Join us on January 16 at 7:00 pm, when Geoffrey Burke will tell his grandparents’ amazing story. This program will be a slide presentation and a telling of the work Geoff and Mary Ehrlander, Professor of History and co-director of Arctic and Northern Studies at University of Alaska Fairbanks, have done to discover and tell Hap and Clara Burke’s story.
In 1908, fresh from completing his internship in New York City, Dr. Grafton (Hap) Burke traveled to Alaska to found and run a hospital in the remote Native village of Fort Yukon. The hospital, located at the confluence of Alaska’s two largest rivers, covered a district larger than the state of Texas, and was the only medical care available for natives for 800 miles along the Yukon River. In Alaska, Hap met and married Clara Heintz, and together, for 30 years, they ran the hospital and an orphanage under the most trying of circumstances.
This story will be presented by Hap & Clara’s grandson, Tamworth resident Geoffrey Burke.