Orah Dee Clark

Orah Dee Clark was born in Firth, Nebraska.[1] Clark started teaching in 1906, which is when she moved to Alaska.[1][2] She worked in Kodiak, Anvik, and Tanana, Alaska.[1] Clark was the first superintendent of the first school in Anchorage, Alaska starting in 1915.[2][3] After teaching in Anchorage, she co-founded schools along the Alaska Railroad. She would teach throughout Alaska, including the Aleutian Islands.[2] She would never marry, per law that women teachers either had to be "married to the students" or leave the field to be married.[3] She was a proponent of desegregated schools where Native American and white students could learn together.[4] As of her retirement, in 1944, she was teaching in Moose Pass, Alaska.[1]

Clark Middle School, which opened in 1959, was named after her. In 1962, she was awarded the Scroll of Honor by the Cook Inlet Historical Society.[3] In 1980, the school where she served as the first superintendent, the Pioneer School House, was added to the National Register of Historic Places.[5] In 2009, Clark was named into the Alaska Women's Hall of Fame.[6] Her papers are held in the collection of the University of Alaska Fairbanks.[4] The Anchorage Woman's Club awards a high school scholarship for boys and girls named after Clark.[7] The Anchorage Museum holds a collection of photographs once owned by Clark.[1]

• Engen, Ione, Ardis German, and Julie Skule. Orah Dee Clark, Pioneer Teacher in Alaska: A Biographical Sketch. Committee on Pioneer Women and Research (1957).

• Oral history with Orah Dee Clark from the University of Alaska Fairbanks