This is Lisbet Norris starting her 2nd race from Fairbanks last March....actually a year ago today! Lisbet runs Siberian Huskys, and is very passionate about the breed. Her family has run a dog lot of Siberian Huskys for several decades...with bloodlines back to Seppala's stock.
At the time, I didn't realize Lisbet's Grandmother is Natelie Norris. She and her husband Earl helped launch the famous Fur Rendezvous sled dog (sprint) races in Anchorage. Natelie was raised in Lake Placid in the northern Adirondacks before moving to Alaska in 1946. In her childhood years, she recalled a mounted Siberian Husky on display in a store front in Lake Placid. Sometime in the 1950's or 60's, the mounted Siberian was sold to the Frontier Town theme park in the southern part of the Adirondack Park. Natelie returned to Lake Placid in the 1980's and asked about the old Siberian Husky mount and went to visit it at Frontier Town. By now she knew a famous siberian husky named Fritz from Leonard Seppala's serum run team was mounted after he died at the ripe old age of 17 while "working" at Gimbals in NYC during the 1932 Christmas Season. She took one look at the mount and knew it was Fritz! She offered to buy the mount but the cost was too high. Over the next decade or so she would visit Fritz when she came to Lake Placid on vacations....the last time she saw him was in the mid 1990s. The Park closed its doors in 1998 and its possessions, including Fritz, were auctioned off. Natelie's brother Art Jubin lived in the area and learned who was awarded the mount. He traveled to Gloversville and negociated to buy Fritz from an antique dealer for several thousand dollars. He arranged to have Fritz flown to Nome and is now proudly displayed at the Nome Museum. In fact, Fritz returned "home to Nome" on January 21, 2005, exactly 80 years after the dreaded diptheria was diagonised in Nome!
Fritz was a favored dog by Seppala, and often ran in lead with Togo in many races. The white husky was the younger brother of Togo and was on his Team who traveled across Norton Sound and back to deliver the serum to the Bering Sea Coast during the relay. Thanks to a little girl named Natelie in Lake Placid, Fritz is now getting the recognition he deserves!
Here is a picture of Fritz in the prime of his life:
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