Barrow Aug. 15, 2010
Alaskan runners mimic 1935 run from crash site
Just like Claire Okpeaha, runners in Alaska left the site of the crash where Will Rogers and Wiley Post were killed in a plane crash 75 years earlier. On Aug. 15, while Oklahomans in Claremore-Oologah and Oklahoma City and at the Will Rogers Historic Park and Ranch in Pacific Palisades, Calif., were honoring Will and Wiley on the anniversary of their death, the same tribute was happening in Alaska.
Leslie Pierce and Karen Hegy made the run in four hours and 38 minutes — from the crash site to Brower’s station, “just like Claire,” said Larry Nemecek of Barrow. The whalebone arch, where the race ended, is right outside Charlie Browers’ still-existing main building, still a café, where Claire went with word of the crash.
Okpeaha is the Eskimo who heard the plane go down and took off running to the nearest place —Browers’ store — with the news.
The photos show some of the runners at the whalebone arch and at the downtown monument in Barrow, Alaska, erected by Oklahoma Lions Club several years ago.
