newsminer.com

Joyce Paskvan

Joyce Paskvan

The mines leading from Minnesota, Montana and into Alaska were a common trail at the turn of the 20th century for many Balkan immigrants to Fairbanks. The Big I, Tommy’s Elbow Room and for the last 25 years, Paskvan and Ringstad law firm, are part of that heritage in the Golden Heart city.

From the mountains of Croatia where life was hard, 19-year-old Tom Paskvan (originally, “Pashkvahn”) Sr., in 1909, left with his 16-year-old brother for Juneau’s A-J Mine. After his January 1919 marriage to Catherina Toldo in Minnesota, “Tommy” Paskvan Jr. was born later that year in the Iron Range. Over the years until 1938, Paskvan Sr. blacksmithed and welded in mines both in Minnesota and Alaska.

As the Great Depression hurt the mine economy, Paskvan Sr. left the Iron Range to go trapping in Alaska’s Fortymile River country for two years. With his savings, he first bought the Owl Cigar Store, a bar/smoke house in Fairbanks, from Dan Nickolich. In 1939, he then bought the International Hotel on Garden Island, which was across from the train depot, from John Vukmer, a well-respected businessman. The “Big I,” with a bar and cabaret on the first floor, had inexpensive hotel rooms upstairs, where many bachelor Montenegrins lived. Paskvan Sr. built the semi-circular bar, a hallmark of the Big I.

“My father, ‘Tommy’ Paskvan Jr.,” Joe Paskvan of Paskvan and Ringstad recently explained, “moved up from Minnesota to Fairbanks with his friends, the Krize brothers, in 1940. He enrolled at the Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines (later the University of Alaska Fairbanks) and was close to graduation when World War II broke out. After enlisting in the Army, he was assigned to the security of the Richardson Highway.”

When the war was over, Paskvan Jr. received a $10,000 G.I. loan and with it, he opened Tommy’s Elbow Room on Second Avenue between Noble and Lacey Streets in 1947.

Unsure if he could make a go of it, Paskvan Jr. cut a garage door in his building’s front wall; he covered the bottom half with boards and above, inserted a plate glass window. If the bar business didn’t fly, he’d open a mechanic shop! However Tommy’s did prosper. Tom Paskvan Sr. made a semi-circular bar emulating the one at the Big I. Tommy’s had slot machines, pinball machines and poker games.

“There was no T.V. or live sporting events in Fairbanks then,” Joe Paskvan recalled. “In Seattle, a Budweiser distributor put films of sporting events and newsreels on the twice-weekly Pan Am flight to Fairbanks. From behind the bar on a 16 mm projector, Dad would show his clientele the week-old sporting events and news.”

Paskvan Jr. and his friends, Ken and Mark Ringstad, played on a local city league basketball team with Andy Miscovich Sr. and Bill Stroecker. The Ringstad brothers eventually married two of the Potter sisters. The third sister, Joyce Potter, came in 1950 to visit. She met Tom Paskvan Jr., and the following January, they were married. The oldest of their nine children, Joe, was born in 1952.

“My father planned to expand with a cabaret,” Joe Paskvan continued, “but the Korean war stopped that, needing the country’s steel.”

By the mid-1950s, construction of the Distant Early Warning System, the DEWLine, a 3,000-mile virtual electronic wall of defense across Alaska and Canada, was underway. “My father,” Joe Paskvan recalled, “felt that by contrast to post-war economy, the lucrative DEWLine boom was more dramatic to Fairbanks than that of the later impact of the pipeline.”

On June 30, 1958 when the U.S. Congress passed the Alaska statehood bill, 7-year-old Joe Paskvan was delivering newspapers, headlining, “We’re In!” Everywhere people were celebrating in the bars and on the street.

By the late 1950s and early 1960s, an addition to Tommy’s, with a big fireplace and increased seating was built.

“Tommy’s was a working man’s bar,” Joe Paskvan explained, “but the clientele also included professors, businessmen and journalists from the News-Miner.”

On Father’s Day 1965, the News-Miner honored Tommy Paskvan, shown with eight of his eventual nine children, as “Father of the Year.”

Four years later, the family began construction next to Tommy’s on the long dreamed-of addition. Paskvan Jr. and his sons did everything, including welding, hauling concrete bricks to mixing and pouring cement, then building. On the second floor, there were office spaces that they rented (before authorization of the pipeline construction) to Morris-Knudsen and Alyeska in 1974. Later they rented to Howard Rock for the Tundra Times.

“During my junior year at UAF,” Joe Paskvan pointed out, “I was also running Tommy’s, responsible for the hiring, firing, ordering, banking. When the pipeline construction hit full swing, we’d open at 11:30 a.m., with 30 people waiting outside the door. Daily, thousands of transients were passing through with incredible amounts of money.”

By 1978, Tommy’s opened the cabaret, featuring a disc jockey and a state-of-the-art sound system synchronized with strobe lights. That same year, Joe Paskvan married Barbara Tritt, and entered law school.

Since 1981, Joe Paskvan has practiced law in Fairbanks. In 1997, he formed his own law firm, Paskvan-Ringstad, now practicing with his first cousin, Ken Ringstad Jr.

“In 1971 when I first began bartending,” Joe Paskvan recalled, “one of the old-timers told me that once in 1950, some newcomer walked in and ordered an Old Fashioned from my grandfather. He promptly poured him a shot of booze backed with beer and answered, ‘That’s about as old fashioned as you get!’”

“When my father died in 2003,” Joe Paskvan remembered, “the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Board remarked that he was the longest liquor license single-owner in the history of the state.”Tommy’s Elbow Room spanned six decades of Fairbanks history, from 1947 to 1993. Tom Paskvan Jr. was one of the last of many Balkan-early Fairbanks saloon owners, the end of an era.