Selling Alaska: The White Collar Adventures of an Advertising Pioneer »

Kay Guthrie's motivation for heading north was not to get rich. It was a stunning 5-foot-2, red-haired vision of loveliness named June Spears at Washington State College. The year was 1949. He soon found himself following his new love to Dillingham, a remote fishing village in southwest Alaska. On the flight from Anchorage, the pilot handed over the controls, instructing Kay, "Head for that mountain peak...and wake me when you get there." Thus Kay learned right away that Alaskans like to do things their own way. The young couple settled in Anchorage, where Kay founded Alaska's first full-service advertising agency soon after Statehood in 1959. The advertising man gravitated toward the state's first election campaigns and loved trying to outwit the opposition in bruising political battles. In a memoir rich with humor and history, Kay recounts the travails of surviving three marriages not to mention the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in North America.