Longtime Alaska resident and beloved husband, father, and friend, Mr. Orville Dale Grosz, 85, passed away on Wednesday, April 24, 2024, after a short and unexpected battle with cancer. He was surrounded by family.
Orville was born at the home of his paternal grandparents on July 23, 1938, in Stanton, North Dakota, to Herbert Grosz and Esther Leontina Grosz (née Kruckenberg). His youngest sister Bonnie liked to tease him about being born in a barn. He was the oldest of four siblings–including a brother, Duane John, who only survived nine months, and two sisters, Betty and Bonnie. His first few years were spent on a farm along the Missouri River where his father worked for a dollar a day. The Grosz family was part of a small community of Black Sea German immigrants, so that was the language spoken at home for the first 10 years of his life. This made Orville’s first language German, and although he didn’t retain an accent and had lost most of his German by the time he was in his 50s, he didn’t learn English until he went to kindergarten at the age of five.
Both of his parents worked, so Orville learned to cook at an early age. Before heading out to her job as a house painter, his mother would write out instructions and recipes for him to feed his younger sisters. He was an excellent cook, and even taught his mother to make pizza in later years.
In 1947, when Orville was 9, the family home was acquired for the Garrison Dam project, and thousands of people were relocated to the surrounding area. The Grosz family moved to Pick City, a small town built to relocate people unhomed by what would become the new reservoir, Lake Sakakawea.
From the ages of 12 to 18, Orville worked on a farm in the summer and came home on the weekends. In his free time, he ran wild hunting and fishing along the abandoned Missouri River Basin until the Garrison Dam was finished when he was 15. After that, he ran wild around the edges of the lake. He taught his sisters how to fish–his sister Betty remembers him helping her reel in a 12 lb catfish. She also remembers that he would only take her fishing if she baited her own hook. He loved reading from an early age, and if he wasn’t hunting or fishing, he had his nose in a book. He also started his lifelong affair with woodworking during this time, building a set of shelves for knick-knacks in school that was used in the home.
After high school, Orville attended some college but couldn’t afford to finish. He joined the Army and was stationed in Germany when the Berlin Wall went up. He never saw combat, but in later years he would sometimes talk about the tension as the wall was built, recalling standing guard all night with the snow coming down, staring across the slowly growing concrete barrier at some teenager on the other side and hoping nobody got an itchy trigger finger.
While he was in the service, after writing him several letters, his sister Betty pestered him about not writing, saying that she would be happy with just a simple “hi.” Three weeks later, she received a single page with just the word “HI” scribbled in giant letters.
After returning home, he briefly worked a road construction job on I-94 before finding long-term employment with the Basin Electric Power Cooperative. He worked for Basin Electric for 29 years before taking an early retirement at the age of 57. Somewhere in there, he also found time to work as a volunteer firefighter for a number of years.
His nephews have fond memories of visiting during summers in the 1970s and 80s. He read wildlife field guides with them, retelling true stories of rare birds he had seen or types of fish he had caught. Unlike with his little sister, he would patiently bait their hooks when he took them out fishing.
In the summer of 1984, Orville’s youngest sister Bonnie, her first husband Tom, and their two kids were living in Alaska when Orville, Betty, and Bonnie’s father got sick. Tom was waiting to start a job and didn’t want Bonnie driving the Alcan alone, so her friend Patricia (Paddy) Callahan agreed to share the drive. They piled into a car with Bonnie’s two kids and Paddy’s daughter, Shannon, and drove to North Dakota, fulfilling a forgotten promise Bonnie had laughingly made to Orville long before, that she would bring a girl home and they would get married.
Orville and Paddy were married in August 1985, and in May 1986 they welcomed their daughter, Willow. Shortly thereafter Orville adopted Shannon.
After retiring from Basin Electric in 1995, Orville moved with Paddy, Shannon, and Willow to Talkeetna, Alaska, to build a house in the woods. Orville and Paddy quickly became involved in the community, regularly donating to KTNA, attending concerts at the Latitude 62 and throughout the community, volunteering for the Upper Susitna Senior Center, and trying to find the best cup of plain black coffee in town.
As often happens in retirement, there was a long list of things to do, so he didn’t get out hunting and fishing as much as he would have liked. However, every Father’s Day, he went fishing for landlocked silvers at Christiansen Lake with Willow, who remembers baiting her own hook, but not whether it was a requirement.
After their youngest child left for college, Orville took a winter job with the Mat-Su Borough transfer stations and a summer job at the Talkeetna Depot for the Alaska Railroad. He worked for the Mat-Su Borough for 17 years before retiring in 2023. He worked for the Alaska Railroad for 18 years. Although he was planning on it, he never did manage to fully retire. A week after he passed away, he was still scheduled for the annual Railroad refresher training for the 2024 tourist season.
He was a talented and avid gardener, often successfully growing vegetables and flowers that have no business surviving in Alaska. He taught woodworking for the Community Schools program, and later, when he started keeping bees, he shared his apiary knowledge as well. He bottled honey, made his own mead, and loved canning and putting up food for the winter.
Orville was preceded in death by his parents, infant brother Duane John, and his wife of 29 years, Paddy. He is survived by his sisters Betty (Jerry) Brekhus and Bonnie (Kenneth) Tritle; daughters Willow Grosz and Shannon Thornton; and grandsons Steven, Michael, and Brandon Thornton, as well as four nieces and nephews, a number of grandnieces and grandnephews, many assorted cousins, and his beloved cat Artemis.
Orville will be remembered for his warm smile coupled with his endless patience and preference to do things right the first time; his love of nature, reading, good coffee, and oatmeal stout; and his dry, gentle, and straight-faced sense of humor.
A formal celebration of life will be held in Talkeetna, Alaska, in the summer of 2025.
This year, the Grosz family would like to invite the community to join in informally raising a glass to Orville at the Latitude 62 on Wednesday, May 15, 2024, at 6 pm Talkeetna time. Come and relax for a minute with friends after work, like he did.
In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in Orville’s name to Friends of the Talkeetna Library.
The Grosz family would like to extend their gratitude to the Sunshine Community Health Clinic, the staff of Mat-Su Regional Medical Center, and Ancora Hospice, particularly the nurses, doctors, and other care providers who cared for Orville in the last week of his life.
