A WORD FROM THE PRESIDENT:
OUR LOSSES TEACH US PAINFUL BUT IMPORTANT LESSONS

As I work through the grief and loss of my friend Glenn Godfrey, who was murdered in his Eagle River home on Aug. 3, I realize that I am not alone. While none of us will feel Glenn's loss in exactly the same way as another, I am coming to see that there will be many wide-ranging effects felt throughout the Native community and even Alaska as a whole.

At the time of his death, Glenn had just left his position as commissioner of the Alaska Department of Public Safety. He was a respected statewide Native leader. At the regional level, he was elected chairman of the Koniag board in 1996, and had been taking on greater responsibilities within the corporation. In 1999, the Alaska Federation of Natives named him Citizen of the Year. Glenn was a husband who loved his wife Patti. He was a father who was devoted to his four children, Glenn Jr., Jerad, Valery, and Jenna. And he was a grandfather who loved his 12 grandchildren.

Some of you may have known Glenn as a law enforcement officer. He was the first Alaska Native to rise above the rank of sergeant in the Alaska State Troopers. You may have known Glenn as a Native leader. You may have known Glenn as someone you looked up to and admired. I knew Glenn as all of those things. And I knew Glenn as my friend.

While Glenn, like most of us, may have had his faults, he had great strengths. In his law enforcement work, he combined his compassion and concern for the people of rural Alaska with get-tough policies aimed at wiping out bootlegging. This concern also led to Glenn's instrumental role in the creation of the Village Public Safety Officer Program. Glenn wanted people in small villages to be able to ask for help, and he wanted them to be able to combat crime in culturally appropriate ways.

Through these programs and others, Glenn's legacy will be with us for many years to come. All Alaskans will benefit from Glenn's dedication and hard work.

I don't have any idea what's in store for us when we pass on, but I believe there is a heaven. I'd like to think there is an ANCSA Hall of Fame up there and that my friends Morris Thompson, Rosemarie Maher, John Hope, and the many other Native leaders before him have just welcomed Glenn to their distinguished ranks.

For those of us who remain behind, however, we now have an important task ahead of us. That task is to find a way to fill the leadership gap left within our ranks by the loss of Glenn. We need to take stock of just how much of a loss we are faced with.

At the time of his death, Glenn was preparing to take on new duties at Koniag, Inc., as senior executive officer under a corporate restructuring. We'll never know how much Glenn would have accomplished at Koniag, nor will we ever be able to measure what he would have added to the ranks of Native leadership in such forums as the Association of ANCSA Regional Corporation Presidents/CEOs. His loss in this regard is simply immeasurable.

As we deal with Glenn's loss, we are all reminded that any one of us could be gone tomorrow, or even later today. No one knows the measure of his or her days. And none of us is given advance knowledge of the crises we will face as a nation. As we look back through the last year and try to understand the meaning of 9-11, we realize that the best we can do is seek to be ready.

We at CIRI are always trying to look ahead and set our sights on being a corporation that can adjust to change from both within and outside. I am honored that at the August board meeting, the CIRI Board of Directors officially ratified my employment agreement and extended my contract as the head of CIRI for another two years. I am equally pleased to look around at the teamwork we have developed here at CIRI, as well as the programs we have in place to mentor and train our next leaders. I know that - should anything ever happen to me - CIRI would continue as a strong company with experienced and talented leadership.

As someone facing an unexpected loss that I never could have imagined, I take some comfort in realizing that the management structure that we have built here at CIRI is strong and sturdy. Just as our nation was dealt a blow we could never have predicted, Koniag and the Native community are now facing a loss we could never have guessed would occur.

For now, our attention must focus on the prayers we recite in our hearts for Glenn's wife Patti, as well as their children and grandchildren and all of those of us who feel Glenn's loss. We must pray above all else for Patti's healing, both physically and emotionally, as she works to accept her loss and recover from her devastating wounds.

At the same time, just as our nation seeks to prepare itself for any future attacks and challenges, we in the Native community need to focus our attention on readiness. Not reliance on personalities and individuals, but on teamwork and training.

The unexpected will come. And if we work hard, we will get through it - working together.

Previous Article | Top | Next Article | Return to the list of newsletters