Roy Andrew Peratrovich

Roy Andrew Peratrovich Jr.-the eldest child of renowned civil rights activists Elizabeth and Roy Peratrovich Sr.-passed away on November 26, 2023, in Gig Harbor, Washington, from complications of Parkinson's disease. He was 89 years old.

A member of the Tlingit Nation, of the Raven moiety, Roy was born in Klawock (Lawáak), a small fishing village on Alaska's Prince of Wales Island. The Tlingit name bestowed on him at birth was Yéil-Naawú ("Dead Raven"), after a former clan leader and master artist from Sitka, and he was also honored with two additional names: Kin-dis-ska-eesh ("Great Artist") and Tsa-qualt (after a dignitary from Deishú Village). Roy's mother was of the Lukaax.adi clan by birth, and Koosk'eidí by adoption, and on his father's maternal side the clan was Naasteidí, of the Kooyoo Khwan. The Naasteidí had migrated under a glacier to Kuiu Island, with Roy's great grandmother later relocating to Klawock during a smallpox epidemic.

Roy's parents were born during the "Kill the Indian, save the man" era, not long after the United States passed legislation to restrict Native American religious and cultural ceremonies. In their youth, children were routinely sent to boarding schools where they were forced to abandon their traditions and were punished for speaking Native languages. Upon reaching adulthood, the Great Depression and widespread bigotry against Native people rendered opportunities limited. The Peratroviches were trying their best to provide for their children, and overcome discrimination, and doing so required that they adapt to Western culture. Thus, Roy learned English when he was growing up, but was not taught to speak Tlingit.

As a young boy in Klawock, Roy fished off the docks using safety pins for hooks and attended a one-room schoolhouse. In 1941, when Roy was seven years old, his family moved to Juneau (Dzántik'i K'ihéeni), Alaska, where they were unable to rent a home and faced other race-based discrimination. Through his parents' efforts, as well as the efforts of the Alaska Native Brotherhood (ANB), Alaska Native Sisterhood and many others, Roy was the first Alaska Native child to be admitted to the "Whites only" school in Juneau, instead of being relegated to the substandard government school in the "Indian village." Several years later, his mother's advocacy and testimony were largely credited with helping to ensure passage of Alaska's landmark Anti-Discrimination Act.

Roy recalled that his parents tried to shield him from discrimination, such that his playmates could have been the children of his parents' political enemies. Even so, it affected him. He was once called a racial slur by a man working at the offices of the local newspaper, further cementing his parents' commitment to battle discrimination when he came home and asked what the word meant. Roy and his brother also stayed in an orphanage for a time, while his father worked, and his mother travelled the state encouraging Native people to vote and run for legislative office. Perhaps in recognition of his parents' civic efforts Roy never missed voting in an election during his lifetime, executing a final ballot less than a month before his passing.

From the beginning Roy was a creator, dabbling in drawing, painting and carving, and relying on his imagination to come up with unique solutions. When a high school classmate's truck broke through the ice in an intertidal zone, the two relied on newly acquired physics knowledge to devise a method to successfully lift the vehicle out of the hole, leaving quite the impression on Roy. Around the same time, Roy and a few friends fashioned a "diving helmet" by welding weights to a five-gallon can and installing a glass window. That complete, Roy cinched a lead-filled army cartridge belt around his waist, lashed an old-fashioned flat iron onto each foot, donned the helmet and jumped into Dredge Lake. His friends pumped air down via a garden hose and portable tire pump, which worked well until Roy walked too far away and dislodged the hose. Undeterred, the friends made a second helmet out of a hot water tank and planned to visit a sunken ship that lay at depths ranging from 52-134 feet in a channel north of Juneau. Thankfully, one of the parents discovered and disposed of the helmet, thus marking the end of Roy's diving career, but not his creativity.

When Roy was a high school senior, his family moved to Denver, Colorado, where-despite having never played or watched a game-he took up football and lettered in it after realizing how many girls were drawn to athletes. Upon graduating from Denver's South High School in 1953, Roy opted to study engineering at the University of Washington, in Seattle. His mother had once noticed a man wearing white shoes and directing men who were digging ditches at a construction site. That man was an engineer, and she thought engineering would make a fine career for her son. After working "some miserable" jobs while in high school, including digging ditches, Roy decided engineering looked pretty good as well, even though he was not altogether sure what it involved.

Roy met his first wife, Kathe, while attending college, and the couple married shortly before his 1957 graduation with a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering. Roy's parents-unable to complete their own college educations-always encouraged him to study hard and make good grades, saying, "They can take everything from you but what you've learned." Roy took that to heart, and his "A" grade in bridge design landed him a job in the City of Seattle's Bridge Design Division. He later said that there were no overpasses or freeway systems back then, so he was able to work on a lot of firsts.

Before long, Roy and Kathe had three children, Mike, betsy and Doug. In 1961, the young family moved to Juneau, where Roy had accepted a job with the Alaska Department of Highways as one of three squad leaders overseeing the statewide design of bridges. The following year, he became the first Alaska Native person to be registered as a Professional Civil Engineer in Alaska. (He later became registered in California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington as a Professional Civil Engineer, and as a registered Professional Land Surveyor in Alaska.)

During this time, Alaska was only a few years removed from being a U.S. Territory. Roy helped develop Alaska's annual bridge inspection evaluation process-creating a rating system to catalogue existing conditions of the bridges and highways inherited from the federal government upon statehood-and led studies and helped design the first municipal transportation systems for Anchorage and Fairbanks. His squad, and the nascent highway department, were also responsible for designing much of Alaska's transportation infrastructure, including some of the state's most iconic bridges. There were no computers, requiring the complicated design calculations to be completed and checked by hand.

In 1965, Roy worked on a project that struck both a professional and personal chord: designing a bridge to cross Juneau's Mendenhall River, at a time when the ANB was celebrating its 50th anniversary of advocating for civil rights. His design commemorated the organization in both its name, the "Brotherhood Bridge," and the incorporation of 10 bronze medallions (also designed by Roy) featuring the ANB crest. The crossing was replaced five decades later to accommodate more traffic and heavier loads. Roy was a guest of honor at the rededication ceremony as his former employer unveiled the new bridge with the salvaged medallions occupying their old spots along the rail.

It was at the Department of Highways that Roy met his lifelong friend, Dennis Nottingham, who had relocated from Montana to accept a job as a bridge engineer in Roy's squad. The two worked extremely well together, challenging the status quo to develop new methodologies and design solutions and gaining notoriety in the process. They also played well together, spending downtime hunting, fishing, playing basketball and taking saunas, amongst other things. Their engineering aptitude did not always come into play when they were not on the job, as evidenced by one seemingly never-ending Christmas Eve, which they spent repeatedly putting together a doll house incorrectly. (Given their affinity for making and sampling homebrew, it may be that Santa deviated from the usual milk and cookies that year.)

Roy and Dennis would go on to work for a private engineering company, where they helped develop new construction methods and ice design criteria subsequently implemented on most of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System bridges. Roy left in 1977 to serve as the inaugural director of the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities' Division of Facility Procurement and Policy. In 1979, Roy and his new wife, Toby, moved to Seattle to form a minority engineering company, Peratrovich Consultants. Soon after, Roy and Dennis founded a private engineering company in Anchorage-now known as PND Engineers-that specialized in bridge and marina design and won numerous awards for revolutionary design prototypes. The firm initially expanded to Juneau and Seattle, and later also opened offices in Palmer, Alaska; Portland, Oregon; Houston, Texas; and Vancouver, B.C.

In 1991, Roy transferred to PND's Seattle office, and he and Toby moved to Bainbridge Island, Washington. Roy retired from PND in 1999, and in 2005 was recognized in an American Society of Civil Engineers publication as one of 32 civil "Engineering Legends." Of his engineering career, Roy most enjoyed the creative process, saying, "That's what drives you. The idea of trying something in a different way. Solving a problem."

Along with engineering, Roy served on a variety of boards and commissions, including the University of Alaska's School of Engineering Advisory Committee; the Alaska Visual Arts Board; the Alaska Board of Registration for Architects, Engineers, and Land Surveyors; the Alaska State Board of Welding Examiners; the City and Borough of Juneau Planning and Zoning Commission; the Juneau Recreation and Planning Committee; and the Juneau Road Standard Committee. In the 1980s, when professional liability insurance became prohibitively expensive, he helped found the Architects and Engineers Insurance Company to provide insurance at less than 25% of the cost of market pricing, and later served on that organization's board of directors. He was also a member of the Tau Kappa Epsilon Fraternity and at various times was a Cub Scout den leader, basketball coach, and a member of the ANB.

After Roy's retirement, Toby encouraged him to take up a hobby, and he learned to sculpt, leading him to open Ravenworks Art Studio. Tribal legends often provided the basis for Roy's bronzes, which largely featured Alaskan marine mammals and wildlife. His pieces were acquired by collectors around the country and were displayed in numerous galleries. He also created a number of public art pieces, including "Flight of the Raven," a 10-foot sculpture that pays homage to his parents, located in Anchorage's Elizabeth and Roy Peratrovich Park, and busts of his parents, which reside at the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. A bust of his mother also rests in the foyer of the Alaska State Capitol Building, just inside the entrance that Roy cleaned and repaired as a young construction worker.

In 2011, Roy and Toby moved to Gig Harbor, Washington, where he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2015. A gifted storyteller, Roy worked closely with his daughter betsy to write the book, "Little Whale," which he also illustrated. By this time, the effects of Parkinson's were such that he painted with his right hand, which he braced with his left hand in order to minimize tremors. He was nonetheless determined to share his story, and when Roy was determined, nothing could stop him. Roy's book was loosely based on an adventure recounted to him by his grandfather, who was aboard Alaska's last Tlingit war canoe and lived to witness the moon landing. Roy and his daughter also worked closely with author Annie Boochever on her book "Fighter in Velvet Gloves," which chronicles his mother's life and advocacy. In his book-and sculptures-Roy sought to reconnect with a culture that was nearly lost to colonization, and was largely unknown to him, saying he wanted to bring back a little of the history "... that made our people what we are."

Despite his engineering prowess, Roy sometimes grew impatient with home projects, and seemingly believed he could fix anything if he used duct tape or hit it hard enough with a hammer. Added to that, although Roy hiked and boated his way around Southeast Alaska in his younger years, he did not know his way around the grocery store, and it is unknown whether he could cook. Family members did confirm that Roy could barbecue, although one such instance resulted in a team of firefighters running up to the house with a hose when concerned neighbors called to report the resultant thick, black smoke.

Perhaps what Roy's family most remembers is how he excelled at enjoying life. Roy liked relaxing with family and friends, and his kind and easy-going personality, and excellent sense of humor, made people gravitate to him. One of his favorite pastimes was deep sea fishing, and even though his surplus Coast Guard boat had to be the slowest boat in Juneau, that didn't stop Roy from taking his family out at every possible opportunity. Nor did it dim his enthusiasm. Years later, he upgraded to a Bayliner christened the "Tlingit Tlipper" and spent many happy days fishing with friends and relatives in the waters near Seward, Alaska. Along with fishing, Roy loved his family, his dogs, good Scotch, smoked salmon, Western movies, the Seahawks and U/W Huskies, Johnny Cash, his Datsun 280z, and Kauai.

As the side effects of Parkinson's increasingly incapacitated Roy, Toby lovingly cared for him, enabling him to remain home for much longer than he would otherwise have been able to. Roy was grateful for her help, as are his children.

In addition to his wife, Toby Peratrovich, Roy is survived by his elder son, Michael Peratrovich (wife Barbara, son Christopher); his favorite (and only) daughter, betsy Peratrovich; and his beagle, Henry. He met his great grandson Leo Peratrovich in March 2023, at what would be the family's last gathering with Roy. Roy was predeceased by his parents, Elizabeth and Roy Peratrovich Sr.; his brother, Frank Peratrovich; his sister, Loretta Montgomery; and his youngest son, Douglas Peratrovich.

At Roy's request, there will be no services; instead, family members will spread his ashes in a place with special meaning. In lieu of flowers, it is suggested that donations be made in Roy's honor to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research. Those inclined are also encouraged to enjoy smoked salmon and a good single malt Scotch in Roy's memory.