Matanuska Colony Project

In November 1943, the St. Mihiel was called into a new wartime role, sent by the Army to Bethlehem Steel Company shipyards in Boston for repairs and remodeling, and in May 1944 emerged as a hospital ship marked with large illuminated Red Cross symbols and able to berth 509 patients. She sailed to the Mediterranean to nurse Allied troops, but on a return trip to the United States grounded off Bermuda, forcing her patients to be evacuated before she went to Charleston for repairs. Back afloat in March, she spent the rest of the war in the European Theatre, then after the war in Europe returned to the US for retrofitting and upgrade in a New York shipyard before sailing into the Pacific, stopping after four months at Pearl Harbor for minor repairs and then continuing hospital ship service at Saipan, Okinawa, Yokohama, Otaru, and Manila before returning in 1946 to Los Angeles. The St. Mihiel received one Battle Star for World War II service and entered the shipyards for the last time in 1957 for dismantling. Its bell later followed an unusual path to Palmer, Alaska, after John Hoogakker of the University of Richmond found it at the U.S. Navy salvage yard in Philadelphia while seeking a bell for a campus tower, then connected it to the Matanuska Valley Colonists' 1935 voyage to Alaska through James A. Michener's ALASKA and contacted family in Alaska to ask whether the Matanuska Colony Project had survived and whether anyone associated with it might want the bell. The Palmer Historical Society and community members then worked to bring the bell to Palmer by 2000 for the sixty-fifth reunion of the Matanuska Colony Project. The 300-pound bell monument, designed as part of Dan Strouse's legacy, uses three legs to represent the colonists' home states of Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, recalls the bell's original foredeck mounting, and sits on a gray prow-shaped base alluding to the USAT St. Mihiel, which carried colonist families to the Territory of Alaska in 1935. John Hoogakker's efforts, Dan Strouse's project leadership, community financial and logistical support, and even the cleaning work of punished University of Richmond students all contributed to the bell's arrival in Palmer, where it was unveiled in June and formally dedicated on Saturday, June 17, 2000, with original Colonist parents present as the first to ring it, though Dan Strouse died unexpectedly before it reached its final destination.

Palmer, Alaska · United States