Born late November in inner-city Manhattan, New York, she always thought Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was a marvelous way to celebrate her birthday. She attended nursing school in Brooklyn, New York.
Married to her high school friend by then, she was employed as a Registered Nurse in a hospital pediatrics unit, then in an emergency room. A fateful decision was to come to Alaska, five months before the ‘64 earthquake, where she worked at the original Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage as a pediatric nurse and then in the orthopedic and burn unit.
Returning to Anchorage and Eagle River in 1969 after two years in Juneau she continued work as office manager and purchasing agent, and then changed careers to Realty Specialist/Land Law Adjudicator with the Bureau of Land Management. In that capacity she traveled to remote corners of Alaska by helicopter to examine, report, and write survey instructions for lands in federal jurisdiction.
Concurrently she earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the University of Alaska, Anchorage. After 30 years in federal service she retired and continued being her mother’s caregiver for a total of 22 years.
Volunteer work consisted of over 20 years with Alaska Health Fairs in many locations providing health care information. During one trip with them to Kuparuk on the North Slope she joined the Polar Bear Club by swimming in the Beaufort Sea.
Now living in Willow she is a member of Willow CERT (Community Emergency Response Team), Willow Garden Club, Willow Historical and Wildlife Foundation, Willow Homemakers, and joined the Sunshine Community Health Center Board of Directors in July 2018 to continue serving her community.
In 2023 she was presented with the Dorothy A. Jones Lifetime Achievement Award from United Way. For fun Melitta watches and feeds wild birds, walks and plays with her dog, raises houseplants, experiments with recipes, learns from Great Courses, reads, and goes camping. Skiing brought her to Willow to have closer access to snow and the joys of the outdoors.
Centro Comunitario de Salud Sunshine
1-907-376-2273 (ATENCIÓN)
*This article was written with the support of AI*