Primary Name: Radonich, Edna Marion Sprague Haley

Filed as: Radonich, Edna Marion Sprague Haley

Also known as: Edna Marion Sprague; Edna Haley; Edna Radonich

Occupation / Association: Teacher; matron, federal jail on Courthouse Hill; Charter member and first president, Pioneers of Alaska Juneau Igloo Women’s Auxiliary No. 6

Associated places: Lyle, Minnesota; Perham, Minnesota; Juneau, Alaska; Dawson City, Yukon Territory; Douglas, Alaska

Keywords: Edna Marion Sprague Haley Radonich, Juneau Igloo Womens Auxiliary first president, Alaska Grill Juneau history, Carnation Tom Radonich, Pine Creek mining claims, Chilkoot Trail families, Courthouse Hill federal jail matron

Biography

Edna Marion Sprague Haley Radonich was a charter member of the Pioneers of Alaska, Juneau Igloo Women’s Auxiliary No. 6. She was elected the organization’s first president and also served additional terms in 1921, 1922, 1925, and 1927.

Edna Sprague was born in Lyle, Minnesota, in 1875 to Will and Mary Sprague. She was raised on a farm near Perham, Minnesota. In 1895, she moved to Juneau, Alaska, to teach school and to join her aunt and uncle, Matt and Alice Loughlin.

She married Ed Haley in Juneau on July 7, 1896. During the 1899 mining season, Edna accompanied her husband to his Pine Creek mining claims. Later that year, she returned to Juneau pregnant with their daughter, Dorothy. Travel to and from the mining camps was by steamer and on foot over the Chilkoot Trail. Edna and Ed Haley had two children, Dorothy and Donald.

After the birth of her children, Edna became a homemaker primarily, though in later years she worked as a matron at the federal jail on Courthouse Hill in Juneau.

Her second husband was Thomas G. “Carnation Tom” Radonich. Born September 19, 1869, in Dalmatia, Croatia, he came to the United States as a young man and arrived in Juneau around 1891. He was an early Klondike gold rush stampeder and operated a restaurant in Dawson City during the height of the gold rush. There, he became known as “Carnation Tom” because he arranged for regular shipments of fresh carnations and was rarely seen without one in his lapel.

After returning to Juneau in the early 1900s, Radonich operated several businesses along the Gastineau Channel, including restaurants, a meat market, and gaming houses in both Juneau and Douglas. The best known of these enterprises was the Alaska Grill, located on Front Street in the C.W. Young Building, which for many years was the largest restaurant in Alaska.

Edna maintained a large rooftop garden on the C.W. Young Building, adjacent to her home above the Alaska Grill. In later life she cultivated an extensive terraced garden on the hillside above her final home on Basin Road in Juneau.

Edna Marion Sprague Haley Radonich died on May 17, 1951. She is buried in Evergreen Cemetery in the Pioneers of Alaska Section.