Financier has hand in much of town history
December 3, 2001, Daily News-Miner

By SEAN COCKERHAM

Walk into Key Bank on Cushman Street and in a large corner office one can meet a man of finance who grew up among the mud streets and moonshine of prohibition-era Fairbanks.

Bill Stroecker is a banker and a hunter. He is a leader of the Alaska Goldpanners baseball organization and the Salvation Army--among other groups--and his family's local roots date back to just after E.T. Barnette declared a ramshackle trading post to be the town of Fairbanks.

Stroecker, no glory-hound, is noted for avoiding the limelight. But his contributions to Fairbanks have not gone unrecognized. The Midnight Sun Council of the Boy Scouts of America will honor him with its Distinguished Citizen Award on Dec. 12.

"He's sort of a quintessential Fairbanksan, I think, a hunter and a fisher," said Mike Cook, among the previous award recipients who chose Stroecker for this year's honor. "He's encouraged Fairbanks along and usually without a whole lot of publicity."

Stroecker was born in Fairbanks back in 1920, when it was a declining gold rush boom town located hard in the middle of nowhere. Even when the Alaska Railroad arrived a few years later, it still took 10 days to reach Seattle from the territory.

"It didn't matter who you were or how much money you had," Stroecker said. "It was just completely isolated from the outside world."

There was no fresh produce to be had in the winter, just cherished treats of oranges and apples. No long-distance telephone service existed in Fairbanks that could ring up the urbanites in the states.

But the wild Interior country was full of game to hunt and there was basketball to be played in town. It was a good and healthy place for parents to raise their kids, Stroecker said.

"In the old days, it was so small. We didn't have the crime and nobody locked their houses," he said. "If somebody did commit a crime, where would they go?"

Stroecker never yearned for life Outside. He only left Alaska for a two-year stint at a New Mexico military college because his dad wanted him to have some soldier training with World War II on the horizon.

He returned home for his last two years of college and in 1942 was among the 30-member graduating class of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He joined the military within two weeks of graduation and during WWII was stationed at Ladd Field--now Fort Wainwright--helping to send American airplanes to Russia as part of the Army's lend-lease effort.

Over the following decades Stroecker never considered living anywhere else. And, in his unassuming fashion, he has helped shape the future of his beloved hometown.

Stroecker has been a well-known figure in Alaska banking and business over the years and has donated his time to the community.

Stroecker has served on the Salvation Army advisory board for so many years he has lost track. He also has been active in many other community groups, including the hospital and as a longtime board member of the Friends of the University of Alaska Museum.

Local music lovers might know Stroecker for his trumpet skills. He has been in many bands and now plays in the Fairbanks Frigid-Aires, a local trio that plays swing jazz.

"If you name a song from up through the end of the 40's, there is a pretty good chance that we know it," he said. "It's a lot of fun."

Another of Stroecker's passions is Fairbanks baseball. For 35 years he has served as board president of the Alaska Goldpanners.

Stroecker said his interest in baseball came from his father, Eddie, a well-known Alaskan ballpayer who played in the earliest organized baseball games in Fairbanks during the early 1900's.

Eddie Stroecker is remembered as the father of the annual midnight sun baseball game and one Dawson newspaper opined that he even had the makings of a professional player in the Lower 48.

On his mother's side Stroecker hails from the Creamer family--the one that operated the local dairy now known as the Creamer's Field Migratory Wildlife Refuge off College Road.

Stroecker's maternal grandfather was a driver for the Wells Fargo line in California who headed north to the Alaskan Gold Rush town of Dyea in 1897 for work hauling the supplies of miners headed to the Klondike gold fields. Stroecker's mom was just a schoolgirl at the time.

In 1903 Stroecker's grandfather moved to the town of Fairbanks, which had just been founded the year before, and settled in the area where the Wendell Street bridge stands today.

Eddie came to Alaska just after the turn of the century and spent winters working in Valdez and summers prospecting in the Copper River country. In 1904 he arrived in Fairbanks.

Eddie held many jobs in Fairbanks in the early years, including delivering mail by dog team.

In 1918, with Fairbanks reeling from a flu epidemic and the decline of the gold mines, Eddie found himself unemployed. Fortunately, the bank hired him as a teller.

That started an impressive history for the Stroeckers in Fairbanks banking. Eddie worked his way up to become the bank president, as did his sons Ed and Bill.

Bill Stroecker started working at First National Bank of Fairbanks in 1947 as a bookkeeper. The bank was later sold and is now KeyBank, but he has remained there for the past 54 years.

"I can't imagine being retired, I'd have to find something to do," Stroecker said. "I think it would have a disastrous effect on me, since I'm naturally lazy."

One suspects that Stroecker could manage to occupy himself. He has just returned from a 10-day deer hunt among the mountains and thick forests of Southeast Alaska.

He spends literally every weekend in an outdoors pursuit like snowshoeing, hunting or hiking. Over the years Stroecker has accumulated an impressive array of cabins in the Interior.

He often hikes seven miles to the cabin that he and a partner built on the Salcha River in 1951. It was the first recreational cabin that was built on the river, he said.

As some Alaskans get older, the cold winters start to wear on them and thoughts drift to living among sunshine and warmth.

But Stroecker welcomes the Interior winters as a hedge against the place being overrun by folks who lack the toughness and independent spirit that he loves. Bill Stroecker is not going anywhere.

"Not a chance," he said. "I'm in too deep."

June 2, 2001, Daily News-Miner