Reprinted with permission from
The Free Lance Star
Fredericksburg, Virginia
fredericksburg.com
Mad Trapper of Seldovia
By Eileen Mead
The Free-Lance Star - August 20, 1988
When I saw the movie "Crocodile Dundee" recently, I was reminded of
Henry "Hank" Kroll, the legendary Mad trapper of Seldovia, whom I met
the summer after my sophomore year at the University of Alaska.
A college friend, the late Midge English, had invited me to spend the Summer of
1949 with her an her family in Seldovia on
Cook Inlet.
It was a picturesque fishing village of about 200 people, and at the time, it
could only be reached by boat or seaplane.
I had been there about a week when Midge and I joined some of her friends at
the movies. Shortly after we were greeted, someone behind me suddenly grabbed
two clumps of my long, curly hair and yanked.
"Scooch down in your seat. I hates bushy-haired women," a man growled
into my ear.
I whirled around expecting to see one of Midge's friends, but found myself
looking into the glowering face of a bearded older man, a stranger to me.
I "scooched" down and looked questioningly at Midge, who appeared not
to have noticed the encounter. I stayed in my crouched position during the movie,
until I forgot and sat up in the midst of an exciting chase scene.
I felt a hand pushing down on the top of my head and heard the man behind me
say, "I knew you wouldn't sit still." I was afraid to get up and
leave, so I sat cowering.
Finally, the movie was over and the lights went on. I told Midge, in a whisper,
what had happened. She laughed out loud and said, "Oh, that was only the
Mad trapper." As we walked outside, thee bearded man, Kroll, came forward
and introduced himself.
"Sorry, I just loves to scare pretty girls," he said, laughing. He
invited our whole group to his house for some "good music."
Surprisingly, Midge and everyone else started walking toward the house, pulling
me along with them. Midge explained that the trapper was harmless, but very
unpredictable. He and his wife, Lois, a public health nurse, owned and operated
a large floating cannery at
Snug
Harbor and a goldmine
near
Mount McKinley, and he often carried around a
fruit-jar filled with gold nuggets. They had several "nice, normal"
little kids.
She said Kroll was considered to be a true genius. He had taught himself to
play every instrument from the violin to the tuba.
Hed also taught himself to fly an airplane, and he built his own airplane from
spare parts. after Kroll had been flying it for some time, she said, he flew
the airplane to
Anchorage
and hired an instructor do take him up for a "refresher course." Once
They were airborne, Kroll started asking questions about flying that prompted
the instructor to ask him who had taught him to fly. When Kroll said he'd
taught himself and had built the airplane, the instructor bailed out. Some time
later, Midge said, the engine fell out off the airplane near
Valdez and Kroll managed to glide in and land
on a glacier.
The trapper earned his title, she said, because he was an excellent trapper. Once
a movie company came to town to shoot some scenes and said they needed some
live wolverines. Kroll went out into the woods and a short time later came back
with one wolverine strapped to his backboard and leading another by a makeshift
leash. He had muzzled the animal by strapping a stick between its teeth.
Another
U. of Alaska alumnus, Dick Inglima, who now
lives in Homer,
Alaska,
recalled the time he flew with Kroll to
Anchorage.
Midway there, he said, Kroll said he was tired and asked him if he would fly
the airplane. Inglima said he didn't know anything about flying, so Kroll gave
him a few instructions and told him to follow the cliffs into
Anchorage then fell asleep. As they
approached
Anchorage,
Inglima became nervous and awakened Kroll.
"Kroll thanked me for waking him and told me he was glad I hadn't tried to
land it myself," Inglima said. Once, Inglima said, Kroll had a dispute
with a fishing partner, but he told the partner that they would wait until they
got back to Seldovia where they could fight it out under the boardwalk, where
all disputes are settled in the town.
"His partner was younger and more agile and he won the fight. Kroll got
up, brushed himself off and asked his partner if he wanted to fish with him
again the next Summer," Inglima said.
The night I went to Kroll's house with Midge and her friends, he insisted upon
making us his "special" drink. He poured Eagle Brand, a sweetened
condensed milk, and cherry Kool-Aid into a seltzer bottle and inserted a
charge. A thick, pink substance billowed out of the container into our glasses
and, although it was sickeningly sweet, we politely drank it.
When we finished, he laughed and slapped his knee saying, "Isn't that
horrible stuff? I only make it to watch people squirm while they drink
it."
I forgave him for everything after I heard him play the violin and then the
piano. Like I was told, the man was a genius.
It says in the above article about my father that I was a
normal child. I take this as proof.
In the 1970’s I owned a seventy-foot boat and fished king
crab in lower Cook Inlet and Kodiak twenty years. While crossing the Gulf of
Alaska my boat slid down hundred-foot waves at 16 knots for 16 hours. They were
so step that my 72-boat at full speed ahead actually slid backward down the
backside of the waves about fifteen feet. The stern deck would fill up with six
to eight feet of water. The old Mary M shuddered from side to side eventually
lifting out of the troth of the wave and the D-8 Cat engine would lug down until
the wave passed under us. Then we raced down the front of the wave at
tremendous speed. The average person would have died of heart failure within
the first hour of this treatment.
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