r. John Beeson, born in Wooster, Ohio in 1872, was hired by the Alaskan Engineering Commission in 1920 to be Chief of Staff at the government hospital in Anchorage. He had barely settled into his office when he was sent on a mercy mission to Iditarod to save the life of Claude Baker, who had been seriously injured.

On the morning of January 24, 1921, Dr. Beeson left Anchorage on a special freight train, accompanied by Bill Corey and his famous setter and husky racing team. The railroad gave them clearance all of the way to end of steel at Broad Pass, and from there Corey took the doctor to Nenana in record time. The first relay out of Nenana was with the “Scurvy Kid,” and between Nenana and Iditarod there were seven separate relays. The entire trip, a total of 512 miles from Anchorage, was made in five days and ten hours, a total of 130 hours, almost all without more than an hour or two of sleep between relays. This was the first documented mercy mission by dog team out of Anchorage.

Dr. Beeson was married and had two sons, Paul and Harold, both of whom became physicians. There is little information about Mrs. Beeson. About 1926, the family left Anchorage for Ketchikan. The doctor and his two sons returned to Wooster, Ohio and opened a clinic there for a short time. Dr. John Beeson retired in LaJolla, California, where he died in 1969 at the age of 97.

Paul Beeson graduated from Anchorage High School in 1925, and became a distinguished leader in medicine. He was chairman of Medicine at Emory and Yale Medical Schools, Nuffield Professor at Oxford University, and Veterans’ Administration Distinguished Physician at the University of Washington. Dr. Harold Beeson became the Assistant Medical Director for the Department of State in Washington.