Kevin Strom, 1956
by Kevin Alfred Strom (American Dissident Voices program of June 19, 1993)
I’M RECORDING this show on the week just before Father’s Day, and this year I’m a father for the first time. Looking at my baby boy and helping my wife care for him have made me think quite a bit about my own life, the world I grew up in, the lessons I learned, and the world my son is going to inherit. I’m going to tell you a little about myself, and how I came to the conclusions and the world-view that I express to you every week on this radio station.
I was born on a Summer morning in 1956, in Anchorage, Territory of Alaska. My parents had moved to Alaska some five years earlier, shortly after they were married, since that was where my father, an Air Force Master Sergeant, was assigned. I was my parent’s first child.
Both my father and mother were of Norwegian descent, hard-working farm kids from Minnesota born during the Depression. They were just three generations removed from their immigrant ancestors. My father’s father, Alfred Strom, in the early part of this century, had cleared his homestead of several hundred acres himself, and built a very substantial two-story house, large barn, and numerous outbuildings with his own two hands. They still stand are in still in use by the family today.
In my mother’s family, Norwegian was the only language spoken in the home for many years. My mother only began to speak English when she started attending school at the age of six.
Growing up in Alaska, I came to love its wild beauty, its endless twilights, and its titanic scale. I developed an appreciation for wild animals which expresses itself today in my abhorrence for any mistreatment or unnecessary killing of my fellow Earth creatures.
