FINDING SAVOONGA

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NEVER IN THEIR WILDEST DREAMS did the young couple imagine their teaching careers would begin in a remote Yupik Eskimo village on a desolate, icy, wind-swept island in the Bering Sea.
It was 1951. On a whim, Charles “Tod” and his fiancé, Doris Derby, answer a help-wanted ad seeking teachers in Alaska. Back comes a telegram from the Bureau of Indian Affairs offering jobs 3,000 miles away in Savoonga, population 250, on St. Lawrence Island.
The village had no airport, no roads, no telephones, and little contact with the outside world. The Rays arrive in a walrus skinboat. “Our lives have become so vastly different from anything we have ever experienced!” Doris writes her mother.
Thus begins one of many candid, evocative letters Tod and Doris write describing their experiences being two of only three white people in the village … melting ice for water … teaching children who speak no English … forming close friendships with villagers who welcome them warmly … fighting a frightening measles epidemic … and receiving groceries by ship once a year while villagers hunt walrus for survival.
Finding Savoonga is illustrated with 110 color photographs illustrating a self-sufficient, pre-industrial society subsisting on food from the sea.

About the Author

Born in 1927 to parents who had emigrated from Canada, Doris D. Ray grew up and was educated in Detroit. After graduation from college and earning a Master of Arts degree, she moved to the University of Colorado to engage in doctoral studies in Slavic history while teaching a course in western civilization.
The author met her future husband, Charles “Tod” Ray, a World War II veteran, who was a student at the university. They married after Tod’s graduation, then left Colorado for St. Lawrence Island in the northern Bering Sea, where they taught school for three years.
After teaching in Savoonga, Tod and Doris took a giant step across continent into a whole new culture to pursue graduate studies at Columbia University in New York City.
They returned to Alaska after several years in New York – Tod to the University of Alaska and Doris to the Fairbanks public schools where she taught advanced-placement history and political science and served as high school social studies department Head and later as director of secondary education for the school district. She also served on numerous state and national educational commissions and boards.
Following their retirement, Doris and Tod moved to Seattle and continued their travels throughout the world, visiting every continent except Antarctica. As Doris pointed out, “No need to go to Antarctica when I’ve lived most of my life in subarctic Alaska and have spent time in Point Barrow at the top of the world. I’ll just visit the penguins in the zoo.”