The Exxon Valdez grounded in Prince William Sound, Alaska, March 1989.
With a copier we were in business, soon surplus desks and a few beat up chairs found their way to our offices at the Valdez Airport. I no longer worked sitting on the floor. On my desk perched the telephone, I had a map, copier and paper, pens, and ancient typewriter. My boss had a desk and a phone, and the Exxon chief pilot had a desk and phone. We were the envy of the airport. Documents were done in longhand, scribbled notes, crude charts and graphs, but information was flowing, and that was good. My boss came to me with a request; find a computer. We need professional documents, charts, and graphs for our briefings and for distribution. He asked if I knew how to use a computer.
I froze, my stomach churned. I was an artist, I’d never worked in an office with a computer and in 1989 computers were not common in the bush of Alaska. The big organizations were using PC’s with programs like Excell, but I only knew how to use my little MacIntosh and a program called Pagemaker. I told my boss if I could find a Mac I could try to do the job. Fine, he said, do whatever it takes. All day I called, following one lead after another. Finally someone at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, told me that a brand new Mac had been ordered and if it had been delivered we could borrow it until one of our own could be purchased. He would check. Good news, they found the computer still in the box and it would be placed on the next flight to Valdez. In those days many software programs came with the computer. Thank God.
For days I churned out charts and graphs on that beautiful little Mac. I sweated out the learning curve on the new version of Pagemaker and Mac Draw and produced some very fine visuals. My work was slow, I felt way out of my element and over my head, but I was the best they had at the moment and the staff was kind to me. I missed my home, my art, my family. We had been working seven days a week, 14+ hours a day for several weeks. The pressure was enormous on everyone. We bonded in our mission and worked as a team to resolve problems. It was an amazing time, a time to grow, learn, push, and produce. Our office was up and running as well as it could, and we were proud of our effort.
More tomorrow,
Gail Niebrugge, Alaska artist
