Jeanne Swartz: Redeye: My 40-Year Love Affair with the Anchorage International Airport

We took off from the small airport in Palmer in a tiny Piper Tri Pacer heading towards Anchorage in the last leg of our flight. We had flown through rough weather, and I was weary from the constant turbulence that buffeted our little plane. After we gained altitude, my father turned and said to me in a conversational tone, "Since the Pacer’s radio won’t transmit, we'll have to go in at Anchorage International. I cleared it with the tower when we were on the ground." I looked over at him in mute alarm and contemplated how landing between the jetliners going in and out of the big airport instead of the much smaller air field at Merrill would be like riding a go-cart on a highway in a convoy of semi-trailers. My father, unconcerned, pointed out features below to me as though he were a tour guide: Eklutna Lake, Eagle River Delta, Elmendorf Air Force Base—they all disappeared behind us, partly hidden by the scudding clouds chasing our plane. A few minutes later, he dropped into place behind a Japan Air 747 with a Wien jet looming close behind us, and banked into a descent towards the runway. I clenched my fists around my seat frame and closed my eyes, waiting for disaster. Incredibly, within a few seconds, we glided smoothly away from the big planes to an uneventful stop at the far end of the runway. I hopped out of the plane on shaking legs, dropped to all fours, and kissed the blacktop. That was the beginning of my love affair with the Anchorage International Airport.

Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport occupies 4,500 acres at the western end of the peninsula that is home to the Municipality of Anchorage. One of the first things a new resident learns is that our airport is the portal, the beating heart of Anchorage.

Unless you got here by driving up the Alcan Highway or were beamed in from outer space, you get your first experience of Anchorage at the airport. It’s also the great equalizer of people. Inside its walls, I’ve encountered old friends as we corralled our luggage for a hurried conversation, waited in the line for coffee behind a U.S. senator, and been entranced by stories recounted to me by a village elder. On other occasions, I witnessed emotional farewells between Armed Forces members and their families, gawked at a few celebrities, and smiled at older people wide-eyed at realizing their lifetime dream of a trip to Alaska. You learn to take it all in stride when you visit the Anchorage airport.

In the rollicking 70s and early 80s, the Anchorage International Airport was dingy, utilitarian, and as familiar as your old Xtra Tufs. We sat on the hard plastic seats at the gates and gazed out at the runway in the twilight of late summer or the moonscape of early winter, waiting for our night flights to depart. They were always night flights in those days. I remember the night I waited with two girlfriends, the three of us young and single with money to burn and follies to regret, ready to embark on the flight for our first trip to Hawaii. It wasn't the drinks in the Upper One bar that made us giddy with delight. The Anchorage airport was the place where we would climb into that metal magic carpet bound for paradise, and our feet barely touched the ground as we hurried to the gate.

Improvements at the airport began to pop up late in the 80s: more shops, new artworks, and a modernization that fit in with Anchorage’s transformation from a quaint frontier outpost to a modern hub of commerce. During this time, it became clear to me that just as changes transformed the airport, time also had its way with me. No longer the unencumbered, adventurous single rover, I was now the provider and guide for a new group of travelers: my own children. When my younger daughter was invited to the junior prom, she insisted no dress in Anchorage would satisfy her desire for the fairytale evening she had planned. When we arrived at the airport ready for our weekend shopping trip to Seattle, she sat apart from me, her Walkman headphones conspicuously in place, telegraphing to all onlookers her assurance, her cool. Conscious of the generational gulf between us, I settled back and considered the space around me. My old, familiar airport was still there somewhere, under the layers of paint in cool colors and modern décor, just as I, the former free spirit was still here, though cast in my new role as a matronly chaperone. As my eyes shifted to my daughter, I understood that she was waiting impatiently to leave childhood behind, as surely as she was waiting to depart Anchorage on a weekend jaunt.

Other times, the space in the Anchorage airport seems to echo my sadness. Once, a few years into the new century, my older daughter was faced with a hard decision: drug rehab or jail. Because no appropriate facilities existed in Anchorage, she needed out-of-state treatment. We had been estranged for a long time and spoke little during the drive to the airport that bleak October day. The airport, too, felt cold and unfamiliar, as though the happy memories within its walls had retreated to make room for my guilt, grief, and recrimination and my daughter’s fear, defiance, and depression. Yet, while we inched our way towards the front of the TSA line, the feel of the airport around us—our own airport, familiar and safe—pulled us out of our separate selves and created between us a tenuous connection.

Our lives continue to change, and so does our airport. With each of us, there’s little left that’s reminiscent of our funky past. I visit the airport rarely now, but when I do, I experience a cascade of memories. It will always be the best place to be, ticket in hand, looking forward to the next great adventure.

Jeanne Swartz has lived in Alaska since 1978. She fell in love with the state, the Municipality of Anchorage, and her future husband all within a three-month span of time. She married, had babies, experienced joy and loss, prosperity and poverty, all within the city’s limits. While her careers in Anchorage have been varied—at times she has been a teacher, a geologist, a crime-fighter, and an environmental regulator—her love of her adopted hometown has been a constant. At various times in her years in Anchorage, Swartz has faced off against enraged moose, drank wine on Flattop to celebrate summer solstice, dug Bootlegger Cove clay to make pots, and attended the opera in furs and high heels. If there is another town with this much versatility, she cannot imagine it.