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PAUL SOLKA, JR. (1908-1998)(Ak. Hist. Soc. Col.). Memoir; 1998. .1 cu. ft.
Paul Solka, Jr. was born in 1908. In 1915, he and his mother moved to the Tenderfoot Creek Mining District, 75 miles southeast of Fairbanks, Alaska, to join his father. Solka's family moved to Fairbanks in 1922. He then apprenticed as a printer with the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, and after graduation from high school, became a journeyman printer at that newspaper. In 1942, Solka and Ernest Jessen established Jessen's Weekly. During World War II, he served with the U. S. Army Air Corps as an aerial photographer, and also headed the photo lab at Ladd Field in Fairbanks. After serving for a time as editor of Jessen's Weekly, Solka ran his own job printing business, which was merged with the News-Miner's Commercial Printing Company in 1956, where he worked in the composing room. From 1959 to 1964, he served as a special assistant to Alaska Governor William A. Egan. Solka then returned to work for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. He left Fairbanks after the flood of 1967, and moved to Eugene, Oregon, where he worked in the composing room of the Eugene Register-Guard until his retirement in 1975. After retirement, Solka became an accomplished artist, well known for his watercolor snow scenes. He also provided Christmas stories and paintings for the holiday editions of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Paul Solka died in Eugene, Oregon, in 1998.
The collection consists of the boyhood memoir of Paul Solka, Jr. The unpublished 145-page memoir is entitled, Tenderfoot, and tells the story of the Solka family and their time living and mining for gold at Tenderfoot Creek.
The collection was presented to the Alaska Historical Society by Candy Waugaman in 2003. The collection was deposited in the archives in 2004.
HMC-0015al
JAS (9/2004)