ALASKA’S RAREST OCCUPATIONS

Or, is there a prosthodontist in the house?

Agood prosthodontist is hard to find. Only three such specialists may be currently working in Alaska, depending on how “semi” some semi-retired dentists might be. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), prosthodontist is among the rarest occupations in the country. As of May 2020, BLS counted 530 nationwide. Only private household cooks and wood patternmakers are fewer in number.

All are craft-related occupations, observes Dr. Joseph Macy, who prepares dental prosthetics at Southcentral Foundation (SCF) in Anchorage. “As a society, I don’t think we tend to financially reward craftsmen,” he says. “I think we tend to reward production.”

Prosthodontics focuses on replacing missing teeth and fabricating appliances to replace function for cancer or trauma patients who have lost sections of their jaw or palate. Macy and his colleagues at SCF, Dr. Tiffany Lee and Dr. Bridget DeYoung, trained for an extra three years in the specialty, learning alternatives to the standard approach most dentists know.

“Prosthodontics in its very essence, if you want to be good at it, you have to know which are the right questions to ask,”

Macy says. “More than anything else, my training was moving me toward asking the right questions.”

Their expertise is a scarce resource. “The busy-ness here is incomprehensible and insatiable,” Macy says. “Every day, every appointment is filled months in advance, not days in advance. The need is well surpassing what we’re able to provide.”

Not that SCF is the only place for prosthetic dentistry in Alaska. General dentists do it every day, too, but Macy says, “Those general dentists who are seeking to refer out to a prosthodontist as opposed to doing it themselves now have to refer out of state if they want to seek someone who did specialty training.”

One other prosthodontist used to work in Alaska: Dr. Mark Williams. In fact, Macy was Williams’ first associate when Macy arrived in 1992. However, Williams retired in 2019. He continued to take patients at his practice, Advanced Dental Solutions in Anchorage, until early 2022. Now he’s gone for good, sailing his boat on the Pacific Ocean.

Dr. Dale Burke, a partner at Williams’ practice since 2017, has training in advanced general dentistry and experience in prosthodontics, but he is not a specialist. Even so, Williams left the practice to him. “I must say, I am not a lone ranger, and my team is a very large part of what we provide,” says Burke. “They know all the techniques, equipment, and supplies required for these large cases, and they are unmatched in Alaska.”

Like SCF, Advanced Dental Solutions is incredibly busy, even considering that the largest cases, such as postsurgical appliances for defects in the jaw or palate, must be referred to specialists in Seattle. But Burke says he’s not hunting for a replacement prosthodontist. At least, not until it’s time to sell the practice.

Scraping the Bottom

Rare as they are, having three prosthodontists is more than Alaska’s share. Given the state’s 0.22 percent share of the US population, the same proportion of the 530 prosthodontists would be exactly 1.

Alaska is likewise relatively rife with dredge operators, despite their nationwide rarity. BLS counts 1,750 Americans making a living that way, slightly more than the number of professional geographers. Multiplied by 0.22 percent, Alaska should have no more than 4.

“Here in Kodiak there’s 4 that I know of,” says Dave Wright, a member of the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 302.

As with prosthodontists, the tiny headcount of declared specialists doesn’t capture the full picture of trained workers capable of doing the job. “I don’t know hardly anybody that just does one thing in 302,” Wright says. “Most journeymen have learned to do whatever needs to be done, from running a loader or dump truck to cranes or excavators, the whole list. An experienced operator has probably touched quite a few of those things.”

Wright has done most of those things as an operating engineer with Pacific Pile & Marine for the last eleven years. He doesn’t operate cranes or graders, but he has experience with just about any other excavation equipment. That

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The type of dredging done in Alaska overlaps the skills used for land-based excavation, such that most workers with that training fall under the more general category of operating engineers.

Pacific Pile & Marine.

includes working as a deck engineer on a dredging barge.

“My last dredge job was at the new harbor in Valdez,” he says. “Using a Hitachi 1200 with a hydraulic clam bucket. Loading it on a hopper barge for disposal.” Wright has also worked at the Port of Alaska, helping with the construction of the cement and petroleum dock.

Anchorage’s port has a constant need for dredging, due to silt flowing down Knik Arm. Manson Construction has that contract, yet their dredging barge requires only two operators on board. And that’s seasonal work; for the winter, Wright says his Pacific Pile crew in Anchorage have been busy with a job off the coast of Antarctica.

BLS counts a broader category of Operating Engineers and Other Construction Equipment Operators. Wright figures that’s what most skilled dredge operators call themselves, which accounts for the 2,680 in Alaska. Within that category, dredge operators hide in plain sight, outside of the narrow BLS definition.

Void of Space

Within a state, BLS has no reliable figures for occupations with fewer than thirty employed, so the actual number in Alaska is guesswork for any job less common than, say, professional historians, archivists, or bookbinders.

Among all states, BLS counts 1,910 professional astronomers—only slightly more numerous than the category of dredge operator. Again, Alaska’s share should be approximately 4, yet in this case the state seems to have a shortage.

Dr. Travis Rector is a professional and an astronomer—astrophysicist, specifically—but as a professor and chair of the physics and astronomy department at UAA, BLS puts him in a different category: Atmospheric, Earth, Marine, and Space Science Teachers, Post Secondary.

Rector definitely does astronomy, though. “Most of my research lately is in star formation, studying how stars are forming out of clouds of gas inside our galaxy.” For that, Rector collects data from telescopes in Chile, taking images of gas clouds using special filters to see the kinds of light produced by newborn stars.

That work could qualify Rector for an entirely different BLS category: Atmospheric and Space Scientists, of which Alaska has 180, mostly clustered around the UAF Geophysical Institute. Yet teaching is still integral to his occupation.

“I love teaching, and really they go hand in hand,” he says. “Most of my research projects, I have students working with me on them, so it’s great to have the two combined.”

The only other plausible candidate for an Alaskan astronomer Rector can think of is his colleague Dr. Erin Hicks. In addition to publishing her research on galaxy formation, Hicks is the planetarium director at UAA. Every other astronomer must be counted in another category.

There’s no reason Alaska shouldn’t have its fair share of astronomers. “The nice thing about astronomy is you can do it from literally anywhere on Earth,” Rector says. “For the most part, astronomers either travel to the telescopes that we use, or what’s becoming more and more common is we can control them remotely. When I use my telescopes in Chile, I log in over the internet and control them from my kitchen.”

For his research, Rector must reserve time on a telescope. If its managers approve his project, the instrument collects data that belongs to him exclusively for a year and a half. After he finishes his analysis, his proprietary observations become public for others to use.

Whatever BLS considers his job to be, Rector loves it. “It’s amazing that the research I get to do is so much fun,” he says. “I love working with students. A highlight of my job is to get students involved in my research and help launch their careers. Many of my students have gone on to work in astronomy as well.” Just not in Alaska, as far as BLS is concerned.

Fading Out

No excuses for the occupation that is, for the moment, slightly more numerous than astronomers. Motion Picture Projectionist is rare and getting rarer. BLS counts 2,270 nationwide, but the way technology is changing movie exhibition, it won’t be long before they fall to the bottom of the list.

Alaska’s share of the BLS total should be approximately five for the whole state. Whoever they are, they don’t have much to do anymore. “There are still people who work at cinemas that start movies, and that could very well be described as a projectionist,” says Aaron Suring in Juneau. “But there’s no film anymore, so there’s no building or breaking down films or, really, upkeep of the projection systems.”

Suring, an on-call projectionist for Gold Town Nickelodeon, says movies are distributed digitally via systems like Proludio. “They have a box that they send to you, and you can upload and download films,” he explains. “It sends out the signal to the projector, a digital projector mounted somewhere. It’s the secure way to transmit movies.” Distributors can also send an entire movie stored on a hard drive, with no download necessary.

Back in 1994, when Suring started working at the now-defunct Valley River Cinemas in Eagle River, film reels arrived in heavy octagonal shipping containers. Assembling them on a large platter so the entire show could run continuously was a prized job for teenaged theater employees otherwise tasked with sweeping floors, ripping tickets, or popping corn. “That was always the dream,” Suring says. “That was the job that you wanted the best because it was the most fun and the most interesting.”

He worked his way up to the projection booth. “We built and broke www.akbizmag.com

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The telescope Travis Rector uses in Chile can be operated from his home in Alaska, but sometimes he travels south to give it hands-on attention. down films and did previews. Swapped out the big, expensive, likely-toexplode bulbs and all that stuff. I’m not sure if that’s something I’d trust with a high schooler, looking back on it, but that’s what they did,” Suring recalls. “And we never really screwed things up that badly.”

Even then, Suring was never what BLS would consider a full-time projectionist. During college, his experience got him a summer job in Juneau as a projectionist and assistant manager for Gross Alaska, owners of the 20th Century Theater. He moved to Juneau after graduation and was recruited by Gold Town founder Lisle Hiebert. “He was kind of surprised that I was better at building up and breaking down films than he was, and he was happy to have me do that part of the job,” says Suring.

Gold Town mainly shows independent movies that aren’t commercial enough for Gross Alaska theaters. It’s been drivein only during the COVID-19 pandemic, but a 35 mm print of Little Women played there in 2020. When the theater reopens, management plans another 35 mm show, and Suring is waiting for the call. Until then, his occupation is video production, museum exhibit design, and co-owning the Alaska Robotics Gallery comic book shop.

Not even the Bear Tooth Theatrepub in Anchorage uses film anymore, converting to digital for its art-house offerings. Suring understands the business case; digital systems are mostly foolproof. Mostly. “If things go wrong, they go more drastically wrong. Probably not actually see anything on screen rather than before, when there’d be shutter problems or the frame would jump,” he says. “That was stressful times. That all happened to all of us.”

Projection booth disasters afflict fewer workers, but that also leaves a dwindling remnant who mastered a Hollywood dream cannon. “We took a lot of pride in making it seamless, in not flipping the shutter before you should or making sure that the sound is working,” Suring says. “You want it to be flawless and you prided yourself on that.”

A craft occupation generally ignored by society: while motion picture projectionists are shrinking as a guild, they have plenty of company at the bottom of the employment statistics.