Termite TV - Life Stories

Hi, my name is Ron M. I’m here in Sitka, Alaska. I’ve been here for 35 years. I was born and raised in Newberg, New York. Actually born in Westpoint, New York. Raised most of the time in Newberg. And parents moved back here to Alaska. And since I was raised here primarily I’ve stayed here the whole time. I’ve traveled all across the west coast and find Alaska to be the most secure place for me to live anyway, I don’t care to deal with all that crime and nonsense. I’d like to be able to just leave my house and leave it open, and go where I want to go and not deal with a million people. I have two kids, I raised those kids here. And their now since grown and live in, one in Washington and one just went to Canada, actually. Before he heads off to India. So my kids wound up being raised real well, in this atmosphere. So I’ve just enjoyed living here the whole time. My wife is also employed here at the local paper office and the two of us have fairly good jobs here in town. And intend to stay here for quite a while yet, as far as I know. Although, the more it rains, the more I want to pack up and live here soon. I think I need some sunshine real soon. I can’t think of anything else really, that I haven’t really done or need to go do. I spend a lot of time working at the Raptor center here, so I got involved working with wild life quite heavily. So I’m thinking when I do move at some point, its going to be to a veterinary technical training area. So I’m hoping that will take me to a whole different field, a whole different place. And somewhere down the road, probably end up living on the west coast. But coming back here to visit as often as I can. My parents both lived here, for approximately 20 years before my dad left. And my mom is still here and I think she’ll be heading off to Florida soon. So I imagine going back to the east coast and going back and forth there as well. I enjoy Sitka, the people here have been pretty nice. It’s just the view is worth a million dollars so a lot of people pay big bucks to come here so I figure why bother leaving. Can’t really think of much else, to my story, other than that. I had a good life so far and always hoping for more good things to happen later on. Probably one of the big things that stands out to me is the fact that since I’ve lived here, the range of people that I’ve met and had experiences with varies so much. Theirs everything from artists to individuals that want to be artists living here. It’s a really talented place, and if you’re not an artist by the end of living here you want to be an artist because it makes you want to be able to go out and sketch and draw. A hobby I enjoy is just getting out and going to into the wood and sketching and stuff. That’s a really fun thing for me but sometimes I think I’m just hiding away from the whole world and the reality of everything. But ah, I enjoy just being out in the woods, just by myself, that’s my quiet time, I call it my church I guess. It’s my version of church, I just go to the woods and take in what mother nature has to offer. And I hope that, at some point my kids wind up coming back here and enjoying some of this. When they left here they felt this wasn’t a very good place for them, as young adults to grow up. And they’re not real hap to move back here, they come and visit some times. But, maybe as they get older as adults they’ll see that this wasn’t such a bad place to live when you start seeing the amount of crime people are getting exposed too. Shootings and carjacking and all that stuff where they’re going to living. I’m hoping that one day they see why we stayed here for the land. And someday I’ll find out why I still live here.