Patricia Ann Roppel

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Category: Obituaries

Created on Friday, 09 January 2015 10:44

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Alaska historian and former Sitka resident Patricia Ann Roppel passed away peacefully after a short battle with a very aggressive cancer on Jan. 6 in Bellevue, Wash. She was 76.

A celebration of her life will be held this summer in Wrangell, her home since 1992.

Pat was born April 5, 1938, in Ellensburg, Wash., to Richard and Helen Snowden. She graduated from Oregon State University with a degree in home economics. She was a member of Alpha Omega Phi sorority.

 She met Frank Roppel at OSU, and they were married and moved to Ketchikan in 1959. She taught home ec at Ketchikan High from 1959 to 1965. 

 Pat had a great love for the history of Southeast Alaska as soon as she set foot in the state. Her first published article appeared in the Alaska Sportsman in March 1965, and over the next 50 years she wrote 13 books and more than  100 historical articles, primarily about Southeast Alaska history.

Starting in 1991, Pat wrote a popular weekly column that over the years was published in Prince of Wales Island, Ketchikan, Wrangell and Juneau newspapers, and she was still writing columns this past fall. Two of her books earned her the Alaska Historian of the Year Award, in 1977 and again in 2006.

Many of her books were about the use of Alaska’s resources, including  salmon hatcheries, salmon canning, and mining. Others were about people and places in Southeast Alaska.  

Pat’s involvement and support of local historical societies and museums started in 1967 when a new Ketchikan museum opened. That same year she joined the recently established Alaska Historical Society, and over the years served the organization in many capacities, including as a member of its board of directors, conference program chair in 1984, local society editor for the quarterly newsletter and awards chair. In 1974 her contributions were recognized with the Beaver Log Award.

Pat regularly attended and presented papers at the annual meetings held around the state. She was the keynote speaker at the 2000 annual meeting of the Alaska Historical Society and Museums Alaska in Ketchikan, where she spoke to a standing-room-only crowd and received a standing ovation for her talk about the town she had lived in for many years, its history and its efforts to preserve that history.

She wrote several articles for the Alaska Historical Society’s scholarly journal and reviewed books for it. After she moved to Wrangell she wrote a newsletter for the Friends of the Wrangell Museum as a fundraiser, and it won the Alaska Historical Society’s Newsletter Award in 2007. She was a regular and important contributor to the Southeast Alaska newsmagazine “New Alaskan,” and was also assigned to cover non-historical articles during the quarter century it was published. 

In 1975 Gov. Jay Hammond appointed Pat to the newly created Alaska Historical Commission that advised the governor and Legislature and oversaw the writing of a high school Alaska history textbook. She served three terms on the commission, until 1983.

Gov. Walter Hickel appointed her to the Alaska Humanities Forum in 1991 and she served on it until 1996.  Gov.  Murkowski appointed her to again serve on the Alaska Historical Commission in 2003. She was vice chairman from 2006 to 2008, and was a member of the commission at the time of her death.

On hearing of Pat’s death, colleagues cited her encouragement and her generous assistance to them and countless others. Pat reviewed their articles, edited manuscripts, prepared indexes, helped locate photographs, but most of all answered countless questions.

When she lived in Ketchikan, Sitka and Wrangell she helped the local museums mount exhibits and she recruited speakers for programs—sometimes donating airplane miles and frequently hosting out-of-town speakers. Alaska historians have the highest respect for Pat, and all are thankful for the huge volume of her work. Her books and articles will be used and referenced by historians, museum staff, and writers for many, many years. 

Pat also was one of the founding board members of Southern Southeast Regional Aquaculture. 

The Roppels moved from Ketchikan to Sitka in 1983 and then to Wrangell in 1992, where they continue to reside.

Among Pat’s pleasures were being out on their boat Twinkle and riding motorbikes on the logging roads around Southeast Alaska. She loved to explore old cannery sites she had researched; and was an avid cross-country skier, pond ice skater and outdoors woman. 

Pat enjoyed traveling the world with her granddaughter Samantha, other family members and friends. She visited Patagonia, Iceland, Mongolia, Roatan, Japan, Nepal and Jordan, among many other exotic places.

Pat is survived by her husband  of 55 years, Frank Roppel; children John Roppel (Michelle) of King George, Va., and Cindy Baird (Darran) of Greenwich, Conn.; grandchildren Samantha and Travis Baird; brother Donald Snowden (Carol) of Yuma,  Ariz.; and many cousins, nephews and nieces.

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests sending a book (new or gently used, any genre) in her memory to Coffman Cove Library, P.O. Box 18135, Coffman Cove, AK 99918.

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