HUMAN

Name: Michael Holland

Age: 56

Residence: Anchorage, Alaska
Occupation: Retired.

Years involved with Iditarod: 22

Iditarod Role: Communications
Current Location: Cripple, Alaska

Date of Photo: March 12, 2020
Temperature: 0F/Outdoors

What, who or how and when did you first get involved with the Iditarod?

I got involved with Iditarod when I was working for the Federal Aviation Administration and Mark Kelleher was the communications coordinator, the trail communications coordinator. And he invited me to be involved and I kept telling him, “Okay,” And the year would go by and I didn’t start. So one year he came to me at work and he said, “You’re going to Nikolai.” And so that’s how my career started with the Iditarod.

What is your Why?..Why are you here today and involved in Iditarod?

I’m here today and involved with the Iditarod because it seems to me like such an iconic representation of Alaska. The pioneering spirit, the willingness and energy to get things done regardless of the weather and the uncomfortableness or the cold or the whatever, and how people come together. I describe it to people who haven’t volunteered for the Iditarod, there’s a really unique experience where you have people you’ve never met before coming together, working towards just one goal; to get the teams through. And so yeah, it’s really kind of a cool adventure.

Tell me about just one of your most memorable Iditarod experiences?

One of my most memorable Iditarod experiences was back when I started in communications, the use of ham radio, amateur radio, to communicate from the checkpoints back to Anchorage or to wherever. And just the extra level of ingenuity and resourcefulness that was required to get that to work. Everything ran on batteries. We didn’t have nice handy little Honda generators that you could carry around in one hand. And it was more of a monumental effort of getting that communications in place and keeping it running without a corporate sponsor or anything like that. It was just a couple of guys getting antennas up in a tree and hoping it worked. Yeah. Just that extra level of ingenuity required to get the race going.

What do you know for sure?:

What do I know for sure in life is that I’m going to heaven when I die.