A Look Back in History 
Clock is Ticking On Saving Jesse Lee Home 

by CIRI Historian Alexandra J. McClanahan 

Two forlorn-looking, abandoned buildings sitting on a breath-taking 2.5-acre site overlooking Seward and Resurrection Bay appear to contain answers to questions about Alaska’s past. The buildings are all that remain of the former Jesse Lee Home where Alaska’s flag was designed. If they are allowed to continue their ever-quickening deterioration, the answers may go from being elusive to lost.

James Lewis Simpson

A number of people are working to find ways to stabilize and eventually renovate and even make use of the buildings in the future, but it may come down to a question of finding state support in a climate of budget cutting.
The Jesse Lee Home, begun by the Methodist Church, had its beginnings as an orphanage in Unalaska in 1890. In 1925, the home was moved to Seward, where it eventually grew to several buildings on a 100-acre site. The home offered housing, education, and health care to resident children until 1964 when it sustained severe damage in the Good Friday Earthquake. Goode Hall, one of the original dormitories, was demolished after the earthquake due to extensive damage.

Many Alaska Native children lived in the home, often sent there as a result of the ravages of epidemics of influenza and tuberculosis that hit villages for years throughout Alaska. Among its more famous residents were Benny Benson, designer of Alaska’s flag; Peter Gordon Gould, founder of Alaska Methodist University; and Simeon Oliver, pianist, composer, and writer.

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