When Richard “Tark” Tarkiainen ’70 arrived in Fairbanks in the 1960s, he was looking forward to seeing a different part of the world. After growing up in Massachusetts and then traveling for a stint in the Navy, he saw Alaska as something new to explore.
Retiring from the Navy meant Tarkiainen (pronounced tark-ee-AIN-en) was entitled to education benefits at the University of Alaska. His service also allowed him to waive the required physical education credits, but he still jumped into campus athletics.
That set him on a path that will lead him into the Alaska State Hockey Association Hall of Fame in August 2020.
Tarkiainen has been involved in every aspect of hockey in the state, as a youth coach, a co-founder of Fairbanks high school programs, a referee and an administrator. But it all started when he played for the University of Alaska hockey team.
These were exciting days as the sport struggled to keep varsity status. In 1968, the team hosted the first-ever intercollegiate game in Alaska.
Even though he was a student, Tarkiainen never lived on campus.
“I always stayed in a house on Second Avenue in downtown Fairbanks,” he said. “The house is still there. It’s got new siding. But, at the time, typically we had three to four guys living there. I did most of the cooking. I didn’t mind, I was willing to do it. We had sourdough pancakes every day.”
Someone in the house usually had access to an automobile, so the group had a reliable way to get to campus, he said. They’d go to hockey practice after class and then catch a ride home. “Hitchhiking was our common mode of transportation. There was a bus, but we didn’t use it very much.”
Hockey kept them busy. The players formed the maintenance crew. In order to practice or play a game, team members had to shovel the ice to prepare the outdoor rink. Of course, there weren’t many people trying out at the time. Basketball was the big sport on campus.
Tarkiainen remembers practicing on the outdoor rink on one cold day. People would usually stop and watch, all bundled up. But, on that day, the audience was a couple of well-dressed gentlemen wearing floor-length coats. Turns out it was Kenny Rogers and members of the First Edition band, who were performing that night on campus.
One of his roommates, Russ Knapp ’69, remembers Tarkiainen as a teammate and fellow biology student who turned him to the “dark side.”
“I was just a snot-nosed kid from New York who came up to Alaska. They had this club hockey team. I did not have any experience, but I met Tark through biology class. My freshman year, I lived in Macintosh Hall, room 318. The next year, he invited me to live off campus.”
The Nanooks finished the 1968-69 season with a record of 4-7-1, coming in from the cold to play in the Beluga dome constructed for $50,000 the previous year. The inflatable nylon dome sat in front of the Patty Center.
“Russ and I played the very first games in the Beluga,” Tarkiainen remembered. “It was in the spring of 1969. We didn’t have to shovel. But we still had to scrape the ice. We didn’t have a Zamboni, so keeping it maintained was up to us. We’d have skating parties and paint the lines.”
Knapp graduated the year before Tarkiainen and moved back to the East Coast, while his friend stayed in Alaska. “In 2005, I came back for the reunion and started to come up every year after that,” Knapp said. “I was blown away by the elevation of the hockey program to Division I. I remember thinking about Tark and I playing outside on real ice with plywood boards. Now they’re at the Carlson Center.”
As hockey became a fixture at the university, the community of Fairbanks got involved. Hockey players who graduated from the university stayed in town and helped establish a youth program. Alumni included Hez Ray ’55, a teacher and coach at Lathrop High School. In 1968, he organized a crew of students and volunteers to move an abandoned airplane hangar from the community of Tanacross to Fairbanks and repurpose it as an ice-skating arena known as the Big Dipper.
After graduating in 1970 with a degree in secondary education, Tarkiainen felt lucky to get a job teaching biology at Lathrop, the only high school in town. Tarkiainen also continued working summers for the U.S. Geological Survey, a job that he’d started as a student and continued for 18 years. He saw a lot of Alaska, driving all of its highways.
But hockey remained a constant occupation. He helped start Lathrop’s team in the mid-1970s.
“I spent 12 years coaching hockey through the ’80s while I was teaching,” he said. “Hockey kept me busier than my academic preparation.”
In Lathrop’s first year, the team travelled to Anchorage to scrimmage. They wanted to find out how well they’d do against teams in a program dating back to the Fur Rendezvous’ early days.
“We did OK,” he said. “We did tie Chugiak. We showed that we were in the game, that we had potential. Thanks to the feeder program, most of the guys were bona fide. You had something to feed the system.”
The following year, the district split Fairbanks students between two high schools. Tarkiainen moved to West Valley and became the full-time hockey coach.
One of his players, Ben Roth ’91, called Tarkiainen a role model. “I first started playing hockey in Fairbanks when I was 7 years old,” Roth said. “Coach Tark was my coach for my first two years of hockey back in the ’70s. He also coached me as a high school hockey player a decade later.”
Roth credits his former coach for supporting him during his years as a player at UAF and later as a mentor. “He’s been active in the alumni group for nearly 50 years, and, at 80 years of age, he still shows up to the Nanook home games every chance he gets. He’s a true fan of the game and has spent much of his life supporting and mentoring kids to be student athletes.”
Roth nominated his coach to the Alaska State Hockey Association’s Hall of Fame. “When someone gives as much of their life as a volunteer and leader to kids, they deserve to be recognized for their efforts. He represents the best of the game,” Roth said.
A person would never guess that Tarkiainen has lived most of his life with a disabling disease. In the fall of 1987, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. “Up until that point I didn’t have any complications. But that’s why I took the early retirement, so 1989-90 was my last teaching year.
“I was doing OK,” he said. “But this is a mysterious disease. To this day, I say I’ve enjoyed a hell of a beautiful remission. I have no symptoms that I’m aware of. I’ve known people who had MS and died in a short period of time. It’s a hard disease to diagnose. The only time I’ve struggled is that night I spent in the hospital in the fall of ’87.”
All of this from a man who never expected to play college hockey, let alone dedicate his life to the sport. “To be honest, I’ve always loved sports, especially baseball and softball. I played for the UA All Stars. I was always a better softball player than I was hockey player.”
“It’s a small hockey community in a big state.”
Hockey isn’t the only constant in Tarkiainen’s life. He has his friends from every aspect of his hockey experiences, his pursuit of fishing and his love of history. And he still has his sourdough pancakes. He picked up his current batch in 1992 from a teacher at Pearl Creek Elementary School who got it from her principal. “I know my sourdoughs. It’s the texture, the sponginess.”
Sourdough is the name Alaskans give long-time residents of the state. It’s a fitting moniker, Tarkiainen said. “Sourdough was tough. You didn’t have to refrigerate it. Just keep it cool. It held up while you carried it over the trail. It doesn’t spoil.”
Mention his upcoming induction to the hall of fame and Tarkiainen likely will list others he credits for hockey’s legacy in Alaska: Bruce Cech, the longtime announcer for the Alaska Nanooks; Scott Roselius ’81, president of the UAF Alumni Association hockey chapter; and Randy Zarnke, local hockey historian.
“Needless to say, I am honored and elated, humbled, all of the above,” he said. “I’ve met a lot of great hockey coaches in this state over the years. I have so many memories of the people I’ve met. This is a big state, but we all know each other. It’s a small hockey community in a big state.”