Joe redington biography

Joe Redington, Senior (February 1, 1917 – June 24, 1999) was an.
Joe Redington, Senior was an American dog musher and kennel owner, who is best known as the "Father of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race", a long distance sled dog race run annually from the Anchorage area to Nome, Alaska.
Lionized as “The Father of the Iditarod,” Joe Redington Sr. virtually invented modern long-distance dog racing and turned it into the Alaska state sport.

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Father of the Iditarod: The Joe Redington Story

Lew Freedman

Epicenter Press, Incorporated, 1999 - 320 halaman

Fifty Years on a Dogsled. "No one embodies the spirit of the Iditarod like Joe Redington. His biography has all the energy and drive of a lead dog leaving the starting chute and is as crisp as a winter's night along the Iditarod Trail." --Tony Knowles, former Governor of Alaska. In a place where repect is not easily earned, the name of this homesteader, pilot, and visionary dog musher generates awe. His is the classic image of an Alaska pioneer --rugged, independent, determined, hard-working. Meet Joe Redington, Father of the Iditarod, a man who found his destiny in Alaska. In an inspriational biography, Lew Freedman chronicles Redington's birth on the Chisholm Trail and his boyhood in the Depression-homeless, motherless, roaming the country looking ofr work as a field hand. Alaska was his rebirth in 1948. Redington found the home he never had. On his own piece of dirt, a man could raise a family, hunt, fish, run dogs, and stand up for what he believed. Almsot si

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Joe Redington, Sr.

As we all reflect on, and honor our country’s veterans’ selfless service, it’s important to remember their contributions to their country and their culture beyond their service. Joe Redington Sr. is the ‘Father of the Iditarod’. He and Dorothy Page always shared their roles as the co-founders of “Last Great Race on Earth”. But it has been Joe Sr’s pathway to Alaska that was so fortuitous for the global mushing community, raising awareness about the sled dog.

Joe was born in Kingfisher, Oklahoma at the end of World War One. He and his brother followed their Dad through the midwest and finally landed in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Joe enlisted in the United States Army in 1940. Shortly after his enlistment he joined the Infantry and Field Artillery jump school,and became part of General McArthur’s Special Assault Troops in the Pacific.

After he was discharged (in 1945), he began preparing for his next big journey. In 1948, he and members of his family arrived in Knik Alaska.

Within a year, Joe started up his own kennel and began working with the U.S. Air Force,

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Iditarod Race History

The World was Changing…

Original document by Don Bowers, Edited 2020

Even after the advent of the airplane, dog teams continued to be widely used for local transportation and day-to-day work, particularly in Native villages. Mushers and their teams played important but little remembered roles in World War II in Alaska, particularly in helping the famous Eskimo Scouts patrol the vast winter wilderness of western Alaska.

After the war, short and medium distance freight teams were still common in many areas of Alaska even when President Kennedy announced that the United States would put a man on the moon. During the 1960’s, however, it was not space travel but the advent of the “iron dog” (or snowmachine or snowmobile) that resulted in the mass abandonment of dog teams across the state and loss of much mushing lore.

In 1964, the Wasilla-Knik Centennial Committee was formed to look into historical events in Alaska, specifically the Mananuska-Susitna Valley, over the past century. 1967 marked the 100th anniversary of Alaska being a U.S. Terri