurant, it was imperative to pay all of her employees a consistent living wage.

Starting a business and buying a restaurant was a considerable risk. Trafton wasn’t sure about her labor source, and she wasn’t sure how the community would react to her cooking, hospitality vision, or no tipping ‘‘gratuity free’’ policy. She wasn’t sure if she’d be able to make ends meet. After her first summer, though, it looked like she could probably stay afloat. And as time went on, she continues to garner more and more public support. Artists and musicians would ask to use her space to share their work. The restaurant would host several community gatherings. And ultimately, to her relief, everyone seemed to enjoy eating and spending time at Beak.

In the two years now that the restaurant has been open, its business continues to grow and grow, and along with it, Trafton’s reputation as a chef and as a business owner. After being open just over a year, the restaurant jumped to #2 best restaurant in Sitka on TripAdvisor.

Trafton has been humbled by all of her community support, and she actively seeks opportunities to give back. She regularly donates time, food, and money to local causes. She also accumulates the extra money left by those who don’t understand the no-tip policy, and each month she has her staff vote on which community organization would benefit most from the money. With her focus on environmental, economic and community sustainability, Trafton continually strives to make Sitka an even better place.