Mark Stevenson Munro, a pilot, fisherman, mechanic, friend, husband, father and grandfather, died suddenly one year ago, on January 5th, 2024 in a car accident in Nevada.
Mark was born in Maine on June 6, 1960 to Judy and Stevenson Munro. His childhood was marked by the curiosity, empathy, and inquisitive eyes of his journalist parents and their paper, the Berlin Reporter. This environment shaped his lifelong curiosity about how people live. Mark was the oldest of three, almost four siblings when his father died suddenly in 1970. His mother continued to run the newspaper and Mark stepped in to help with his siblings over the next years. In 1972, Judy married Howard James, and their family grew with a new brother and two step-siblings. His siblings remember him as a kind, fun, super hero-adventurer older brother.
Mark attended Principia Christian Science High School in Missouri where he thrived with the independence of a boarding school, and in his photography and journalism classes. He continued to work at the family papers back in Maine during the summer, but wanted to travel and see more of the country. While in high school, he made a list of things to do in his life: hike the Appalachian Trail, hitchhike across the country, start a newspaper, own a sailboat, learn to fly, and fish in Alaska. He did all of those things, and more.
Mark attended college at the University of Maine Orono, but quickly found his way to Alaska. Mark first came to Dutch Harbor as a forklift operator at a fish processor, and soon returned to the Aleutians where he drove a cab, fished for crab, halibut, and salmon, worked on a joint venture dragger, and co-founded the newspaper The Aleutian Eagle. At the paper, he photographed and reported on politics, fisheries, and people. He later sailed a small sailboat from Dutch Harbor to Homer, navigating by sextant – the first and last of his sailing adventures. In 1982, Mark’s daughter Abra Jean Foster was born to Mary Lynn Foster in Indiana after they had met in Dutch Harbor.
The joint venture fishery gave Mark the needed funds to pursue his dream of running his own boat. He made his way to Cordova where he purchased a Copper River drift permit and a bowpicker, the f/v Kazbek. He was known around Cordova for his friendly, humble nature and his ability to offer creative mechanical fixes over the radio to fellow fishermen. He was involved in the herring pounding fishery until the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 – during which he volunteered as a pilot. Prince William Sound was cast in a rosy hue in his memories for its seascapes, people, and the independence he found there as a first-time skipper.
Mark met Lisa Krebs in 1986 in Seattle, and later that summer had the good luck to take her salmon fishing on the Kazbek. As he told it, their first opener together was moonlit, magical, and he just so happened to have the biggest set of his life. They fell in love, and several years later when Lisa took a job welding in Dutch Harbor, Mark used his common sense and followed her. They were married on the beach in Unalaska in February 1989. They soon moved to Homer where they bought land on the hill overlooking the bay. Their daughter Thorey joined that fall, and they moved an old structure from the airport to their new land and began building their home. Their son Fritz was born in 1993.
In the early 90s, Mark and Lisa shifted to Bristol Bay, where they could spend their summers fishing as a family. Lisa runs a set net operation in Egegik and Mark drifted, first with the f/v K-2 and later with the f/v Loki. Mark loved the salmon, sandbars, eddies, and channels of Bristol Bay’s rivers. He loved the culture of fishermen and talking on the radio, offering mechanical advice or a tow to a vessel in need, tying up to other boats, the AGS Egegik dock, flying the river channels, making “aesthetically pleasing” sets, and fishing alongside his family, crew, and friends.
Mark’s passion for flying began as a young boy, and he received his private pilot license by his late 20s. Later, he got his instrument, commercial, and float plane ratings, and his airplane mechanic ratings. He owned many project planes that he would rebuild, sell, and repeat. Mark founded Steller Air Service, his floatplane air taxi business in Homer in 2009, to share the beauty of Kachemak Bay with his passengers; but mostly he appreciated a captive audience to casually interview as they flew over glaciers. Mark also worked as a spotter pilot in numerous fisheries in Alaska, and in Utah for the Great Salt Lake winter brine shrimp fishery for the last 15 years, where his son Fritz joined him as a boat operator. Being a spotter pilot suited many of Mark’s interests: flying, talking on the radio, and grasping the big picture of landscape, water, fishermen and the catch.
Mark’s best qualities were his natural ability to draw people out, ask good questions, and listen. He had a talent to challenge, enable, and empower people towards more creativity and adventure in their lives (particularly in fishing and flying). He was always willing to lend a hand, whether to one of his children or a hitchhiker. He loved babies and kids. He was driven by a broad curiosity and a desire to connect with people of all ages and backgrounds.
Mark is preceded in death by his father Stevenson Munro and step-father Howard James. He is survived by his mother Judy Vogel James; siblings Eric, Kate, Stevenson, and Jonathan; his wife Lisa Krebs; children Abra Jean Foster, and Thorey and Fritz Munro; grandchildren Lorelei and Ronan Foster-Pike, and Loa and Marko Dyer; and countless friends who love him like family.
