{"id":5994,"date":"2015-11-29T09:00:59","date_gmt":"2015-11-29T17:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/fairbanks-reverend-scott-fisher-recalls-life-of-service-to-church-alaska\/"},"modified":"2015-11-29T09:00:59","modified_gmt":"2015-11-29T17:00:59","slug":"fairbanks-reverend-scott-fisher-recalls-life-of-service-to-church-alaska","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/life\/fairbanks-reverend-scott-fisher-recalls-life-of-service-to-church-alaska\/","title":{"rendered":"Fairbanks Reverend Scott Fisher recalls life of service to church, Alaska"},"content":{"rendered":"

FAIRBANKS \u2014<\/strong> In October 1970, a young man landed in Fairbanks on a 24-hour layover between his old life and a life that would come to touch countless people throughout Alaska.<\/p>\n

That man was Scott Fisher, known to most now as \u201cFather Scott\u201d of St. Matthew\u2019s Episcopal Church, the century-old log church on the banks of the Chena River in downtown Fairbanks.<\/p>\n

Fisher, who is now retiring, arrived as a volunteer layworker at the encouragement of the Episcopal Church\u2019s \u201cFlying Bishop,\u201d Bishop William Gordon Jr., after graduating from Kenyon College in Ohio with a major in English and a minor in religious studies. Bishop Gordon met Fisher at a summer camp, and Fisher was struck by how un-fatherly Gordon appeared sitting on a porch wearing shorts.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sitting down with him as an East Coast kid and I said \u2018Doing what?\u2019 and he said, \u2018I see your job mainly as just sitting around drinking coffee and listening to people,\u2019\u201d Fisher said on a recent weekday afternoon, with a Styrofoam cup of coffee in his hand. \u201cAnd that\u2019s what I\u2019ve been doing for the last 40 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gordon set Fisher up with some winter supplies, flew him to Fort Yukon in his plane, spent the night and then dropped Fisher off in Chalkyitsik.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere the heck am I?\u201d Fisher recalled thinking about the village.<\/p>\n

He said he made a bit of a fool of himself in the first few days, showing just how foreign rural Alaska was to him, but the community took him in. He said those lessons have stuck with him to today.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just doing what folks taught me in the Bush,\u201d he said. \u201cYou watch out for each other. You help those that need it, like screwed up white guys who don\u2019t know anything. It\u2019d be a real drag if he freezes to death. People are inevitably kind, so all I\u2019m doing is what people taught me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fisher later moved to Stevens Village and then settled down in Beaver before he was encouraged to go to seminary by Gordon in 1973. After seminary, he worked out of the Fort Yukon Church and later the Fairbanks Diocesan Office, traveling throughout the villages, delivering communion and giving services at funerals.<\/p>\n

He decided to become the rector of St. Matthews in 1991 while standing on the coast of Point Hope.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was walking around on the beach, arguing with God,\u201d he said. \u201cI was having this argument with God saying, \u2018You know, this is really fun just hanging out in Point Hope and Kivalina, wandering around in Allakaket or Chalkyitsik.\u2019 More or less \u2014 and I don\u2019t know how to say this without sounding weird \u2014 but the sense I had from God was, \u2018It has been good out here, and if it\u2019s been good out here, it\u2019s because I\u2019m out here and guess what, I\u2019m in Fairbanks, too.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

And shortly after that, Fisher took over at St. Matthew\u2019s, where the hall is lined with portraits of the many reverends who have served the congregation.<\/p>\n

With long hair, unruly sideburns and colorful Converse sneakers, he\u2019s been known to many as the \u201chippy\u201d priest. That was the first impression Rev. Anna Frank, a longtime colleague and friend of Fisher who remembered seeing Bishop Gordon fly into her village as a child, when she met Fisher.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat darn hippy,\u201d she said with a laugh. \u201cThat hippy-looking priest. Well that was what he was anyway when he came to Alaska.\u201d<\/p>\n

But for nearly everyone who\u2019s had an opportunity to share a moment with Fisher or attend one of his services, he or she knows Fisher is far more than the colorful sneakers and frayed jeans that peak out beneath his robes.<\/p>\n

\u201cScott, I would say, is a good, kind person and a good listener,\u201d Frank said.<\/p>\n

St. Matthew\u2019s has long been a mixed congregation, bridging the Native and non-Native communities. Frank said Fisher has lived up to that.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why people like him so much,\u201d she said. \u201cPeople are people to him. We\u2019re all human beings regardless of their color or their race. We\u2019re all important to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

At his second-to-last service at St. Matthew\u2019s, the 67-year-old Fisher had the calm, comfortable demeanor that comes with the hundreds of services and the familiarity with the people in the pews. He cracked jokes, recalled distant stories and embarrassed his teenage granddaughter.<\/p>\n

During the service, he stood among the front pews, leaning forward on the dais to talk about his time with the congregation.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou deserve better than I can give you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Now, Fisher isn\u2019t sure what\u2019s next, but he\u2019ll be missed.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s one of a kind,\u201d said Shirley Gordon, the 92-year-old widow of Bishop Gordon, who still attends services today. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be a real loss, but I can understand why you have to move on. … He has a great love for the people of the Interior, and they reciprocate it.\u201d<\/p>\n

As his future stands ahead of him, he has spent a lot of time reflecting on the first few hours that he spent in Alaska.<\/p>\n

\u201cI still remember that first 24 hours when I flew into Fairbanks in that October,\u201d he said. \u201cSome of that I still remember in the sense that Fairbanks always seemed more like a jumping off place, more so than Anchorage. When I run into tourists, I\u2019ll usually take them out in front of the church and point at those hills and say \u2018half of the state, north of you.\u2019 My suggestion is any way you can, go north. Get out of here, get out of town, see what it\u2019s really like.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for what\u2019s next, Fisher said he doesn\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t have any big deep voices saying \u2018I want you to go to Madagascar,\u2019 but I had the sense it was the time to do this for a variety of reasons, and I still don\u2019t know what I\u2019m going to do. All I know is on Sunday, Nov. 29, I can\u2019t be in this building,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it was up to me, I\u2019d just go sit in Beaver City and watch the wind blow down the Yukon,\u201d he said, recalling with fondness of his time spent in the rural community. \u201cWatch the swans come play in the spring. Worry about who came in the mail plane that day.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FAIRBANKS \u2014 In October 1970, a young man landed in Fairbanks on a 24-hour layover between his old life and a life that would come to touch countless people throughout Alaska. That man was Scott Fisher, known to most now as \u201cFather Scott\u201d of St. Matthew\u2019s Episcopal Church, the century-old log church on the banks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":5995,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-5994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5994","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=5994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5994"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=5994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}