Nancy Marie Titus, nee Bratsberg (1933 – 2021)

Nancy Titus was born in Tacoma, Washington to parents Thora Elfrieda and Carl Essman. Nancy grew up in Dawson where her mother and stepfather, Bert Bratsberg, worked a placer mine. Nancy worked for her uncle Harry Gleaves at the Arcade Café and attended the Dawson school. Her first husband was an RCMP officer stationed in Dawson.¹⁾

Nancy met her second husband, Arne N. Sundt II, in 1947 when she was working at a mining camp at Flat Creek, Alaska and they were married at Galkona Lodge, owned by Arne’s mother, Henra Sundt. Nancy and Arne had two children. The family lived in Galkona except for one year in Phoenix, Arizona where Nancy earned her pilot’s license. She sang and played piano and organ and she and some friends started a bank called the Coppertones in honour of the nearby Copper River. Nancy worked for more than ten years at the lodge and then she and the children moved to Anchorage. There she met and married Larry Beckhaus and the family moved to Prescott, Arizona where they purchased and ran a bar and restaurant.²⁾

Nancy eventually returned to Dawson where she met and married Jim Titus. In her later years she moved to Whitehorse for a short time and then moved to Cordova, Alaska to be near family.³⁾