Juneau historian, community organizer and advocate Marie Darlin has died. She was 93 years old.<\/p>\n
Darlin, born in Juneau in 1925, was a third-generation Juneauite, her family having arrived in the city in 1894, just 14 years after its founding. Friends referred to her as the “velvet hammer” behind many causes, most notably the preservation of local history.<\/p>\n
“She was such a large-dimensional person — and I don’t mean size — in her character and the activities that she has done to make Alaskans’ lives better,” said Malin Babcock, who was born in Juneau in 1939 and served with Darlin on the board of directors for the Gastineau Channel Historical Society.<\/p>\n
“Marie and I are both half-Finnish,” Babcock said. “Finns have, and they have cultivated, a national characteristic known as sisu. Basically, it means guts. It means stick-to-it-iveness. Looking back at Marie, she absolutely embodies that.”<\/p>\n
Darlin received the 2014 Evangeline Atwood Award from the Alaska Historical Society for outstanding achievements over a lifetime. She was inducted into the Alaska Women’s Hall of Fame<\/a> in 2015 and was named an AWARE Woman of Distinction the following <\/a>year<\/a>.<\/p>\n Gary Gillette, a member of the board of directors for the Gastineau Historical Society, said, “I used to tease her: You’ve gotten every award we have. There’s nothing more we can give you.”<\/p>\n Darlin was born to Hilda Hendrickson and Henry Hanna in April 1925. Her father died three years later, drowning during a hunting accident, and her mother moved in with her parents. In 1929, the family moved from their homestead on Douglas Island to a homesite at Sunny Point, where they operated a dairy. Hilda’s parents were Finnish immigrants, and Darlin grew up speaking both English and Finnish.<\/p>\n Hilda married John Osborn in 1932, and the family moved to Auke Bay in 1938. Darlin is said to have had an active childhood; when Gillette was compiling an article on the history of soapbox racing cars in Juneau, Darlin said she was either the first girl or one of the first girls to participate. At the time, the race ran down what is today’s Goldbelt Avenue and Calhoun Avenue to finish on 12th Street in the Flats.<\/p>\n Darlin graduated from Juneau High School in 1943, the the year after fellow student and valedictorian John Tanaka was barred from graduation because he was interned in a camp for being a Japanese-American on the West Coast. Darlin was among the supporters of the Empty Chair project<\/a> memorializing Tanaka’s experience.<\/p>\n