Ghemm Company: five partners of construction.

• Author: Jones, Patricia

In 1952, five men joined together to create GHEMM Co. of Fairbanks, the name formed from the first letter of each of their last names.

In the utilitarian offices of the Fairbanks-based GHEMM Co., more than 100 color-coded push-pins are scattered across a map of Alaska.

Each pin represents a completed project, reflecting diverse areas and environments in which the GHEMM Co. has worked throughout the company's 46-year history.

The pins range from North Slope villages to Saint Lawrence Island to a huge cluster surrounding Fairbanks. Also marked on the map is the Dalton Highway Bridge across the Yukon River. GHEMM Co. built that span a little more than 20 year ago, the only structural crossing of the Yukon River in Alaska.

"We tackled almost anything that came along," said Harvey Marlin, one of the five founders of the general construction contractor. "We've been gathering experience and talented personnel along the way."

The contracting business evolved from a freighting partnership started in the late 1940s by now deceased Robert Mitchell and Clyde Geraghty, who then both worked for the Alaska Road Commission.

At that time, Marlin was working on the mammoth-sized gold dredge near Ester, owned by the F.E. Co. "We were getting close to the end of the dredgeable ground and I saw the handwriting on the wall," Marlin said. "Bob came by and said, 'Why don't you throw in with us? We may not make a lot of money, but one way or another, we'll be able to have three squares a day.'"

Carl Helfinger and Carl Erickson both joined, and in 1952 the fivesome incorporated the heavy equipment business. GHEMM represents the first letter of the last name of each of the partners.

"Everyone was equal. We did what we could with a certain level of expertise," Marlin said, recalling those early years that involved digging basements and moving houses.

Eventually, the gold fields surrounding Fairbanks beckoned to Helfinger, who sold his interest in the company to Conrad G.B. Frank in 1959. Frank, a graduate of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, already had established a solid reputation locally as a civil engineer, Marlin said.

"With him doing our bidding, we got into a different frame of work, more professional jobs," he said. "We turned the corner with more sophisticated work."

The company took on jobs building streets and bridges. Red pushpins, representing road or railroad bridges, dot the Alaska map on the Steese Highway and the Taylor Highway, a summer-only road...