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Tony Tengs. Director

Anthony Martin Tengs first entered Alaska as a newborn at St. Anne's Hospital in Juneau, February of 1954 because there were no hospitals in Haines, and the water system there was frozen. His paternal grandparents were Norwegian- American and courted in that language; Grandpa Tengs was the first to make it to Alaska, as a fisherman in the 1930's, and his stories captivated Tony's father, "Marty", who came up in 1941, after growing up in Eugene, Oregon, and almost graduating from the University there. He lived in Sitka for 9 years before coming to Haines, He was very proud of his Norwegian heritage, and the eating of his favorite dish, "lutefisk", was almost a tribal sacrament in the Tengs household. Marty met Tony's mother, Helen, in Haines where she had followed a childhood dream to teach in Alaska. She was from the small Swedish settlement of Balsam Lake, Wisconsin. Helen's father was a Swede who farmed and played music, and her mother was an immigrant from Switzerland who spoke five languages and had been born and partly raised in Australia. Helen, like her mother, was not afraid to conquer new horizons. Because Tony was partly Swede, his Norwegian-stock father liked to joke that Tony was a "half breed".

All the Tengs's were adopted into the Katzeek family's Raven clan after it's matriarch, Grandma Katzeek, instructed that Helen be given her Tlingit name, which made Helen the nominal matriarch, an honor she has not taken lightly. Tony's Tlingit name is "Kanak". It had belonged to Watson Katzeek, who had been a musician also. It is an old name passed down from the Tlingit man who built a famous stone house on the pass of the trading trail to the interior, ( now occupied by the Haines Highway ), and which is celebrated by the name of "Stone House Creek" today. "Kanak" comes from a Tlingit preposition meaning to "go up and over", and thus was given to the man who "went up and over" many times to build the stone house shelter. Tony's friends sometimes say that it is an appropriate name for him - because, they joke, he is so "over the top".

Tony's sister, Christy Fowler currently operates the old family business " The Pioneer Bar and Bamboo Room Restaurant" in Haines. Haines was a diverse place to be raised. It was too small to have the often impenetrable cliques that larger cities develop, and since his family owned and operated a prominent bar and restaurant in the heart of a town that not only had the first military base in Alaska, but the only road out of Southeast at the time, Tony was raised among interesting people from all over the country. This variety naturally included Canadians, as well as of course the Tlingits from the area, whose trading ancestors had ranked as the most powerful tribes in Tlingit country. This was especially so of the Chilkat, who not only were the namesake for the prominent local river, mountain range and peninsula, but the woven regalia of greater Tlingit country. All of this contributed to an upbringing of many creative influences.

As a young man, Tony had summer jobs working at Alaska Indian Arts and danced for the Chilkat Dancers. These experiences helped him on his path of appreciation for the influences of Tlingit art and culture.

Other defining experiences of Tony's early years, include a 2-year bout with arthritis from the ages of ten to twelve, and summer entrepreneurial activities, like selling painted river rocks and hand-made sealskin "iceworms" to the tourists on the dock. Those were the days he had a big fixation on Leonardo da Vinci, and made models after some of his designs. His classmates called him the mad scientist. Science experiments included building water pipes and even a molotov cocktail. He fronted a rock and roll dance band all his years of High School, also playing proms and dances in Skagway and Wrangell. Tony has played "Proud Mary" more times than he can count. He also experimented with publishing, via mimeograph, two short-lived but relatively harmless "underground" High School newspapers. The summer after his junior year, Tony attended Boy's State and was offered the slot to attend Boy's Nation if he would only cut his hair, and like a fool, he declined. Tony graduated early his senior year, to travel for 4 months in Europe, chronicling his travels with reports to the High School newspaper of his visits with his European cousins.

After three years at Reed College, Tony left "temporarily" ( a qualification which has become more indefinite over time.. ). The following winter he designed and had built a fiberglass gill-netter, The Garm ( from Norwegian folklore ), in Port Townsend, which had a bow section tacked onto the stern of a planing hull, and whose colors added to the impression that it was some kind of whimsical flying saucer. Tony's experiences as a fisher lasted 10 years, and wound up out at False Pass at Unimak Island, and Port Moller, in outer Bristol Bay. This period over-lapped a move to Seattle where he lived as an expatriate, returning at least once a year for Christmas or family concerns.

Seattle was fertile ground for Tony, where he lived with a doctor climber friend initially, and then other musicians, starting with the lead guitarist of a local rock band, and ending up with the principals of the Emerald City Brass Quintet. He formed a company with the doctor climber friend to market a line of attractive "game board Tee shirts", dubbed "Bodyboards" by the friend's wife. These they manufactured and marketed to REI and Eastern Mountain Sports, among others. This lead to a seemingly endless progression of creative business endeavors, and to guest speaker engagements at the University of Washington's creativity class. The products Tony developed and marketed include " The Classic Leather Game Companion" ( a direct child of Bodyboards ) as well as Love Gasket, a positive trademark for condoms, which Tony had licensed to a condom manufacturer for some years. He obtained patents for a mobile-like creation, "The Invisible Christmas Tree", and an erasable shirt which uses strippable adhesives.

In 1990 he returned to Haines to start The Chocolate Blanket Company on Main street. This was a total business creation, and involved the design, development, packaging and production of a tribute to the Chilkat Blanket in Chocolate, which was a tall order, given the complexity and stature of the Chilkat Blanket - but the result was indeed a simply beautiful tribute. Tony is proud that the only practitioner of the art of Chilkat weaving in Haines at the time, Maria Miller, was a strong supporter of his as well as the other weavers of this magnificent art form. The fall of 1991, Tony brought the Chocolate Blanket Company to Juneau, where he has remained since, by subsidizing his creative process working on the Alaska Marine Highway as a bartender. He likes to set up musical Hootenannies in the bar for the traveling public. Tony has played nine years in the Alaska Folk Festival with his large group, The Preserves, who debut his original compositions at the festival.

In 1997 Tony started the Chilkat Cone kitchen in Juneau, and built his own ice cream cone bakers out of bronze castings to produce beautiful form-line cones. That business and its constant stewardship and reinvention keeps Tony busy, along with working on a studio recording of his compositions for the Folk Festival. One of Tony's other main interests is "The Alexander Technique" for which he took training to be a teacher, and which he uses to undo the arthritic tendencies he has had since childhood. He has helped incipient arthritics get a grip on how the "dis-ease" works, and what they can do to help themselves consciously. He hopes to complete a book on his observations and discoveries within a year.