Jim Paul/Daily News photo
Former area doctor John F. Selden, M.D., wrote “Alaskacare: Maria and the Others” about his times as a doctor in the wilderness of Alaska and a trip to the former Soviet Union.
IRON MOUNTAIN — An Upper Peninsula native who spent more than 20 years as an Iron Mountain physician has written a book on his years in Alaska and a harrowing adventure to the Soviet Union in the midst of the Cold War.
Dr. John F. Selden said he began writing “Alaskacare: Maria and the Others” in 2020 while he and his wife, Ruthann, were isolating from COVID-19. It was a way to document his life for his five children, some of whom were too young to remember living in Alaska.
“As it got going, I began to realize that this was becoming a book, especially the middle portion about Russia,” Selden said. “I thought it was a tale to be told.”
Selden was born in L’Anse and graduated from high school in 1956. He received his undergraduate degree from Northern Michigan University and went on to attend medical school at the University of Michigan.
With the Vietnam War ramping up, Selden applied for a position with the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia. Selden was chosen for a CDC assignment in Alaska because his hearty U.P. upbringing would make him well suited.
Trained as an epidemiologist, he spent 1965 to 1967 in Anchorage, Alaska, serving the indigenous peoples in remote villages on the Yukon and Kuskokwim watersheds and beyond the Arctic Circle. Indigenous people then were being ravaged by tuberculosis, injuries, childhood illnesses, waterborne diseases and sexually transmitted diseases.
Getting to the remote villages often involved dangerous travel in small airplanes with pilots of questionable skills, Selden said.
“I went to 10 or 11 doctors’ funerals or memorial services, 10 of them were in a plane either flying or as a passenger. There were terribly bad pilots in planes that were too fast for the skill level,” Selden said. “But I was 27 years old. You never think it is going to happen to you.”
After fulfilling his two-year commitment with the CDC, Selden did not wish to stay with epidemiology. He did not want to end up in a far-off land fighting a deadly unknown disease or, even worse, stuck behind a desk, he said.
So he and his family returned to the Lower 48 states, where he would spend 1967 to 1970 at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he specialized in internal medicine with a nephrology subspecialty.
After UW-Madison, Selden returned to Anchorage, which had become a boomtown with construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. When he arrived back in Alaska, kidney dialysis was a much-needed, hard-to-find service.
During this time, Selden met Maria, a young woman who the U.S. Coast Guard had evacuated from a Russian fishing vessel. Maria was the victim of a poorly performed abortion and was near death with advanced kidney failure.
Selden was able to stabilize Maria and ended up accompanying her back to the Soviet Union, which he found was ill-equipped to handle the medical care she would need for the rest of her life.
Selden was allowed to spend five days in Moscow, an experience few Westerners were able to experience during the Cold War.
In Russia, Selden was able to tour Lenin’s tomb, the World War II Museum and attend the Russian Ballet. But Selden said he never was completely at ease in Moscow, as he always felt that he was being closely monitored.
Selden spent 10 years in Alaska, but a variety of factors that included the high cost of living led the family to leave the state.
He chose Iron Mountain as the family’s new home.
Selden would work for Dickinson County Memorial Hospital and the Oscar G. Johnson VA Medical Center as a consultant for renal care. Previously, dialysis patients needed to drive to Marquette several times a week for care, he said.
All five of his children would graduate from Iron Mountain High School. Son Chris remains in the area as a dentist.
Selden and wife Ruthann are active in the community, helping start the Pine Mountain Music Festival and Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
“Iron Mountain was a really good choice for us, especially when the kids were going to school,” Selden said. “Iron Mountain was very generous to us. We are grateful.”
He retired in 1997 and now spends his time between Minneapolis and Phoenix.
His book is published through Austin Macauley Publishers. Selden said he is considering writing another book about growing up and later returning to the U.P.
“Alaskacare: Maria and the Others” is currently available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble in soft cover and as an ebook.
Jim Paul can be reached at 906-774-2772, ext. 229, or [email protected].
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Publish date : 2024-08-13 20:05:00
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