New grave marker honors early Anchorage fire chief

This year marks Anchorage’s centennial, and on Thursday, as part of that celebration, city firemen gathered to honor the muni’s very first paid fire chief.  The story behind the man who helped create many of the muni’s most enduring traditions is an intriguing one.

Listen now:

Thomas Bevers arrived in Anchorage in the days when the community was expanding beyond it’s tent city beginnings. Records show he came from Virginia, and no doubt immediately set about his business serving the community. Bevers started as a volunteer fireman in 1921 and by 1940 retired as the city’s fire chief. Stories abound about Bevers.. how he served on the city assembly, how he went into real estate and helped to develop what is now the city’s Fairview neighborhood. He even served on the committee that founded Fur Rondezvous.  Audrey Kelly, who keeps track of Anchorage’s historical figures, picks up the tale.

“He was very highly esteemed, he was part of the group of influential people in town in the community at that particular time. He made a wonderful life for himself, he never married, or course, and he was considered quite attractive. It is said that there is more than one time when a woman would ask him to marry them. ”

Bevers had no family in Alaska, and when he  died, the only relative city officials could locate was his sister, who came from back East to claim the body, Kelly says.

“The 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. For 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. At any rate, she did not go home with the body.”

Bevers’ associates in Anchorage had had no idea, assuming he was Caucasian, and probably Beavers did not reveal his real ethnic heritage, because social standards of the time would have discriminated against him, possibly blocking his community involvement.

Sunshine broke through the cloud cover Thursday, as firemen gathered in Anchorage’s Memorial Park cemetery.

Pastor Victor Marbury is an Anchorage Fire Department chaplain.  He gave a brief invocation at the ceremony placing a new headstone on what is thought to be Bevers’ final resting place. Afterward, he said the recognition is important.

“I’m looking at a lot of history that is not being exposed to the community. And 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’t make a difference as long as they have the integrity of serving the city and nation like they do.”

Soon to retire AFD deputy chief Jim Vignola, says the fire department wanted to honor Bevers for what he did for the early firemen.

“We were able to take some money that had been donated to the AFD by citizens, some small amounts of money that were sitting in a fund. We utilized some of those funds and with the gracious help of Mat Su Memorial, who gave us a great discount on a beautiful pillow marker for chief Bevers.”

Planes buzzed overhead from nearby Merrill Field. Anchorage’s light plane airport is another project that Bevers helped to get built back in the city’s early days.  Although the new headstone marks a grave, Audrey Kelly says it is not certain if Bevers lies beneath it. She says the old wooden crosses used in decades past deteriorated and disappeared, leaving a handfull of graves in the cemetary unmarked and unknown.