Editor’s note: Joe Williamson retired from his position as Facilities Maintenance Manager earlier this year.

Photos by: Jovell Rennie

Joe Williamson has been in charge of maintaining all the mechanical systems running at the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts for the last five years. The massive public building opened in 1988, and many of its mechanical parts remain unchanged. As they’ve aged, they’ve become harder to maintain and find parts for. Williamson knows all the quirks — old boilers, elevators, fire suppressions systems, and air handlers — and has seen all kinds of trouble. His job has been to keep it going — a classic Alaska skillset of doing the best you can with what you’ve got. People call him MacGyver. 

“The MacGyver skill set is making things happen with chewing gum, a book of matches, and duct tape. You know, it’s finding ways around the problem so that it can function. It’s a temporary fix, which is why I say that I’m in ‘reactive maintenance.’ I prefer preventative maintenance, but we’re a long way from that here. So we react. It’s a daily thing,” he said.  

“When they built this building, they did not consider maintaining it at all. You can tell by the pillars that we have, there’s lights that are so high and smoke detectors that we could never get to without scaffolding or a jet pack. So maintaining this building is a challenge that nobody really sees because I keep it hidden as best I can.”

Williamson has been fixing things since he was a kid in Colorado. He came to Alaska for a job as a handyman at a lodge out of King Salmon in 2003.

“I flew back to Anchorage, actually stayed at Brother Francis Shelter for three months. I got a job right away, and then I moved up from a hotel, then rented a room, and finally got into a house. I just came here and loved it so I decided to stay.” 

“We each got to do what we need to do to survive here,” he said. “The frontier way of life is just that — being able to engineer something out of nothing, out of whatever’s on hand.”

“Being Alaskan” is a series of interviews with locals sharing what it means to be Alaskan, the community we share, and helping one another.