HUMAN
Name: Rod Perry
Age: 79
Residence: Chugiak, Alaska
Occupation: Retired, but full time Iditarod.
Iditarod Role: I am a volunteer self-appointed ambassador on the streets of Anchorage, where I meet the summer public and spread the Iditarod gospel.
Current Location: Chugiak, Alaska
Date of Photo: February 21, 2022
Temperature: 25 F Outdoors
What, who or how and when did you first get involved with the Iditarod?
I first got involved with Iditarod… I already, I had a small dog team that I was using in a motion picture, and I was visiting the fellow who got me into dogs, who lived on the shores of Willow Lake. I was visiting during the Willow Winter Carnival. I started walking from his place, which is right near where the race restarts now, over towards the headquarters building. I noticed a fellow that I knew very well, Tom Johnson, conversing with a little group of friends. I walked over to say hi to Tom, and he introduced me around. One of the men was named Joe Redington. I recognized him. The other was Dan Seavey, and then there was another gentleman that had a dog team, and the topic of their conversation made me almost levitate.
They were talking about this wild, it sounded to me like this wild, Devil take the hindmost dash across Alaska, everybody pick his own routes, and it just sounded crazy, and it was everything that I imagined that I had come to Alaska to… That was about two or three years before the first race, and from there, I started attending every meeting that I could of the Iditarod Trail Committee. I’d take it back to Anchorage, and talk to DickTozier and Orville Lake and these guys, and they pooh-poohed the whole thing. Dick didn’t pooh-pooh it, he just didn’t think it could possibly be brought off. Orville, in his inimitable Finnish accent way, just pooh-poohed the whole thing.
I was around all the negative in Anchorage, and then I’d go back out for a transfusion to connect to the meetings, and make friends with Dave Olson and Bill Cotter and Joe, and all the positive guys. And so, I tracked it hard for the two or three years before the race, and I was locked in.
Tell me about just one of your most memorable Iditarod experiences.
One of my most memorable Iditarod experiences was arguably the greatest blizzard in the history of the Iditarod. It happened on the second race, and there were nine of us trying to push through the pass. I had been through, we went through Ptarmigan Pass those first four years. I had been through before, and the wind was so bad, there was only one lead dog, my lead dog was the only one that would face into the wind. One of the Natives from Lake Clark had another one that would do it for a while, but most of the rest of the lead dogs would just turn and go with the wind, it was so fierce.
And it was said that the chill factor maybe was 130 or 140 below zero. I’d go up and clear. The ice from the lead dog and the swing dog’s faces, and finally I told the guys, “We are not going to be able to make it through. I am not going to go any further. This is going to freeze the dogs’ flanks. We’ve got to protect them and bed them down.”
So, we did that. I had a tent that I had customized, and Terry Adkins and I, I told Terry, “Come on, help me set it up,” and I told Joel Kottke too, but he decided to sleep in his sled. Terry and I set that up, and it’s lucky that I had customized it. We got it up in no time, and we spent the night in that terrible storm, and the next morning, we turned back and waited until it abated, and then made it through. But a lot of people are kind of amazed that you could exist in temperatures and conditions like that, with what only you have on your dogsled, on the top of the Alaska Range.
How do you feel about this being the 50th running of the race?
I feel, with this being the 50th running of the race, I rejoice in the celebrations. On the other hand, I’m a little frustrated. There are two ways to celebrate a centennial. One, you can celebrate all hundred years, like Anchorage did its centennial. Two, you can do like Oregon did with its centennial. They celebrated the year of Oregon becoming a state.
So, I would like, since this is not the anniversary, this is the 50th running. Next year will be the anniversary. And so, really what I would like to do is, celebrate a wider group of runnings on this race, maybe the first 10 runnings or something, but focus on the pioneers who set it up for all the rest the next year. Because what happens is, if you combine it with all the rest, it just gets watered down.
And so, there was only one first Iditarod. We’ve always said there was the first Iditarod, then there were all the rest. It’s the only Iditarod that does not fit in the Iditarod box. It just was unique. There is a vast world of difference in doing something that has never been done before, and doing something that’s already been done. In making history and following history. And so, there are rewards available only to those who go before.
What do you know for sure?:
What I know for sure in life is that I feel very thankful for the life that God has given me here in Alaska, and I know that, to quote a favorite verse that… I’ll just do the King James version. “My Redeemer liveth, and I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I’ve committed unto Him against that day.” So, I’m just happy to be alive, energetic, healthy at, I’m getting on not far from 80, and I have a lot of energy for Iditarod, and just to work towards Iditarod’s future is what I’ve dedicated myself to, and my remaining energetic years.