{"id":32559,"date":"2015-11-04T09:08:26","date_gmt":"2015-11-04T17:08:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/headstone-honors-early-anchorage-fire-chief\/"},"modified":"2015-11-04T09:08:26","modified_gmt":"2015-11-04T17:08:26","slug":"headstone-honors-early-anchorage-fire-chief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/headstone-honors-early-anchorage-fire-chief\/","title":{"rendered":"Headstone honors early Anchorage fire chief"},"content":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE<\/strong> \u2014 A new headstone honoring Anchorage\u2019s first paid fire chief has been installed as part of this year\u2019s celebrations marking the city\u2019s centennial.<\/p>\n

Firefighters gathered in Anchorage\u2019s Memorial Park cemetery Thursday as the new grave marker was placed on what is believed to be the final resting place of Thomas Bevers.<\/p>\n

Bevers began as a volunteer fireman in Anchorage in 1921. By 1940, he had retired as the city\u2019s first fire chief, The Alaska Public Radio Network reported.<\/p>\n

Stories about Bevers\u2019 contributions to the city include his service on the assembly and the committee that founded the Fur Rondezvous festival. He also helped to develop what is now the city\u2019s Fairview neighborhood.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was very highly esteemed, he was part of the group of influential people in town in the community at that particular time,\u201d said Audrey Kelly, who keeps track of Anchorage\u2019s historical figures.<\/p>\n

Records show that Bevers, who was born in 1889, came from Virginia. He had no family members in Alaska at the time of his death in 1944. Kelly said the only relative city officials could locate was his sister, who came from out of state to claim the body.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sister came up and the town realized that she was African American, and then, so was he. So it was a total surprise to the town,\u201d Kelly said. \u201cFor whatever reason, I would like to think that the sister felt he had made a wonderful life for himself here, so he should be buried here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bevers\u2019 associates in Anchorage had assumed that he was white. Bevers probably never revealed his real ethnic heritage, because he would have faced discrimination at that time for being black.<\/p>\n

Pastor Victor Marbury, an Anchorage Fire Department chaplain, gave a brief invocation at Thursday\u2019s ceremony for Bevers. Afterward, he said Bevers\u2019 influence on the city deserves some recognition.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m looking at a lot of history that is not being exposed to the community,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd maybe from this point on, it is to be spread out through Anchorage as to what they actually had as a first fire fighter here and how men of different nationalities that doesn\u2019t make a difference as long as they have the integrity of serving the city and nation like they do.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Information from: KSKA-FM, http:\/\/www.kska.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE \u2014 A new headstone honoring Anchorage\u2019s first paid fire chief has been installed as part of this year\u2019s celebrations marking the city\u2019s centennial. Firefighters gathered in Anchorage\u2019s Memorial Park cemetery Thursday as the new grave marker was placed on what is believed to be the final resting place of Thomas Bevers. Bevers began as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-32559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32559","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=32559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32559\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32559"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=32559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}