saac H.H. “Ike” Heffentrager, born in Skippack, Pennsylvania in 1899, joined the U. S. Army in 1924 and was stationed in Alaska. He served his three-year hitch and was discharged at Vancouver Barracks, Washington in 1927. Alaska was in his blood, and he returned to Anchorage the same year. He worked as a night policeman for the city of Anchorage for a time and then went to work for the Alaska Railroad in 1930, retiring after thirty years of service.

In Anchorage, Ike met Anna Wagner, who was born in Plauen, Germany in 1912. She had come to the United States with her mother Gertrude in 1915. Her father had died and her uncle, her father’s brother C. W. Wagner, had sent for them to come to the United States. Anna and her mother traveled across the country via train to California. The trip was somewhat difficult, since neither of them could speak or understand English, but that wasn’t unusual in those times.

In California, Gertrude was married to C.W. Wagner and the couple moved to Alaska. They lived in the towns of Seldovia and Fairbanks and also on a homestead near Eska. Finally settling in Anchorage, they lived on L Street, where they were neighbors of Ike Heffentrager, who lived with a friend. Ike and Anna were married in 1929 and soon bought their own house at 136 7th Avenue. Built in 1919, it is listed in history books as the Bieri-Heffentrager House.

The union of Anna and Ike produced a son and two daughters. Son Frank and his wife, Bonnie Maxwell, had three children. Daughter Mary Margaret and her husband, Edson Anderson were lost on a fishing and hunting trip on Cook Inlet in 1951, and were presumed dead. Daughter Gertrude Katherine Hinds had seven children: Linda, Danny, Mike, Susan, Elizabeth, Jim and Thomas. Anna Wagner Heffentrager died on January 10, 1999, and Ike passed away in June, the same year. Both are buried in Evergreen-Washelli Cemetery in Seattle, Washington.