Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

He enlisted in the Navy as a 19-year-old in 1969, hoping to learn something.

By all accounts, Army Lt. Col. Danilo Motas, who has his retirement ceremony this afternoon at Fort Wainwright, succeeded. His military career was far superior to anything he had hoped for.

“I got an excellent education,” Motas said Thursday.

Returning to civilian life, Motas plans to continue his work as a family nurse practitioner at Bassett Army Community Hospital.

After four years in the Navy, he joined the Army Reserve and later went on active duty for 19 years. He said he opted for the Army the second time he signed up because the Army had more options for continuing his education.

Motas earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in nursing during his Army career and advanced as an officer along the way.

He has been a nurse for 26 years, 19 of them on active duty.

“There are opportunities for anybody that wants to embrace the military life, but the military life is not for everybody,” he said.

He said that one message he tries to emphasize with young soldiers is that there are many ways they can advance their careers if only they put their minds to it.

Motas has been married for 33 years to Camella Motas, executive assistant to Borough Mayor Jim Whitaker.

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MIKE SHIELDS: It was a close encounter with a sewing machine salesman in 1960, Mike Shields would tell you, that led him to Fairbanks.

Mike developed his mechanical aptitude as a boy back on the farm in Ireland and he used those skills in many enterprises after he left home at 21, reaching Fairbanks by way of London, Toronto and Seattle.

He was helping run a gas station in Seattle 48 years ago when the sewing machine peddler boasted of having sold 500 machines to the needle-happy residents of Fairbanks.

Excited by the memories of tales he had heard in a one-room school in Ireland, Mike decided to seek his fortune in Fairbanks.

He worked as a mechanic at Noble Street Motors and later sold cars at Gene’s Chrysler during pipeline construction. He went into business for himself in 1978, renting lift equipment, tractors, Bobcats, heavy equipment and all sorts of tools. He catered to contractors, handymen and not-so-handymen like me. He was a survivor in a difficult business.

Mike was the only one I’ve known in Fairbanks who pronounced my name the way the Irish do, “Diarmid.” He made a habit of passing along copies of Irish newspapers to me when he returned from periodic visits to Ireland. He was from County Cavan, where my mother’s family is from.

Mike was a great dancer, which he demonstrated at such events as the annual St. Raphael’s Christmas ball. The past few years were marked by periods of progress and repeated health setbacks, but he kept going in spite of it all. As his family put it, he was “passionate about politics, religion and dancing.”

He died Monday at 75. The funeral will be at St. Raphael’s Catholic Church Saturday at 1 p.m., in a building that was constructed in part with the help of equipment provided by Mike Shields and Shields Rental Center.

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JANET SORENSEN: In her own quiet way, Janet Sorensen worked for international understanding.

Through the Rotary exchange program, Janet and her family hosted 10 students from 10 countries over a period of 20 years.

The students came from India, France, Finland, Spain, South Africa, Germany, Thailand, Hungary, Italy and Sweden.

She kept in touch with several of the students from that fair sampling of the United Nations, and she could have taught professional diplomats a thing or two about getting along.

She was the kind of person who would think things over before making a comment, which made her comments worth listening to.

Janet helped smooth the way for many Alaska exchange students over the years. She roped me into speaking to visiting exchange students on one occasion and often asked me to mention the program in this space when she held meetings to recruit local candidates.

She encouraged young people to be ambassadors for Fairbanks, the United States and Rotary on their world travels.

“The whole purpose of this program is to promote international peace and understanding,” she said.

In addition to her service with Rotary, Janet worked as a physical therapist. She was a volunteer who could be counted on, whether that meant sewing figure skating costumes for her daughters or being there to watch ski or play soccer. On the day before she died, she was volunteering at a ski race at Birch Hill, helping the Lathrop Cross-Country Ski Team.

She died early Monday at home at age 58. A celebration of her life is to be at 3 p.m. Saturday at Fairbanks Lutheran Church.

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FLAGGING: While lawmakers held a hearing Thursday on the bill to require the state to fly only American flags and Alaska flags made in the USA, it was pointed out that the Alaska flag pins distributed by the thousands are made in Taiwan.

Rep. John Coghill said that’s why he always takes them out of the plastic bags before he gives them away.

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HOT SPRINGS: The February issue of “Popular Mechanics” includes an article on Chena Hot Springs and the innovative alternative energy techniques promoted by Bernie Karl and backed by government grants.

Dermot Cole can be reached at cole@newsminer.com or 459-7530.