Dan Seavey, who helped organize the first Iditarod Trail sled dog race and whose son and grandson Each one has won the famous Alaska race several times, he has died. He was 87 years old.
The Native of Minnesota, who had been inflexible to remain in the house of the center-south of Alaska in Seward, had transferred his family to decades before, was helping to tend his dogs shortly before he died last Thursday, said his son Mitch Seavey.
“It’s difficult, and everyone will miss him. But he lived a great life and died in his own way,” said Mitch Seavey.
Iditarod’s career organization called Dan Seavey a “true pioneer and figure appreciated” in the race 53 -year history And he said it was fundamental in the establishment of the Iditarod path as a national historical path in 1978. He also wrote a book, “The First Great Race”, which his son said Drew On Notes Seavey recorded during The first edition of The Iditarod.
Dan Seavey directed the Iditarod five times, including the first two races in 1973 and 1974. The last, in 2012, aimed to celebrate and attract attention to the history of the path.
That year he presented three generations of Seaveys, with Mitch’s son, Dallas, winning the first of his Six title record. Mitch, a three -time Iditarod champion, that year ended seventh.
Dan Seavey moved with his family to Alaska in 1963 to teach in Seward, a community to about 125 miles (201 kilometers) south of Anchorage. In an interview for Project Jukebox, a oral history project from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, he remembered being inspired when he was a child by a radio program focused on a character that was with a police force mounted in Canadian and his reliable sled dog, Yukon King, who faced the evils during the golden age.
Seavey said that finding time to train the race was difficult.
“Having to make a living, he interfered with my dog dog,” said Seavey, a history teacher for a long time. He trained on nights and weekends, and around the first two years of Iditarod asked the school board for a free time, he said.
Seavey had no competitive aspirations beyond those first two Iditarod races, his son said, but continued to soak up recreationally. Seavey at one time thought about letting Mitch had his dogs, but he couldn’t bear the idea of not having dogs, Mitch Seavey said.
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Bohrer reported from Juanau, Alaska.
