In the coming days, you’ll have two opportunities to listen to Monroe Robinson, author of “The Handcrafted Life of Dick Proenneke,” talk about his experiences serving as caretaker of Dick Proenneke’s cabin for 19 summers in Lake Clark National Park.
There will be a live broadcast on Thursday, April 7 (rescheduled from Thursday, March 24), 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. Pacific (12 p.m. to 1 p.m. Eastern), on Johanna Wildoak’s “Wildoak Living” radio program on KZYX, Mendocino Public County Broadcasting. The broadcast will be live-streamed on the KZYX website here.
The program will also be archived in the KZYX jukebox for about two months. You can look for the program by date and time of broadcast here. It will also appear as a podcast on all major podcast platforms. Simply search for “KZYX.”
On Thursday, March 31, the Friends of Dick Proenneke and Lake Clark National Park will host a webinar on Zoom discussing “The Handcrafted Life of Dick Proenneke” at 5 p.m. Alaska time (6 p.m. Pacific, 9 p.m. Eastern).
Panelists will include Monroe Robinson; Fred Hirschmann, founding member and current president of the Friends of Dick Proenneke and Lake Clark National Park; Cheryl Linder, current board member of the foundation (and pictured with Dick Proenneke on Page 349 in “The Handcrafted Life of Dick Proenneke”); and Susanne Green, a National Park Service representative for the foundation and current superintendent of Lake Clark National Park and Preserve.
“The Handcrafted Life of Dick Proenneke,” signed by Monroe, will be for sale as part of the Zoom event. It will be priced at $60, including shipping. Proceeds above the wholesale cost of the books will be donated to the Friends of Dick Proenneke and Lake Clark National Park. You can also donate directly to the foundation here. The foundation is currently raising money for numerous projects, including creating an endowment for the long-term preservation and interpretation of Dick’s cabin and the Twin Lakes basin and continuing reproducing and purchasing artifacts and belongings for the Proenneke site. Funds from the foundation recently helped replaced the sod roof and cure the mold growth at Dick’s cabin.
“The mission of the foundation includes assisting the National Park Service with future restorations of the structures and handcrafted items of Dick Proenneke, providing interpretative staff for the site and preserving the wilderness of Twin Lakes drainage,” Monroe says.
The webinar is open to the first 500 attendees who register. To attend, you must register in advance here. After registering, you’ll receive an email containing information about joining the webinar.
— Kara Gebhart Uhl