The Daily Alaska Empire

Mrs. Nordale
Confirmed as
Customs Head

First Woman in Alaska,
Perhaps Nation, to
Obtain Post

Mrs. Katherine Nordale of Juneau, appointed by President Truman, has been confirmed by the Senate to be Collector of Customs for Alaska. She is the first woman to hold that position in the Territory, and perhaps the United States.

The only other known woman Collector of Customs is in Puerto Rico.

An Associated Press dispatch from Washington, D. C., to The Empire said the action was taken yesterday. Mrs. Nordale succeeds James J. Conners, who resigned a short time ago.

Mrs. Nordale, who at present is with the Federal Security Agency, is a life-long Democrat. She came to Alaska from Reardon, Wash., in 1925, going to Fairbanks where she taught in the Fairbanks High School.

In 1930 she married Alton G. Nordale, son of one of Alaska's best known pioneer families. Her husband served as a Democratic representative from the Fourth Division in two terms of the Territorial legislature, 1933 and 1935, and in August of 1935 met tragic death in a plane accident. With several friends he had been to Dawson to attend "Discovery Day" celebration and on the return trip to Fairbanks the plane crashed into a mountain.

At the time, Nordale was deputy clerk of court in the Fourth Division and following his death, Mrs. Nordale was appointed to the position.

She continued as deputy clerk of court until the summer of 1943 when she was named director of an office of U. S. Savings bonds for the Territory and came to Juneau.

In 1947 that office was closed and she became head of the Federal Security Agency.

Mrs. Nordale has two children, James who is in Juneau at present but who will return to Gonzaga University this fall where he is a student, and a daughter Mary, a junior at Juneau High School.