Photo courtesy Donna Massey. Donna’s son Crispin and family taken at home at Sister Lake. Left to right – Donna, Mary Ruth Gentry, holding infant Eilidh, Crispin Gentry holding Hannah Grace. Dog “Sister” in front.
By Joanne Potts, Assistant to the Race Director and Donna Massay
Finishing in 10th place in the 1980 Iditarod, Donna Gentry was the first female to finish as rookie of the year. She finished the race in 15 days, 16 hours, 39 minutes, and 6 seconds.
Donna grew up in Laconia, New Hampshire. She explained that the 60’s in New England was an incredible time for sled dog racing. The area was alive with recent history as the dog teams and drivers for the two Byrd expeditions to the South Pole had been based in New Hampshire. Leonard Seppala had raced in New England and brought the Siberian husky with him. From January through March, the historical New England Sled Dog Club had races every weekend at winter carnivals throughout northern New England. The races drew mushers from around the United States and Canada. Club members included Roland Lombard, who is well known to Anchorage Fur Rendezvous fans. Donna remembers meeting Leonhard Seppala during those years.
When Donna was 12, she remembers watching the Laconia World Championship Race, a huge annual winter carnival for that town. She watched and listened to the commentary on her little transistor radio. “There were all sorts of dogs in the race that year, a team of Irish Setters and a team of pointers. Jean Bryar, a prominent racer during that time, had a border collie leading her team of sled dogs in that race. The French Canadians were racing long legged hound dogs. Jean Bryar took second place that year. Donna listened to all the commentary following the race and quickly decided that if so many different kinds of dogs could run in sled dog races, her poodle could do it too! She went home and started training her poodle, who “was a true Pavlov sled dog. He ran only for the treat he got at the end of the run.” She fashioned a sled out of her little red wagon and terrorized the people of Laconia as she, her poodle, and her “sled” traveled the sidewalks of Laconia.
That summer her dad bought her a used sled for $10. So the following year, when the Jr. World Championship Race came around, she entered with her poodle, her $10 sled, and her home made harness (that she had fashioned from an old sheet after studying pictures of harnesses in books on the Byrd expedition to the Antarctic). Donna took second place (and still has that second place trophy!) During that race, she watched the three dog class and went home and made a three dog team with her poodle, her beagle, and her cocker spaniel.
Donna got her first real sled dogs that summer. That was shortly after New England mushers began traveling to Alaska to race and were bringing back Alaskan sled dogs. Mentored by some of the great mushers of that era (Jean Bryar, Dr. Lombard, Dick Moulton, and Dr Belford), her little team was successful and grew. Back then, the open class races did not have a minimum age restriction. At the age of 15, she was asked to run a team in the Laconia World Championship for a musher who wasn’t able to compete. She doesn’t remember how she placed in that race, but she said, “I finished.”
Donna continued building a team and racing in New Hampshire and was successful in her racing efforts. She says, “In New Hampshire, it was okay to be a tomboy until you graduated from high school, but after that you were expected to become a prim and proper miss.” Within a week of her high school graduation in 1968, Donna accepted an opportunity and was on the way to Alaska with three of her dogs.
Donna says that Anchorage was very “doggie” when she got here. Earl and Natalie Norris had their 300 dog kennel where the University Center is now on the corner of 36th and the Old Seward Highway. Roland Lombard and George Attla were the kings of sled dog racing. It was always easy to pick up a surplus sled dog and during evenings, one could sit at Dick Tozier’s table talking mushing with all the other mushers stopped by.
Her first summer in Anchorage, she worked at the Anchorage Daily News. The second summer she landed a job with the Yutana Barge Lines. That turned out to be a great opportunity for her to get into many Native villages on the barge route. I began to understand the true magnificence of Alaska – the vastness and variety of the land, the diverse cultures and lifestyles of the people.
Donna soon married and had her first child, Robin, in 1972. She continued racing and breeding dogs. In 1977, the family moved to Skwentna, where Donna suddenly discovered that it didn’t make sense to train in circles. In the Anchorage area, she had trained on the established training tracks, but in Skwentna, there were trails on which she could travel 16 miles with her dog team just to have tea with a neighbor. That was also when she began seriously thinking about running the Iditarod. She explained that the hardest adjustment for her sprint dogs was learning to camp out. “When we were camping, they would stay up all night looking at me and wondering when they were going back to their kennels. As sprint dogs, that was what they were used to doing, running short distances and going back to their kennel.
Donna entered the 1980 Iditarod, finishing 10th and earning the award for being the top placing rookie that year. She noted, “Running the Iditarod is a personal experience, almost a religious experience. I thought I knew my dogs’ abilities pretty well, but during the Iditarod, they reached a different plateau and our relationship became even more intertwined.” The sunset in Rainy Pass is a special memory. Being out there alone with the dogs in the beautiful country was an experience beyond description.” Corralling had not yet become a norm in Iditarod. Donna didn’t know about the hospitality of the villages until she arrived in Kaltag on her first race. She said she was met by Austin Esmelka who told her she was staying with them and they already had her food. While she hadn’t planned to stay long, she ended up staying and Mary Esmelka cooked a marvelous dinner but the best she said, was the ice cream. “I had a banana split out there in Kaltag while on the Iditarod Race!”
Donna said, “In Koyuk, I made a classic rookie mistake. When I arrived I was met by a man who said he was going to cook my food. I really didn’t want to be separated from my dog food but he insisted and I was finally convinced. So he took off with my food and said he’d be back soon. He didn’t come back. I finally tracked him down in a home where Jerry Austin and Roger Nordlum, who had arrived in Koyuk before me, were just waking up, having their coffee, and preparing to leave the checkpoint before I did. My food was sitting there uncooked. At the time, I was so focused on what I was doing that I didn’t realize until much later exactly what they had done!!
Donna ran her second Iditarod in 1981. Her second child, Crispin, was born in 1983. In her early years of Iditarod, her daughter, Robin, was old enough to be part of Donna’s mushing experiences. As a mom with a new baby, Donna had a decision to make. She realized that she couldn’t increase her competitiveness and be a mom to a new baby. She chose being a mom and staying involved with Iditarod by serving on the Iditarod Board for 8 years.
In 1984, she had been a race judge for the Iditarod and was expecting to be a judge again in 1985. Ten days before the Iditarod started, she was told that something had come up and the race marshal wouldn’t be available. She was asked to take over that duty. Her two thoughts during that race were “Necessity is the mother of invention” and “The Iditarod will happen in spite of us”.
In 1986, the family moved from Skwentna to Palmer. Before she left Skwentna, she gave her dogs away to young mushers there, bringing only a few of her older dogs to Palmer with her. She quickly became a 4-H mom supporting Robin’s interest in horses and pigs and a wrestling and football mom later when Crispin was involved in those sports. She took the time to go back to college and earn a two year degree in refrigeration and heating. Her theory is that “Old time Alaskans don’t go away. They just reinvent themselves.”
She married Glenn Massay in 1991 and they built and operated a bed and breakfast in Palmer for 10 years. Donna said that the business was incredibly successful. “It was like traveling the world without ever leaving home. Very much like Iditarod, the people define the experience in many ways.”
In 2010, the family built a home near Trapper Creek, where Donna lives now with her Australian Shepherd. Her home on a lake is a great place for her children and four grandchildren to visit often, winter and summer. After years of building homes, guest houses, garages and workshops, Donna says her definition of retirement is “not building anything else that I need to heat, wire, or plumb! That leaves only woodsheds and dog houses. Fortunately, the dog is spayed!”
