by Colleen Mullaly
According to my parents, Bill and Clare Mullaly, when they arrived in Anchorage in 1946, housing was scarce to nonexistent. They were still on their honeymoon, which began with a cross-country train trip from New York City to Seattle and continued with a flight to Anchorage that stopped at Annette Island, Juneau, Yakutat, and Cordova along the way.
After much searching they found a room to rent on East Fifth Avenue near Gambell Street. It was within walking distance of Merrill Field where Dad worked in the Civil Aeronautics Authority Communication Center as a communications specialist and Mom relayed messages. (The CAA was the precursor to today’s Federal Aviation Administration.) To Dad it was a room in a boarding house, but my mother always maintained it was a bordello with ladies of the night on the first floor. Mom said that whenever she had to go down to the basement to do laundry, she was mortally afraid that someone would mistake her for one of these women.
The author’s mother, Clare Mullaly, at the CAA Communications Center
(from the author’s personal collection)
Mom told me the walls of the building were so thin you could tell what the weather was without a window, and Dad said the walls didn’t do much in the way of keeping out the cold. The inside walls didn’t even reach the ceiling. They had a small woodstove in their room and a lot of blankets piled high on the bed for warmth.
The flimsiness of the accommodations was relayed to me in one particular story. They told of finding their door frozen shut one morning when they got up to go to work. Dad said when he finally knocked the ice off of their door with a small hatchet to get out, he heard a fellow CAA worker on the same floor yelling for help. His door was also frozen shut but evidently he had no means at hand to break free, so Dad also had to chop the ice off of his door.
My parents had other stories of living in a converted apartment in a garage between Eleventh and Twelfth Avenues on L Street until shortly after I was born. Once I was born they were finally eligible for family housing and moved to a small apartment in the Fairhaven Apartments at 1501 W. Eleventh Avenue, which are still there to this day. I always enjoyed my parents’ tales of Anchorage when they were young and vibrant and full of a sense of adventure. It gave me a more interesting picture of where I grew up and a better understanding of some of the challenges they faced when they first moved here.
Colleen Mullaly was born in the Territory of Alaska in the old Providence Hospital on Ninth and L Streets in Anchorage in 1948 and has lived here for most of her life. She finished her education with a B.A. in Anthropology at Alaska Methodist University (now Alaska Pacific University). She worked for the state of Alaska for thirty years as a social worker. Mullaly has raised twin sons; been through earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and windstorms; seen a pope, an emperor, a president, and world renowned artists; and met wonderful friends through the years. She looks forward to what else Anchorage has to offer.
This project would not have been possible without the assistance of a Community Centennial Grant from the Alaska Humanities Forum, Rasmuson Foundation, and Anchorage Centennial Celebration. We are most grateful for their support in bringing these stories to light.
Great story– thanks, Colleen!