Priest to Pirate
by Stuart Murch

         This is the story of a man who grew up aspiring to be a priest, but became a pirate. This transition raises many questions: Who would do that? How does something like that happen? And, most importantly, why?
         The answer to the first question is deceptively simple. To answer it one must know more than a name, they have to know the character of this person. Dale Rosene, or, as he is known on the Alaska Great Lakes Project, Ishtar, is exactly the sort of person who would do that. How do we know? Well, he’s done it.
         Dale is 62 years old and living in Marshall Michigan where he recently retired from his job as a technology teacher at the local middle school. He has a wife and two children.  His son, Brady, is a chef currently living in Marshall. His daughter, Emily, works as a teacher in Wasilla, Alaska where she lives with her husband and son, Boone. Dale is a parrot head (Jimmy Buffet fan) who loves pirates. As of this spring he has retired, but is still running the Alaska Great Lakes Project, which is now on it’s twentieth year.
         Question number two: how does some thing like that happen? Well it all started with a 9th grade science teacher named Chris Miller. The special thing about Chris Miller is that he was Dale’s first science teacher. Dale loved the subject and thought, “this is pretty cool.” Miller was a great teacher who taught Dale many interesting things, including a fact that really interested him. “(He taught me that) If you shoot a bullet level to the ground and if you drop a bullet (from the same point) they will hit the ground at the same time.” Miller not only taught Ishtar about Science, he also had an impact on what Ishtar would do later in life. Partially because of Miller, Ishtar taught science classes for 36 years.
         Question number three is more difficult because there is not one answer, there are several. Dale was on the fast track to becoming a priest; in the eighth grade he was president of the future priests club at his catholic school, so why didn't he follow through? Part of the reason was that he stopped going to church. “The priests lost their relevance,” said Dale. If this had not happened, if the priests had not stopped meaning what they once did, I would not be writing this now. However, it’s not as simple as that, he is still a priest of sorts. Every year Dale gives an inspirational speech two days before the Alaska Great Lakes Project must leave beautiful Alaska to return home to Michigan. “You have 48 hours left in Alaska. What are you going to do with that 48 hours?” Dale said. In this way you could say he did become a priest, with a unique chapel and an even more unique congregation.
         Dale became a pirate because of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. This was one accident that started a project that is now on it’s twentieth trip and still going. Without that spill the AGLP trip would not have started and hundreds of students from the small town of Marshall, Michigan would have missed out on the experience of a lifetime. In some cases students have returned as junior leaders and some even later as drivers. Some of these students, like Emily Rosene, even move to Alaska later on in life.