Gene Coghlan Biography

Eugene Joseph COGHLAN was born 12 Jan 1910, in St John, Rolette County, North Dakota. He was the third child of William and Delia Mathilda (COUTURE) COGHLAN.

"His grandfather and brothers came from Boston and homesteaded in North Dakota. It was really frontier living. He remembers his grandmother hiding all the children when some Indians came to the house." [*VPC]

"Water was hard to come by and they melted ice for drinking and washing clothes. One brother went into the ice business. He would cut huge slabs of ice from a nearby lake. They would haul it by horse and sleigh and store it in sawdust." [*VPC]

"Life was hard with outdoor toilets and no luxuries. The children picked berries, fished, and trapped small animals for a few dollars to help out. The girls baked, sewed, and cleaned the house." [*VPC]

"One brother became a road contractor and another a judge. Gene's father eked out a living as a farmer. His mother was blind and his grandmother lived with them to help with the children. [Gene's mother was Mother of the Year once in North Dakota.]" [*VPC]

"It was a beautiful place with the Turtle Mountains nearby. As the brothers settled down with families they decided to build a huge stone house. It became known as the 'Coghlan Castle' and subsequently a state land memorial." [*VPC]

"One brother was a blacksmith and used to let the boys watch and help out with shoeing horses. [He has some brothers still living in Valley City, North Dakota. They had some connection with the Coast-to-Coast stores.]" [*VPC]

"Without electricity nights were long in winter. They would read by lantern light, make candy, and sing together while one of them would play the piano." [*VPC]

"School was a one-room clapboard building. [Some of the kids in Gene's school lived in Canada.] Everyone knew everyone else. Some women would hire a half breed girl to help out. Families were large - six to ten children. Everyone wore hand-me-downs, long underwear, and heavy sweaters." [*VPC]

"The railroad terminal was a big thrill when it came through. All the boys wanted to be an engineer. Once in a while the engineer would let them blow the train whistle and take one or two at a time for a short run." [*VPC]

"There was no TV or radio. The phonograph was hand wound and treated very carefully." [*VPC]

"The girls would gather bark from a certain tree and sell it for a few pennies. It was used for medicinal purposes - a patent medicine called 'Lydia's Compound Syrup'. " [*VPC]

"The only crime was a little thievery by the Indians. It was tolerated by the settlers who know what being poor was all about." [*VPC]

"To go to the 'Big Town' was a thrill. Rolla was six miles away. It had about 500 people. It had the only hospital in the area for many miles. Everyone traveled by horse and buggy or sleigh." [*VPC]

"I am in the process of tracking the movements of Sid Rae, Gene Coghlan, and Pat Carter. I am especially trying to nail down the how, where, and when they met; meaning when and how did Gene meet Pat Carter, and where they met Sid Rae, who led Gene and Pat to leave North Dakota and go to Montana to work." [*DC]

"Before World War II, Uncle Gene flew right seat on Ford Tri-Motors, flying supplies to miners in Central America." [*ML]

"My grandfather, Sid Rae, was at one time friends with Eugene Coghlan, who ended up spending most of his life in Alaska. ... We recently concluded a research trip to Montana. We spent some time in the archives in Helena, and then dropped down to Townsend to scan the old newspapers there in the recorder's office. I found some articles that Gene wrote, a couple as 'Plympton McDuff' about the local baseball minor leagues, and as Damsite Dennis, about the construction of the Toston Dam. Also a couple articles sent from Nicaragua to the editor at the Townsend times, outlining some of his experience there." [*DC]

Damsite Dennis
Jul 1939, continued

Damsite Dennis
Aug 1939, continued

"Uncle Gene was manning an army weather station in the Alaska bush for two years, and he got the same service credit as men overseas. He volunteered to do it again, but the arm said he had to come back to the lower 48. He was assigned retraining in Chicago. Auntie was a waitress he met. Later he was assigned a post in Arizona(?) [or Arkansas?]. He went to the commander and asked for leave to get married. The Commander called Auntie to see if it was true. It was the first she had heard of it, but she backed up his story so he wouldn't get in trouble. He came back to Chicago and they actually did get married." [*ML]

Eugene Joseph COGHLAN married Violet PREVENAS 13 Mar 1945 in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois. Their three children were: Gerald 'Skip' (1940), Katharine 'Kathy' (1946), and Bonnie (1951).

He was stationed in Nome during WWII. After World War II, Gene told Vi that they were going to be homesteading in Alaska. "When Gene said he was taking Vi and Skippy to homestead in Alaska, we all thought he was crazy. Of all people, Violet wasn't suited. She never left the house without her white gloves and parasol. It turned out, Gene knew what he was doing. And, he cured Skippy. Vi had raised him as a fancy pants. Gene grew him into a man in one season." [*JPP]

"December 1945 we arrived in Wasilla and lived in the front half of the Post Office. Spring '46 we moved 1/2-mile from town to the "ranch," a former mink farm. Fall of '47 we moved back to Chicago, and lived in the lower level of Thein's place on Drake." [*GSC]

"When Aunt Violet and Uncle Gene came to live briefly in Chicago, they spent the winter. They had a driver side window that wouldn't close so Uncle Gene could be seen stopped at stoplights, in a car with Alaska license plates, fanning himself while the outside temperature was around 0 degrees." [*ML]

"Spring of '49 we moved back to Wasilla, lived the summer at Senske's, and that winter at Marge's." [*GSC]

"Spring of 1950 we moved to Sagers and lived there until the spring of '58. In 1951 Daddy homesteaded and built the 'cabin,' though there was not enough money to build a house. In 1954 Daddy (and everyone) started as the school janitors." [*GSC]

"When Christmas came around and they needed a tree, Uncle Gene would go outside and cut down a few of their sprucetrees, lop off the top few feet of each, and bring them to the back door for Aunt Violet to pick the one she wanted." [*ML]

"In 1957 they built a house on Jacobsen Lake on the homestead. I graduated high school in spring of 1958 and that summer is the only time I lived in the house, but Kathy and Bonnie grew up there, and Mom and Dad lived there until they died (1992 and 2007). Kathy and her husband Richard Webb rented the house, then bought the house in 2009, and lived there until they sold it in 2016." [*GSC]

Gene had a friend who did all the surveying for the homesteads. They were all surveyed and plotted out. You had to go file on one that was already staked out. You couldn't just pick any piece of land that you wanted. His friend let him see the map first. His friend let him pick the best one. His was at the middle of a kidney shaped lake. (Later on they wanted to call it Lake Bonnie but it already had a name.) The two tips of the kidney-shaped lake went to two different homesteads. Gene got the middle of the other side of the lake in his homestead too. About twenty acres of the 160 acre homestead was under lake water. And, he also got the only homestead that straddled the highway that ran from Anchorage to Fairbanks. Having both sides of the highway was why he picked that homestead.

Gene homesteaded three miles out of Wasilla. He lived on the land for six months while his family lived in town. He hunted and trapped. In the summer he did cat skinning. He had has own bulldozer.

"When they built their house on the homestead, Uncle Gene said he designed the floor plan with the bathroom in the center so anyone could reach it quickly from any spot in the house." [*ML]

"When Uncle Gene worked at the local school, he cleaned classrooms at night. Sometimes he would see a pile of themes stacked on a teacher's desk waiting for grading, and he couldn't resist sliding in one of his own under a fictitious name." [*ML]

"The teachers would get upset because at night, while cleaning, Gene would correct the spelling and grammar they had written on the blackboard. Then the stupid teachers would erase it and put it the way they had it." [*KPL]

On the other side of the lake ran the railroad from Anchorage to Fairbanks. Gene worked on that railroad, building it and maintaining it. You can watch the train going by. In the old days the train used to pick him up right there. He would take his canoe across the lake, wait on the tracks, signal the engineer, and get aboard. He didn't have a long commute. And, if the family was going to either town the engineer would pick them up and let them off when they got back to Gene's place.

There are cranberry bogs on the other side of the lake. Some cranberries were on the house side too but most were on the other side.

"The game wardens allowed homesteaders to take six or seven moose a year to feed a family. Uncle Gene didn't like to hunt but would take five or six moose a year for food for the family. The best meat was from a barren cow moose. That's what they all said. Sometimes he would get meat that was very tough, sometimes it was very tender. He never figured out why. The worst meat he ever took was so bad 'even the hamburger was tough.' It is all woods from Anchorage to Fairbanks. There is only one highway. If you are on the highway you can't get lost because you can only go one way or the other. So, I asked him about going out into the woods to hunting for moose and carrying all that meat back to where he needed it. He said he never went to the woods to hunt. At dawn he would just get in his truck and cruise the highway. There would always be a moose somewhere along the side of the highway. He would shoot it there and load it into the truck. He never had to carry it." [*ML]

"I remember Daddy shooting a moose for meat through my bedroom window. He kept waiting for the moose to move because he did not want it falling in our garden when it was shot. Mother would tell a story about how when she came into some money, she splurged on some fancy beef roast, and her kids turned up their noses and said, "The meat tastes funny." We were accustomed to moose, salmon, and chicken and pork for special times. We really did not eat beef until the mid 1960s when there were both working full time outside the home at State jobs." [*BCB]

When he was working for the reform school, he was in charge of one cabin group of boys. One of the things they had to do was go and get road kills when the calls would come in. If a moose got hit on the highway by a truck or car, the meat went to the kitchen for the boys school. He said he hated that. The kids didn't know how to do it so he would end up having to skin it out, and cut it up, and he didn't like to do it to begin with.

In the 1930's Gene was a barnstormer in North Dakota. He flew again in Alaska. Gene used to land his seaplane on the lake. He would change from pontoons to skis as the weather would dictate. There were lily pads at the surface of one section of the lake. He had to be careful when he landed because the lily pads collected heat. During the winter the warming and cooling of the lily pads made holes that were each a foot wide in diameter two feet down which made the ice weak.

When it was really bitter cold, -20 to -40 degrees, he had to drain the oil as soon as he shut off the engine. The oil had to be taken inside the house to keep it from congealing over night. Then, in the morning when he was ready to fly again, they would have to warm up the oil on the stove. And, he would also have to warm up the engine before pouring the hot oil in the engine so the engine wouldn't crack. They had canvas that they put over the engine that hung all the way to the ground where they built a controlled fire to warm the plane engine.

All pilots always carried pine boughs in their planes. Often, they had to use the horizon and because of all the snow and sky whiteness they would get snow-blindness sometimes. In case of 'white out', they could throw the pine boughs out of the plane, circle around to find them and be able to get a reference as to where down was. Gene didn't like to fly by the horizon. He liked to travel hugging the shoreline. He didn't like to get out over the ocean too much. And, he didn't like to fly by himself too often. He always liked to have another plane flying with him. He would fly into town to get the mail. His friends would signal him from below if the FAA inspector was there and he would just fly on through because he didn't have a pilot's license. He loved to fly but he never did get a pilots license.

"A good friend of mine from high school, Cassius Philo, had quite a few encounters with Gene, as he kept his aircraft at Philo's airstrip." [*DC]

Gene liked to play around with his airplane on the frozen lake. It was not an easy thing to taxi the plane. He would gun, accelerate the engine and use the rudder to steer. When the wind was blowing there was extra difficulty. One day he hit a snow bank and bent the propeller. He had to get a new prop. He put it in the mail and had the package insured. The prop was lost in the mail. The insurance paid him something like $90. He sent away for a rebuilt prop for $85. So, the first thing he did with the new one was to put it in the mail. After all, he made $5 the first time. Let's try it again!

Gene once built a Jenson gyrocopter with the intention of selling them up in Alaska. He also had an Ultra-Light plane built. He never flew it because Violet felt they were too old. He donated it to some museum there. That was about the time they got all that money from selling eighteen acres. Gene owned three airplanes and sold each of them for a profit. Therefore he fancied himself as a financier.

It used to irritate Violet when Gene would take the car out on their frozen lake. He thought it was so funny. He would make sure he would honk the horn and spin the car on the ice right in front of their big picture window so she would see what he was doing. He knew it annoyed her a lot. One day he went too far out and the ice cracked and the car slid right in. They had to get the crane out there to haul the car out. "Even when I was there in October 1985 to bring their new car up, he took it out on the lake and skid it around, made it spin, ... He thought is was great fun!" [*ML]

Gene would feed the birds all the time. He put suet and seed out for the winter birds. They had birdfeeders by the kitchen and living room windows. Their house has big picture windows. The kitchen windows look out on the lake and the forest. The living room window look out on the lake and the mountains. The lake is a glacial lake.

"Uncle Gene used to feed corn to the ducks on their lake all summer. Aunt Violet asked him to shoot a couople to eat, but he would always say the ones close enough were too small and point across the lake to another flock and tell her those are the good eating ducks. He laughed about the duck hunters down south who might shoot his corn fed quackers and remark about how good wild duck meat is." [*ML]

Gene and Vi first sold 90 acres on the other side of the highway for $1,000 an acre. Then they were able to retire because they had all that money. A few years later someone came out and wanted to buy 18 acres that bordered the highway for a quarter of a million dollars. Gene said no because they wanted their privacy. A few days or weeks later someone else came up wanting that same property. They said, 'You might as well leave because we have already turned down an offer for a quarter of a million dollars.' The guy said, 'How about a million, two-hundred thousand?' They said, 'No, we want our privacy.' They negotiated for a while and finally decided to sell for something like a million and a half on contract in 1985. Then, the fellow who bought the land died. His son inherited everything but didn't know how his father was managing everything. The son said he couldn't make the payments. So, Gene and Vi got the land back. They were able to keep the money down and all the payments made up to then and the land.

"Gene realized his ambition and succeeded with his writing. He sold stories to Blue Book, True, Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, Alaska Sportsman, etc. Then he quit and relaxed saying writing was 99 percent hard work and discipline (he said he hated both) and 1 percent talent." [*VPC]

Gene was a writer. While he had a steady job as Wasilla's school janitor (Vi was his assistant), one of his stories was published. The school teachers were quite upset that the janitor would be a published writer. When he was a kid living in North Dakota, Gene had a horse. He said they made a big mistake when they named the horse Joe. Every time you would say 'Joe,' the horse would think you said 'Whoa' and would stop. Joe inspired his short story, Me and Old George, which was published in the March 18, 1961 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Two stories were published in the Saturday Evening Post, two or three in Harper's under Garfield Scrog penname. Also, some can be found in True magazine. Published a home newspaper, The Muskea Journal, during the 1960's and 1970's.

Gene had his first heart attack in 1959. He had heart bypass surgery in the mid 1980's. Eugene Joseph COGHLAN died 24 Feb 1992 and was buried on the homestead.

[*BCB Bonnie Coghlan Buchanan, *DC Dan Carney, *JPP James Peter Prevenas, *KPL Katharine Prevenas Langner, *ML Marty Langner, *SC Skip Coghlan, *VPC Violet Prevenas Coghlan]

Eugene Joseph COGHLAN

1910 - 1992