Girdwood's new park pavilion could be named for longtime resident John Trautner

The Anchorage Assembly takes up a proposal Wednesday, Nov. 4, to name the new pavilion at Girdwood Lions Park for John Trautner, a former Girdwood fire chief and gas station owner who died in 2022.

Trautner fell for Alaska after reading Jack London's "The Call of the Wild" in a one-room schoolhouse in Minnesota, according to a biography in the naming request. He made it to Alaska in 1953 and moved to Girdwood in 1969. "He never left," it says.

He worked as a logger, gold miner and wildlife photographer, and at Alyeska Resort. He was Girdwood's fire chief, sat on its Board of Supervisors and owned the Texaco station on the Alyeska Highway from 1977 to 1995, helping young people who wanted to start businesses in town.

Trautner was a Lions Club member from 1953 until his death and helped charter the Girdwood Turnagain Arm Lions Club in 1992. He began exploring a picnic pavilion to get families outside "in spite of our rainforest weather."

The club spent several years raising the $27,000 needed for a grant to build it. The pavilion was finished in June across from the playground and tennis courts, and "people use it every day," the biography says.

The Girdwood Board of Supervisors backed the name 4-0, and the city's Public Naming Commission recommended it 5-0. Assembly Chair Anna Brawley of West Anchorage and members Zac Johnson and Keith McCormick of South Anchorage are sponsoring the proposal.

People can testify at the meeting or online through the Assembly's testimony page.