JA Q&A with Dave Allen: A Legacy of True Alaskan Hospitality.

• Position: JUNIOR ACHIEVMENT SPECIAL SECTION

Dave Allen is the owner of Alaska Dream Cruises and Allen Marine Tours, a family-owned business and one of the oldest tour companies in Alaska, operating in the Inside Passage for more than forty-five years.

Allen Marine operates more than thirty vessels, employs more than 300 Alaskans, and provides daily and week-long tours and cruises throughout Southeast Alaska. The company also builds aluminum boats and structural products at its boat shop in Sitka.

Alaska Business: How did you get your start?

Dave Allen: I grew up in the family business, which started as a shipyard in Sitka in 1967. Our family spent countless hours hauling boats, propping them up, scraping barnacles off hulls before adding fresh layers of copper paint, and making repairs.

Summers were slow since all the boats were out fishing. To fill this time, we fixed up a sunken motor yacht and outfitted it for sightseeing tours.

Our refurbished tour vessel, the Manana II, was re-christened as the St. Michael and we began running tours of Silver Bay. Dad was the captain, mom was the first mate, and my siblings and I were deckhands.

AB: Where did you grow up?

Allen: I was born in Kodiak in 1967; however, our family moved to Sitka when I was less than a year old. My parents, Bob and Betty Allen, funded the move through our family's first entrepreneurial venture--recovering and selling communication cable that had been buried in the ground and laid along the seabed during WWII. My dad came up with an efficient means of pulling the cable so that the copper and lead could be recovered in paying quantities.

AB: What were your parents like and what was your family life and upbringing like?

Allen: Dad had a way of making even the most tedious and disagreeable chores seem like fun--to the point that us siblings, who generally got along well with each other, would sometimes end up fighting over the privilege of completing whatever task was at hand. The working part was almost like play. We loved being around the shipyard and we all participated in the family business.

Here's a story to illustrate how much we liked to be at the shipyard: One time my sister. Kipper, had an accident where she got her hair caught in a planer. She was able to get the machine stopped but not before it separated her scalp. She ended up with three stitches. Well, I was really young and started yelling "I told you! Now we won't be able to go to the shop anymore! You ruined everything!" And I was right--at least for a...