Digital Bob Archive

The DeArmonds

It's been a long and comfortable association we've enjoyed here in Juneau, having Dale and Bob DeArmond as members of this community. Dale, with her art, and Bob, with his writing, have given us much over the years to be thankful for. It goes without saying that their departure from the Gastineau area will definitely leave a void. Luckily, much of their art and writings will remain, a fitting legacy of long creative and productive lives.

Bob has written Juno Days of Yore in Info for over five years now. He and Dale will be leaving for Sitka on April 16, 1991, where they will take up residency at the Sitka Pioneers Home. He has enough material for the column to go through June. After that we will close that chapter in our publication and replace it with something that will be announced later. I thought you'd be interested in excerpts from Bob's biography.

\"I was born in Sitka in 1911 and first became associated with the media there in the summer of 1926 when I got a job hand setting type for the local weekly, The Sitka Progress. Before the summer was over I got more experience than I had counted on when the publisher was called away by family illness and I was left to put out the paper single-handed. (Ed. Note: He was only 15 years old!)

\"There was not a full high school in Sitka in those years ... I attended Stadium High in Tacoma for three years and after graduation got a job as a reporter on Stroller's Weekly in Juneau. That included some reporting of the Tenth Territorial Legislature, the first one held in the present Capitol. That was a vastly less complicated task than it is today as there were only 24 members and 16 employees. (I'll bet the budget was a whole lot smaller too!)

\"One of my first assignments on Stroller's was to research and write a history of the Juneau Public Library. It was then I discovered how much more pleasant it is to research a story in a warm library than to pound a beat and I have been doing that ever since when I could get away with it.

\"After a stint at the University of Oregon I returned to find, in those depression years, no available newspaper jabs in Alaska. During the next dozen years I was in the fish business, at Sitka and Pelican. Dale Burlison, whom I had known at Stadium agreed to come to Alaska to see whether she could live here. She decided she could and we were married in Sitka in 1935.

\"Late in 1944 I returned to newspapering at Ketchikan and also during the next several years reported legislative sessions for the Ketchikan News, the Empire, and papers in Seattle, Anchorage and Fairbanks. After nearly five years in Ketchikan we returned to Sitka where I was a partner in a printing business for four years, then came to Juneau as administrative assistant to Governor B. Frank Heintzleman.

\"After that, Bob Henning and I bought the Alaska Sportsman Magazine and I served first as business manager, then as managing editor, during which time all editorial work was done in Juneau. I subsequently edited the Alaska Journal and some books, worked for the Historical Library, and did a study on Cook Inlet History for the Attorney General's office in connection with an oil case.

\"For some time now I have been 'retired' as a freelance writer and editor. At present, in addition to writing for Info-Juno, I write a piece each week for the Sitka Sentinel on Sitka history.\"

Bob, we wish you the best, and everyone here at Info will miss both you and Dale. Thank you for all the good words you've written.