Hotel Captain Cook bellman retires after 44 years of witnessing Anchorage’s evolution

The last day of Ron Owen’s 44-year career began the same way as his first: He donned his golden-collared vest, punched his number into the automated clock-in system, and got to work making sure the visitor’s guides and city maps were restocked and tidy at the concierge’s front desk.

“It’s every day, as usual,” Owen said with an unironic smile.

For almost the last half-century, Owen has served as a fixture employee, a bellman, at the Hotel Captain Cook, which itself has been a fixture of downtown Anchorage since 1965. The four-star hotel was built in the aftermath of earthquake wreckage, and has since grown from a one-tower hotel, to a two-, then three-tower hotel that occasionally hosts dignitaries and celebrities, and a steady stream of tourists from all over the world.

There for much of the hotel’s history has been 65-year-old Owen, a soft-spoken man in a uniform of slacks, a black vest over a white collared shirt, and a clip-on gold tie. He walks tilted forward, like he can’t wait to get where he’s going, and sports a Motorola earpiece, which he uses to communicate with the 17 other men on the bellman staff.

Owen grew up in Fairbanks, where he worked as a teenage bellman for the late Wally Hickel at The Traveler’s Inn. In 1980, Hickel, a businessman and real estate developer who twice served as Alaska’s governor, asked a then-21-year-old Owen to come work at another hotel he built, the Hotel Captain Cook.

It was the tail end of the pipeline’s construction days, and Anchorage was a different place, Owen said, evidenced by a long list of since-shuttered businesses that catered to construction workers: The Monkey Wharf, where monkeys riled up by loud music “lost their minds” from their cage behind the bar; The Wild Cherry strip club on Fourth Avenue; and The Great Alaskan Bush Co.’s first location, down the street.

“Back then, it was like the wild, Wild West,” Owen said. “Downtown was dangerous.”

But over the years, with certain local and federal influences, Anchorage’s reputation began to shift, Owen said. Oil money flooded city coffers, and local government invested in infrastructure projects that modernized quality of life for Anchorage residents, including a new performing arts center, sports arena, ski area and upgraded parks. Anchorage continued to be a strategic military outpost, a pivotal refueling location for transpacific flights and a jumping-off point for circumpolar research, all of which brought all sorts of influential people into the Hotel Captain Cook.

That, and the former governor who owned it, said the hotel’s general manager and employee of 23 years, Raquel Edelen.

“If a president is going to come, they are going to stay here,” Edelen said, crediting the late Gov. Hickel, who also served as the secretary of the Interior under President Richard Nixon. Anchorage has four main hotels downtown, including the Marriott, Sheraton, Hilton and the Hotel Captain Cook — the “big four,” Edelen calls them — but the Captain Cook is set apart because it’s still owned by the Hickel family, with deep Alaska roots. That sense of a longtime local business, even one with five restaurants and a shopping promenade that takes up one city block between West Fourth and Fifth avenues, is reflected by the hotel staff in their rapport with customers.

“They all love him,” Edelen said of customers’ attitude towards Owen. “They call him ‘old man,’ and think he’s a staple who is going to be here forever. There’s going to be people that are coming in next week that will be looking for him to be right there at the concierge desk, saying good morning.”

Although his formal job description includes tasks like valet parking, bag tagging and helping guests with their luggage, Owen has made his career in customer service.

“I (love) dealing with people all the time, situations, seeing where a problem might escalate into a bigger problem, trying to fix things,” Owen said. “You might say it’s not a part of a bellman’s job, but truly it is. Everything is our job.”

Owen has stories upon stories about his career: He said he’s spoken with President Xi Jinping of China, helped former President Richard Nixon ditch his Secret Service agents for a few hours, and carried the guitar — named Lucille — of blues musician B.B. King. He had guns pointed at him by visiting security staff while dropping off laundry at a diplomat’s room, raced to work on a day off on an invitation to play gin rummy with a returning guest, and helped direct traffic when former President Barack Obama stayed at the Captain Cook and security shut down most of I Street. He has been complimented on his calm demeanor by the king of Norway, and has lent out his fishing gear to guests, then joined them after work to show them how to use it.

For Owen, his mission has been to show guests the best of the hotel that he loves so dearly.

“It gives you a good feeling to know you’ve made an impact on people,” Owen said. “That’s what made me do it for all this time.”

Colleagues said that Owen’s legacy is in the lengths he would go to ensure guests had a positive experience.

“There are countless people that come into this hotel asking for (Ron),” said Brian Mercereau, the hotel’s front desk manager, who has worked beside Owen for 12 years. “It’s because he’s Ron.”

“He has empathy,” said Sergio Rodriguez, who has worked as a bellman with Owen for the last three decades, and has seen him exceed expectations to find a guest’s lost luggage, even though it was lost by another company. “That’s what I learned from Ron, to care about doing your job well.”

Staff described Owen as the history buff of the hotel, its clientele and its surrounding area. He has brought in laminated photos of the original newspaper clips to show new hires the 1964 earthquake, and can tell you the origin story of most of the artwork hanging on the walls.

“ ‘Human encyclopedia’ doesn’t do him justice,” Mercereau said.

[‘A whole new meaning’: Anchorage man celebrates first anniversary of heart transplant with Alaska Heart Run]

In his retirement, Owen is looking forward to spending more time with his wife, who retired last year from the Anchorage School District; sleeping past 5:30 a.m.; and ditching the clip-on tie. And becoming a hotel guest himself.

Knowing this, Owen’s colleagues gifted him some tools to make that happen at his retirement party after his last shift on Friday: a set of luggage, 250,000 airline miles, and a watch.

“I want to travel,” Owen said. He and his wife will visit family in St. Louis in October. After that, maybe they’ll explore his own family heritage in Wales. “Being on this side of tourism, my expectations are pretty high.”

But before he clocked out on the penultimate day of his career, Owen was the same “go-to guy” his colleagues described him as. When a guest came to the front desk carrying a large zip-tied plastic storage bin she couldn’t open, Owen intercepted her before front-desk staff had a chance. The 65-year-old got on his knees and, using the pocket knife he carries for situations like this one, sliced through the plastic zip-tie.

“Thank you,” the woman said to Owen, one of the last he’d collect in his 44 years as a bellman. “I really appreciate it.”