Port commissioners, public brainstorm with Juneau artist

Sentinel writer

The Wrangell Mariner's Memorial is presently about 3,500 square feet of black empty pavement scattered with mussel shells.

It could one day be an educational space. It could one day be an artistic exhibition. It could one day be a memorial shrine. It could one day be a historical exhibit and a place for community gatherings. It could be a navigational aide. It could one day be a tourism draw, though that's not its primary focus, planners said.

Wrangell Ports and Harbor commissioners met twice with visiting Juneau artist Chris Mertl Jan. 30 to discuss with the public what they want for the future of the memorial, planned for the strip of pavement at the end of the parking lot in Heritage Harbor. A noon forum drew one member of the public. A handful of others attended a forum later that evening.

Don McConachie attended both events, and told Mertl and commissioners he'd like to see "a memorial site, but some place you can do some sort of recognition," he said.

Mertl will take the public feedback and provide two or three concepts of what the memorial ought to look like.

Planning for the Memorial started as many as 25 years ago, and has been in the works ever since, albeit in a patchwork fashion. An informal group convened at the start never successfully selected a site. A succession of Wrangell High School seniors worked on the project in the early 2000s, though as one senior graduated, the project wouldn't always get handed down to someone else to work on. Local resident Tom Sims – who had been working on the project informally - asked the port commission to become involved in about 2009 or 2010, according to Commissioner Brennon Eagle.

"We've probably had six or eight workshops on it over the course of about two, two-and-a-half years," he said.

The workshops have decided upon the construction of a lighthouse-shaped pavilion as one feature that a lot of people could agree on. They have decided on the strip of empty pavement near Heritage as the place. The Jan. 30 workshops focused on listing every conceivable idea and desire people could want to see.

"Please, give him (Mertl) your ideas," Eagle said. "Give him all your ideas."

Ideas floated during the meetings include: a compass rose motif incorporated in the floor or ceiling of the lighthouse pavilion; names of individual mariners on brass plates or etched in granite, depending on potential maintenance costs. Commissioners want to include items ranging from anchors to a ship's bell.

"My concern was that if you're going to build a memorial next to it, it should be a 24-hour-a-day light in it," said assembly member James Stough, who attended the evening meeting. "It needs a light signifying that this is a place to come home to."

Commissioner Clay Hammer agreed, and said some discussion had included making the navigational role formal.

"It might become a registered Nav Aid with the Coast Guard," he said.

The memorial could potentially expand beyond the pavement strip in the future, Hammer said.

"One of the concepts that has been thrown around a little bit – and there's been a million of them - is that this whole project take place in stages, and that one of the future stages might be that at some later point there be a walkway built out to the breakwater where there's a point itself ... maybe there would be a deck there that would support some sculptures, some totems, something like that," he said.

Discussion focused around historic, activity, educational, and memorial components.

Beside the question of what the Wrangell public wants the memorial to do, there's the question of which mariners to memorialize. They wish to include a memorial to the Sept. 20, 1908 wreck of the bark "Star of Bengal," wrecked off Coronation Island with a loss of life of at least 110, many of them ethnic Chinese workers from the Alaska Packers Association cannery in Wrangell, according to the periodical "Sea Chest," a journal of the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society.

"To date there is nothing anywhere that commemorates the loss of that ship and all those lives," Hammer said. "I think there's an opportunity to include something like that which would be kind of cool."

Including specific names for the Bengal's passengers may prove difficult because "there was no passenger manifest made before the 'Star of Bengal' left Wrangell, and since most of the bodies of the cannery workers were buried in a mass grave," according to the article, published in December 2001.

Commissioners and members of the public have also pointed out that in prehistoric times, native Tlingit and Haida mariners plied local waters in dugout canoes, and by rights ought to be included in the memorial.

"We've talked about that," Eagle said. "I'm sure there was natives lost well before we even got here. It's part of life."

Mertl told commissioners a segmented wall curved in the shape of a river, reminiscent of the role the Stikine has played in local maritime navigation, with each segment representing a different epoch of maritime history could build a connection with the past, without disturbing what is intended as a contemplative spirit for the memorial.

"My plan of attack – over the next three weeks to a month - is to come up with a bunch of concepts, probably two or three," he said. "The intent is to have a public meeting, and then I'll have a presentation. My role in this portion of the project is to listen."

That meeting, tentatively set for March 7 at 5 p.m., should include public feedback, Mertl added.

"It's going to be a matter of working out your priorities. Where are you going to allocate your funds, what's going to be phase 1, what's going to be phase 2?" he stated.

The overall goal is to create something the community can be proud of while honoring emotions that are at times deeply personal, commissioners said.

"Conceptually, that's one of the things that I had hoped how this would come about was that the actual lost at sea would be inside the protection of the actual memorial proper," Hammer said. "In effect, they came home."

Commissioners are still actively seeking additional ideas to submit to Mertl.