A lifetime commitment.
Until they retired 25 years ago, Walter and Vivian Teeland owned the only store in Wasilla.In 1923, President Warren G. Harding journeyed to Alaska to hammer in a gold spike marking completion of the Alaska Railroad. Very few Alaskans have Walter Teeland's perspective as a part of the crowd who watched the event near Nenana.
"Harding's first swing missed the spike and hit the rail," Walt said. "Boom - they must have heard it almost in Fairbanks."
At the time, Walt worked at Coghill's General Store in Nenana. He would go on to a long career as a small-town storekeeper.
Walter Teeland and Vivian, his wife of 63 years, still live in Wasilla, where for a quarter of a century they ran the only store in town, a combination grocery store, general store and hardware store known as Teeland's. Their 50 years in Wasilla have made them perhaps the most-respected and best-loved couple the town has ever produced.
But the years in Wasilla are only part of the story. Both have deep ties to the Alaska of yesteryear, the Alaska most of us know only as vignettes from history books.
Walt's father, John Teeland, hiked over the Chilkoot Trail from Skagway in 1898. By the time Wait was born in 1907, the family lived at Cleary Creek, a mining site north of Fairbanks.
Walt learned to talk while they were living in Nome. "My mother said my first word was 'beans,' and my second word was 'more beans.'"
In 1911, John built a raft at Tanana and floated his family down the Yukon River to Ruby, where they would live for 10 years. Walt, then 4, says his earliest memory is of stepping ashore in Ruby.
"In those days, we thought going to Fairbanks from Ruby was like going to New York," Walt said, reminiscing one day not long ago. Many of those memories cover things now taken for granted.
"I saw my first airplane in 1920 - the New York to Nome flight when they stopped in Ruby for gas," Walt said. "We cleared the brush off the sand bar in front of town for them to land. People came from all over to see them.
"I spotted them first way off, just tiny specks. But we weren't prepared for the noise. We'd seen airplanes in silent movies, but it never occurred to us that they were loud."
Vivian, born Outside, came to Alaska in 1917 with her father, Evan Jones, and her mother and sister. Her father, who started out working in the coal mines of Wales when he was 12, was lured to Alaska by a coal mining job. "He worked at the Daugherty and Eska coal mines," Vivian said. "We actually lived in the camps."
Later Jones operated his own mine and for many years was the principle supplier of coal to the Alaska Railroad. Periodically during these years the family would return to Anchorage, where Vivian graduated from high school.
Walt never finished high school. He pulled out at 15 and went to work. He clerked at Coghill's and later at a grocery store in Seward. By 1924 he was in Anchorage, which would be his home for more than 20 years.
In Anchorage, Walt tried a little of everything. He worked for the Alaska Railroad for a dozen years. He formed his own trucking company around a beat-up Model T Ford. One of his contracts was hauling supplies to the Evan Jones coal mine. As Walt points out, "I was interested in his daughter."
Vivian and Wait met at a dance at the Oddfellows Hall in 1932. When Walt called later asking for a date, Vivian had to ask her mother if it was OK. "I had hurt my foot playing basketball, and wasn't sure if I should walk on it," Vivian said. Mom approved of the date, one thing led to another, and they were married the following year.
During the war years, Walt returned to the railroad and kept the books for an Anchorage grocer at night. The grocer wanted to sell, and kept trying to convince Walt to buy the store. Walt was reluctant, but after considerable pressure finally made what he thought was a very low offer for Quality Grocery in Anchorage. That evening he told Vivian, "That's the last we'll hear of that."
He was wrong, and in 1944 he found himself the owner of a grocery store at a time when Anchorage was booming because of the war. But it was short-lived. Walt developed tuberculosis shortly after the war. He and Vivian sold everything, including the store, and moved Outside where Walt spent a year in a sanitarium.
After he was cured the couple returned to Alaska, but in Anchorage's post-war boom housing prices were sky high. Then Walt heard of a small store in the Mat-Su Valley that might be for sale. It included a house behind the store. In 1947, Walt, Vivian and their three children moved to Wasilla and took over the store.
"The first thing we did was put in automatic heating," Walt said. Prior to that one had to shovel coal for warmth.
"All the kids worked in the store," Vivian said. "When they came home from the university in the summer, they worked in the store."
Daughter Colleen lives just a couple of doors down from her parents in Wasilla. Son Walter (Wally) is an accountant in Brisbane, Australia, and son Lawrence is a sociologist in Sweden. There are eight grandchildren and five great grandchildren.
How small was Wasilla when Walt and Vivian took over the store? "I think," Walt said, "that the school district had a superintendent and four or five teachers. Maybe there was 100 people total and a few homesteaders."
As Wasilla's only storekeepers for 25 years, Walt and Vivian watched the population slowly increase, all the while enjoying their small-town home and the people who came their way.
The 1964 earthquake demonstrated why Walt and Vivian liked being storekeepers in a small town. Teeland's suffered about $2,500 damage in the quake. "It was a horrible mess," Walt said. "We had to go outdoors to go to the back of the store."
"Everything fell down," Vivian said. "It was knee deep in there. But, at 6 a.m. the next morning, a whole lot of volunteers came down to help us set it back up."
By 1972, it was clear that Teeland's was going to have to expand. But Walt was already in his mid-60s and wasn't so sure. Though it was still the only store in town, changes were coming fast. In 1970, the Parks Highway was built alongside the store. By 1972, the road reached all the way to Fairbanks, and traffic was increasing. They offered the store for sale.
Not much happened until a bank auditor from Illinois stopped in one day. He was visiting Alaska and looking for a change in lifestyle. A few weeks later, he called Walt from back home to talk some more, at which point Walt told him to come back up to Alaska and they'd make a deal. Walt and Vivian sold the store and retired.
The store is in business no more. The corner where it stood for so many years now hosts a sleek, modern convenience store. But the buildings remain. Both the store and the house are now part of the Wasilla Museum.
And, in an interesting twist, Walt knew the mother of another of this year's inductees into the Business Hall of Fame. Back in the 1920s when he clerked in the grocery store in Seward, he used to wait on Mrs. Lindsey, who came into the store with a baby. Though the baby wasn't Dale Lindsey - most likely it was his older brother - this small anecdote demonstrates just how much of a small town Alaska really is. People like Walt and Vivian Teeland - and Dale and Carol Lindsey - and Bill Stroecker - made it so, to the benefit of us all.
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| Title Annotation: | entrepreneurs Walter and Vivian Teeland |
|---|---|
| Author: | Dalby, Ron |
| Publication: | Alaska Business Monthly |
| Date: | Jan 1, 1997 |
| Words: | 1335 |
| Previous Article: | Building tomorrow's business leaders. |
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