For the past decade, Katherine Hope has stood on her two feet greeting and guiding locals and visitors for the Mount Roberts Tramway.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am the lead host greeter for Mount Roberts and I\u2019ve been a greeter at Kmart for two weeks and a greeter for Walmart, and the whole city \u2014 the state of Alaska \u2014 loved me when I used to greet them because I care,\u201d Hope said.<\/p>\n
Katherine\u2019s history of assisting others began in grade school with, among other things, cutting hair at a Presbyterian mission school.<\/p>\n
\u201cI helped the missionaries when I was in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade,\u201d Hope said. \u201cThey wanted their hair done and cut so I permed and trimmed their hair. That\u2019s how I learned to help with the elders. \u2026 I just did it and it came out fine, then I gave a perm and I fixed their hair. Same thing when I got out of high school for the junior and senior prom \u2014 I used to fix everybody\u2019s hair. By the time I was graduating, a half hour before that, I did not have time for my (own) hair but I looked OK, so that\u2019s just the way I live my life, to help somebody out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Katherine was selected for \u201cPeople of Juneau\u201d by her neighbor Terry Baker.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s been an inspiration to me, and she\u2019s always has a nice thing to say about everybody,\u201d Baker said. \u201cShe\u2019s been through a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
At eight years old, Katherine lost her father to drowning. Alone at 26, Katherine\u2019s mother had a hard time taking care of her children, which caused Katherine to leave home and join the Presbyterian mission school in Haines from first through eighth grades. Hope then moved to Sitka to attend Sheldon Jackson High School. In order to afford the high school, Hope worked at Chatham Cannery and on the school\u2019s campus.<\/p>\n
It was faith that carried Katherine through the years of working and traveling from home to home.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverywhere I went was my home, I just had faith,\u201d Hope said. \u201cI did not grow up any other way, I just knew He was there to help me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Katherine settled down in Sitka after graduating high school to raise her children and joined the workforce once her children were older. In 1978, Katherine was in her late thirties when she applied to work for the Sitka Pulp Company. The company rejected her application.<\/p>\n
\u201cI figured they just didn\u2019t want me, until I got a letter from the Department of Labor, which told me what it was all about,\u201d Hope said.<\/p>\n
In 1989, Katherine left power trolling in Port Alexander to join 18 other women in Juneau\u2019s Dimond Courthouse. A lawsuit had been filed against the Sitka Pulp Company for the company\u2019s discriminatory behavior towards women. The company paid a price. Hope was awarded $10,000 in the settlement, which she used to travel the world. When considering her family heritage, Hope was destined to travel and meet travellers.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy maiden name is Lott, and that\u2019s an English name,\u201d Hope said. \u201cMy grandpa came over from England and married a Yup\u2019ik lady so my dad is half English and half Yup\u2019ik. (He) married my beautiful mother and she was Tlingit, Irish, and Russian \u2014 that makes me five nations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hope believes her family heritage is what has made her so successful at greeting people all over the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cI stick up for every nationality on this Earth and I welcome as much as I can,\u201d Hope said. When she\u2019s not greeting at the Tram, Hope makes sure to encourage and support Juneau\u2019s homeless.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s just a light for Juneau,\u201d said Terry when commenting on what Katherine brings to the community. \u201cShe never quits.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u2022 Ray Friedlander is a Douglas writer who contributes the monthly People of Juneau feature to the Juneau Empire. To nominate someone for a profile, email editor@juneauempire.com with \u201cPeople of Juneau\u201d in the subject line. Include your name, contact information, the name of the nominee and their contact information, plus why you think they deserve it.<\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For the past decade, Katherine Hope has stood on her two feet greeting and guiding locals and visitors for the Mount Roberts Tramway. \u201cI am the lead host greeter for Mount Roberts and I\u2019ve been a greeter at Kmart for two weeks and a greeter for Walmart, and the whole city \u2014 the state of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":30407,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-30406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30406"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=30406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}