“Whether or not I see you again, remember this. We’ll always have wolf urine.”
– Humor columnist Dave Barry in a letter to Bill Alkofer at the photographer’s living wake.
By Greg Mellen
Up a narrow staircase in the middle of a nondescript three-story brick building, a little southwest of downtown St. Paul, Minnesota, is the home of the Czech-Slovak Protective Society. The Czech Hall is not most people’s idea of a prime spot for a soiree. Except maybe for the photographers, who used to congregate at the former restaurant the Glockenspiel, or the Glock, to throw back beers.
The hall was where the Minnesota News Photographers Association held its annual contest judging.
That made it the perfect, and perfectly offbeat, locale for former St. Paul Pioneer Press and Orange County Register photographer Bill Alkofer to seal a legacy. To check a big item off his bucket list before he checks out.
In October 2018, Alkofer was diagnosed with a variant of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. There is no cure for the disease and a roughly two- to five-year life expectancy after diagnosis. Alkofer is now more than three years into his march with the disease and can hear the bells of eternity getting closer.
He has a collection of aphorisms — call them Alkoferisms — for his approach to the disease. One is, “Everyone has a bucket list, but it’s a little different when you see the pail on the trail.”
Alkofer, 60, knows better than most that the next bend on his life trail could be a cliff, so he is putting up and knocking over as many buckets as he can.
A big item on that list was an “Awake Wake,” or living wake, so he could hold court one last time. He wanted a final chance to express and accept the love of those who have meant so much to him.
Another saying Alkofer has adopted comes from late singer Warren Zevon, who coined the phrase “enjoy every sandwich” during his fight with late-stage lung cancer. The wake turned out to be a movable feast.
Alkofer was stunned when 150 friends, family members and photography and journalism colleagues from as far away as California and Florida decided to attend the October 2021 event in St. Paul. Several times during the evening, Alkofer was brought to tears when a face from the past, some long-ago colleague or former flame appeared. Attendees ranged in age from his 88-year-old mother, Laura, who wouldn’t let anyone in without a name tag, to a 4-year-old great-niece.
Having events or projects to be involved with, Alkofer believes, keeps him going, releasing serotonin and endorphins that buoy his spirits. Along with the stream of friends who regularly visit him at the New Perspectives assisted living home where he resides.
“If it weren’t for them, I don’t know where I’d be,” he said. “Depression might have overtaken me.”
Family members and friends have noticed that when Alkofer is chasing a goal, his ALS symptoms are briefly held in abeyance, only to accelerate after he achieves the goal.
Before leaving California in April 2021, Alkofer managed to climb the stairs to his second-floor apartment. The day he left, his legs gave out. Since his “Awake Wake,” Alkofer has suffered several setbacks with incontinence, and he was recently fitted with a neck brace to prevent “head drop” due to atrophied neck muscles. He also has lost complete use of his legs and is wheelchair-bound.
In a uniquely Minnesotan twist, the wheelchair, a hospital bed and a hydraulic toilet were all donated by former Minnesota Twin Kent Hrbek, whose father died from ALS.
It’s no easy task remaining upbeat as, slowly but surely, his body denies and rejects him.
Since diagnosis, Alkofer has lost virtually all use of his arms and hands. He relies on voice recognition typing and the help of friends and aides to maintain correspondence. He can no longer dress or undress himself. He is begrudgingly learning to accept the indignities of having to rely on aides to help him with basic bodily functions.
Before his symptoms got any worse, particularly his ability to speak and communicate, Alkofer wanted to have one last shindig. That is, before the one in which only his body will be present.
Alkofer was terrified of a sudden attack of “bulbar onset,” a part of the ALS progression in which speech and swallowing become difficult. He was worried about much more than not being able to enjoy literal sandwiches.
The idea of a party in which he couldn’t speak and pontificate was unthinkable not just to Alkofer but his friends as well.
“Bill is an attention suck,” said Rich Marshall, a close friend and former picture editor and colleague at the Pioneer Press. “He’s a force of nature.”
Alkofer threw himself into the planning of the party with the help of his “Awake Wake academy” of 20 friends.
“He had it all planned out in his head to the last detail,” said Craig Lassig, a Minnesota friend and colleague, later adding: “Down to the last excruciating detail.”
For example, Alkofer insisted on finding a picture of late rocker Frank Zappa to hang next to one of former Czech President Vaclav Havel in a small display area set aside in the back corner of the hall. Because, of course, Zappa was the first major Western musician to visit Prague after the Velvet Revolution. Of course.
Alkofer was infamous for walking around the newsroom spitting out pieces of arcana and factoids.
A factoid is a dubious or invented fact believed to be true because it appears in print. Alkofer and a reporter at the Orange County Register had a jar in which they kept running bets for every time Alkofer would utter one of his spurious claims, followed by an “I just made that up … or did I?”
Unfortunately for the reporter, the factoid was more often than not fact.
Also in the “Alkover” of weirdness at the wake was “Mannie Kihn,” the mannequin that was Alkofer’s 1978 prom date in high school.
Among the got-to-haves for the party was a bottomless supply of Minnesota’s own Grain Belt Premium beer. And boxes and boxes of pizza from Red’s Savoy Pizza, home of “’Sota style” pies, one of Alkofer’s go-tos after deadline back at the Pioneer Press.
A long and varied slideshow on a theater-size screen displayed a retrospective of Alkofer’s stunning work over his 40-year career.
Alkofer’s friend and favorite former bartender Dave Boquist played guitar through the evening with a selection of photography-themed songs, such as “Photograph,” by George Harrison and Ringo Starr, and Paul Simon’s “Kodachrome.”
The date of the event, Saturday, Oct. 30, was also important because it was as close as Alkofer could get to All Saints’ Day and still make it accessible for travelers.
Those who know Alkofer know he has a “thing” for saints. He would have “can you name that saint?” challenges with the bishop of the Diocese of Orange.
About the only thing not fulfilled was Alkofer’s desire for it all to end in a food fight.
An unexpected addition to the party was a letter to Alkofer from former Miami Herald Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist Dave Barry, who labeled Alkofer “batshit crazy.”
Alkofer worked with Barry at the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, in 1994, and Nagano, Japan, in 1998. During the Lillehammer Games, Barry had a running gag in his columns about the use of wolf urine to keep moose off train tracks.
While many dismissed the story as the usual Barry brand of high jinks, Barry wrote, “But not Bill. Bill was ALL OVER the wolf-urine story. It was his Watergate.”
Alkofer went so far as to track down and photograph the Norwegian official in charge of the wolf-urine program.
Barry concluded by writing, “Congrats on a fine career, and on somehow making many good friends despite being clearly unbalanced. I wish you the best, and whether or not I see you again, remember this. We’ll always have wolf urine.”
Several of Alkofer’s Olympic memories, with which he regaled partygoers — or some may say subjugated them — involved Barry.
One had to do with Alkofer inviting a comely athlete to join him for a dinner of lutefisk, a Norwegian dish of whitefish brined in lye. When the woman, shockingly, demurred, Barry nicknamed Alkofer “Mr. Suave.”
And so the Alkoferian tales unfurled through the evening.
“It had an authentic wake feel,” said Mindy Schauer, one of Akofer’s West Coast photographer friends who wrote about Alkofer and his ordeal with ALS for the Orange County Register. “What a great way to celebrate a life and to be there.”
“I just wanted to show support,” said photographer Jeff Gritchen, who met Alkofer at the Long Beach Register and was a colleague at the Orange County paper. “There’s nothing you could do for him, really, but I could do this. It was exactly what I expected: He had the beer he wanted, the quirky old hall. It’s exactly what he wanted.”
A greeting line of people who wanted to share a moment or a memory with Alkofer snaked through the length of the hall.
Lassig says even now, Alkofer has an unerring ability to lift his spirits.
“He just made you feel good about your profession. He’s a true believer. He’s an inspiration,” Lassig said. To take liberties with a line from “Field of Dreams,” “The memories were so thick they had to brush them away from their faces.”
At the end of the evening, Alkofer told those who had put together the event that it had been perfect.
Characters who are, um, “odd” are nothing new to newsrooms the world over, particularly among photographers.
Mindy Schauer, who has been a photographer with the Orange County Register for 25 years, calls Alkofer “the lovable asshole.”
“All the people (at the event) were people who got Bill. He can be an asshole, but he’s our asshole,” Marshall said.
The a-word is one many share about Alkofer without the slightest hesitation or embarrassment, and it’s a term Alkofer embraces.
“Bill is hard to describe,” Schauer says. “He can make some people uncomfortable. If you don’t get him, you probably never will.”
“I just knew from the very first time we crossed paths that he was my soulmate,” Marshall said.
What set Alkofer apart was an uncanny talent, eye and a journalist’s news sense.
Since Alkofer started his career in 1978 as an intern at the Walsh County Press, collecting the dreaded man-on-the-street quotes and photos, he was a natural.
His skills were all on display at the event in a rotation of photos displayed on screens in the hall.
Alkofer was not only a photographer, he was a photojournalist.
“He was a consummate journalist,” said Gritchen, who met Alkofer at the Long Beach Register in 2013. “While others were just looking to take pretty pictures, he never stopped asking questions.”
Alkofer believed in talking about stories with reporters and the collaborative process of photos and words working together. On assignments, he was always asking questions and gathering information, often better than the reporter was picking up.
“Bill’s a great reporter; his medium just happens to be the photograph,” Marshall said.
“He has such an incredible mind,” Schauer said. “His brain never turns off. Everything he encounters is a potential story. His story ideas never stop.”
Alkofer was also a technician like few others.
“He was really good at lighting,” Schauer said.
Schauer remembers the story of Alkofer taking off to cover a plane crash in Southern California. Not only did Alkofer show up with his cameras in hand, but he also brought lights and lit his photographs.
“This was before digital,” Schauer said. “It was unheard of. He was legendary.”
Gritchen remembers Alkofer going out to shoot pictures for a story on carnival workers.
“He wanted to bring lights; they said no, and he did anyway,” Gritchen remembers.
Marshall said photographers often talk about “available light.”
“To Bill that meant: How many lights are available?” Marshall joked.
Gritchen remembers Alkofer would often schedule feature shots for when the light would be just right, whether he was on or off the clock.
To this day, Alkofer finds himself taking photos in his head and thinking about the light. “And in my brain, it’s always perfectly exposed,” he said.
Alkofer was working on a story about an Eastern Bloc refugee who fled in a Trabant, one of the ugliest cars ever made. In California, Josef Czikmantory was able to buy one of the rare cars.
Coincidentally, Alkofer had also been looking for someone with a Trabant, because it’s Alkofer.
He met Czikmantory at a scenic overlook at sunset, brought along about a dozen lights and created a picture that told a wonderful, and wonderfully ironic, story. In front of a spectacular, orange-hued backdrop is the man, arms flung out in triumph. A man and his plug-ugly auto.
“He always had a vision of his photo and how it would manifest itself,” said Mike Goulding, another Orange County Register colleague. “He was just a dogged artist.”
“He always pushed the limits of what you’d expect,” Schauer said.
Alkofer was in good health until late in 2018, when he was diagnosed with a variant of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Alkofer knows the exact moment he realized something was wrong. Terribly wrong. It’s time-stamped on his Nikon camera. You hardly forget the moment when your whole world starts to cascade.
Alkofer was on the edge of a jubilant pregame scrum with players and fans at a JSerra Catholic High School football game.
Alkofer’s brain told him to lift his camera for a “Hail Mary” shot looking down on the crowd. It’s part of a photographer’s repertoire and often a way to catch faces and emotions. Bill was always adept at catching faces in their most telling moments.
Try as he might, Bill couldn’t lift the camera. There may have been physical signs before that. He chalked them up to a pinched nerve of some other mild affliction. This was new. This was the first time his body refused a simple task.
Two days and a battery of tests later, disaster. Alkofer’s doctor, Clyde Holstein, told Bill he couldn’t take ALS off the table.
Alkofer Googled the disease and read the grim prognosis.
“When you hear you have two to five years, that’s pretty devastating,” Alkofer says.
The disease is not only a death sentence, but a particularly vile one.
Lou Gehrig uttered the memorable, and memorably ironic, line that he considered himself the “luckiest man on the face of the earth.” There is nothing lucky about ALS. There is no effective course of treatment; the stricken are gradually stripped of just about every bodily function and scrap of dignity, while the brain remains alert and acutely aware.
Alkofer’s variant is called brachial amyotrophic diplegia, or BAD. Often characterized by “flail arm syndrome” or “man-in-a-barrel syndrome,” the disease tends to work its way down the body, unlike regular ALS, which first takes out the legs. But it is equally deadly.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 people in the U.S. suffer from ALS, although it seems most people know someone who’s had it.
As Alkofer’s health faltered, he did all he could to keep shooting. He started using a monopod to support his camera. Photography was his “raison d’etre,” he said, “the reason I was put on this planet.”
That led to his bucket list priorities. They included:
The view from Alkofer’s room at the New Perspectives home is beautiful.
Alkofer says: “This is the room where I want to die.”
The facility sits on a rise above the Mississippi River. As Alkofer nears the end of his life, he watches a river that’s just beginning its life’s journey, which began 223 miles north at Itasca State Park. The river will continue its life flow southward until it spills into the Gulf of Mexico.
But here in the far north, the river is full of hope and promise. It doesn’t know where its journey will take it as it stretches out beyond the horizon through countless twists and bows.
Unlike the river here, Alkofer has navigated most of the twists and bows of his short life. Where the river sees potential, he sees endings.
The trees are bare now, giving view to the river. Everything is brittle in the winter in St. Paul as if a hard stare could break it. In spring and summer, the lush greenery will return, making the trees vibrant and supple. Whether Alkofer will see it is uncertain.
As much as he would love to see his last light through these windows, Alkofer may soon need more skilled nursing and care.
A Catholic, Alkofer struggles with the notion of the right to die. Life is so precious, the gemstones so rare and valuable, that it’s hard to conceive tossing those away. Catholicism teaches that God gives life and only he can take it away. And no matter how far one drifts from the Mother Church, its lessons often follow. Death vs. diminishing life, heaven vs. potential hell. The joy of every dwindling sandwich. Those are all part of Alkofer’s internal algebra; those are dark places he will need to visit.
For all of us, life is a spool forever unwinding. The fates spin, measure and snip our lives. Slower for some, faster for others. For Alkofer it is spinning fast and short. The frayed edges creep ever closer.
But he says he wouldn’t have chosen any other life, the opportunities, the adventures, the stories — oh, the stories: wolf urine with Dave Barry; eating chocolate chip cookies and smoking a cigarette with Johnny Rotten; going to exotic places meeting celebrities; but, more importantly, telling and portraying the stories of everyday people.
One of Alkofer’s favorite pictures is one he didn’t take. Rather, it is a random snapshot of Alkofer holding a fish caught while with a group of children in Alaska while working on a story about Indigenous people. On Alkofer’s face is a kind of unadorned joy, simple but soulful. These are the moments he says that he’ll take with him from this world.
At his “Awake Wake,” Alkofer may have seen a glimpse of forever, maybe not just for him but for those he affected over the years.
“I observed him touching everyone,” Marshall said. “These were the people who were important to him.”
Meanwhile, as long as he has time, Alkofer will be lining up pails on the trail.
Greg Mellen is a writer, occasional freelancer and former faculty at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. He worked at newspapers and dodged layoffs for more than 35 years before being downsized by the Register and its hedge-fund owners. He now works in public relations. He can be reached at [email protected].
Bill Alkofer worked at the St. Paul Pioneer Press for 10 years and the Orange County Register for 15 years. He joined the NPPA in 1982. He can be reached at [email protected].
Video below by Richard Marshall; Courtesy of Bill Alkofer.
