Brice family: Brice Incorporated.

• Author: Stomierowski, Peg
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: 2011 Junior Achievement Alaska Business Hall of Fame

The Brice family, recognized in the 2011 class of Junior Achievement of Alaska Business Hall of Fame laureates, has left a lane footprint in rural Alaska. Those included in the family legacy are second generation Brice brothers Sam Richard, Al, Andy and Tom; and first generation parents helenka (she preferred the lower case 'h') and Luther (now deceased); Company president (third generation, Al's son) Sam Robert will be present at the awards, representing current management and employees.

In 2010, Brice Construction and related companies were purchased by Calista, an Alaska Native regional corporation that's expanding its construction reach. Third-generation Brices (headed by Sam Robert) and extended family members still manage the five Brice companies as a consolidated Calista subsidiary.

Not one employee lost his or her job, and key aspects of the company culture continue, gratifying to cofounder Sam Richard. Anchoragebased Calista represents more than 13,000 shareholders and encompasses 56 villages in western Alaska.

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ROOTS IN THE BUSH

For a long time, Brice Construction had enjoyed a strong sense of institutional history, a storehouse of early Alaska statehood knowledge and connections, and a reservoir of good will with many Native communities in the region.

Even before the Native corporations came into being in 1971, observed Northrim Bank President Joseph Beedle, the Brices had a reputation for business networking with Bush communities along the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers. They'd been at it since 1962.

"They established contacts with the Native villages before it was popular to do so," said Beedle, who considers this a compelling tale of Alaska-style karmic growth. From very early on, they mobilized and networked in rural communities, even staying in schools to get some jobs done. Over the years, he said, the family built its operation to a pinnacle, and then was able to gracefully pass it on to another generation.

"Our jobs traditionally were in a half moon--west, north and east around Fairbanks," Sam Richard reflected. In such remote communities as Kivalina, Huslia and Savoonga, they tried to preserve any infrastructure and enhance local economies, he said, conducting themselves as guests who left things a little better when they buttoned up their work--trucks, tugs and barges--at job completion to go home.

Sam Richard, like his mother, helenka, before him, Beedle reflected, believed that...