Richard H. Geoghegan

Small Twin Turboprop Airliner on Akun Island

My niece in her work as a general factotum for Trident Seafoods, is in Anchorage this week coordinating transportation for 200 workers from their arrival in Anchorage to Trident's processing plant on Akutan in the Aleutian Islands. 

Akutan Airport on Akun Island

The Trident Seafoods plant on the remote island of Akutan is one
of the largest fish and crab processing facilities in North America

Workers arrive in Anchorage from the four corners of the globe on modern jetliners, but getting to Akutan requires first taking a 16 passenger prop plane 700 odd miles to Akun and then a short helicopter flight to the town on Akutan.

Maritime Helicopters Bell 412 HP
The Bell 412 HP can carry 12 passengers

One couple have been doing this for umpteen years. Originally from Africa they now live in Austin Texas.

CoastView has a page about Akutan Airport wherein I found this lovely little bit:

Akun Island is relatively flat and uninhabited, except for airport workers and a few people controlling a herd of feral cattle. The island historically had three small villages or seasonal camps. The Alutiiq Unangan name was recorded in 1768 by Captain Lieutenant P.K. Krenitzin of the Imperial Russian Navy. According to the linguist R.H. Geoghegan, the name Akun means “that, over there”. Neighboring Akutan Island is mountainous and the topography is dominated by Mount Akutan, a stratovolcano with an elevation of 4,275 feet (1,303 m) that last erupted in 1992. The name Akutan may be from the Alutiiq word “hakuta” which, according to R.H. Geoghegan, means “I made a mistake”.

Naturally I have to look up this R.H. Geoghegan where I find this:

Despite the rigorous climate and rough gold mining environment, the informal Alaskan lifestyle and the opportunity to study firsthand Aleut and other native languages of the region appealed to Geoghegan. Except for the year 1905, which he spent in Seattle (where the Seattle Esperanto Society was founded primarily under his influence and that of his friend, William G. Adams), and 1914, when he traveled through the western United States and Japan, Geoghegan remained a resident of Alaska until his death on 27 October 1943. Because of his physical handicaps, Geoghegan was of a retiring nature and remained single until 1916. In that year, infatuated with Ella Joseph-de-Saccrist, he married her, but only secretly, under the advice of friends, because of racial prejudices that existed at that time: Ella, who came from Martinique, was known as a black. She died in 1936. (This explains why in many biographies one reads that he never married.)

Geoghegan lived simply, often in primitive log cabins, at various addresses in the city of Fairbanks. He always remained faithful to Esperanto, to whose Lingva Komitato (Language Committee) he was elected immediately upon its formation in 1905. For him, however, Esperanto was mainly a written language. The first person with whom he actually spoke it was Wilhelm Heinrich Trompeter, who visited him in Eastsound in the 1890s. His valuable book collection, including many original letters from Zamenhof and other pioneers, as well as other rare artifacts about little known—mainly oriental—languages, were destroyed when the family home in Eastsound burned down in 1906. Probably Geoghegan's most noteworthy linguistic contribution was the compilation of a dictionary and grammar for the Aleut language of the Alaskan islands, on which he labored from the time of his arrival in Valdez, Alaska, en 1903. It was finally published only after his death, in 1944, and remains even today the principal English language work on the subject.

Akutan (lower left) to Anchorage (upper right) 756 miles