There are many roads that can lead to becoming a health aide. For Jon Dyer, one of two health aides in Manley, the path included owning a distillery, starting a construction company, working as the manufacturing director for a medical equipment company, and feeding an interest in veterinary care by taking classes in animal husbandry. Then, about 11 years ago, Jon and his wife decided to visit Alaska. They bought a boat in Anchorage and started exploring the Yukon and Tanana Rivers. One of their stops was Manley.
“We loved it here and just kept coming back over and over,” recalls Jon. Eleven years ago, they finally packed up their home in Michigan and moved to Manley. His wife eventually became the post mistress, while Jon took jobs working on the North Slope. Whenever he was home and the season was open, Jon would fish and hunt. Then, about four years ago, the family’s circumstances changed drastically: Jon was laid off and COVID-19 hit.
It was not long after that he saw the advertisement looking for a health aide for Manley. It seemed like life finally had brought him to the place where he could throw himself into health care. “I had always been interested in medicine,” he says, “but the timing was never right. It was not in the cards for me, not when I had a young family to support.” But now he had the time, his wife was securely employed, and his two children were adults and gone living their own lives. His application was supported by the community, one of the requirements for being accepted into the training program at Tanana Chiefs, and he was soon in Fairbanks starting the first of four sessions required to reach the top tier of the health aide ladder. He is now a Community Health Aide 4, having finished all the trainings, and earned the Alaska board certification.
Jon was older than his classmates and did not have the distractions or responsibilities of young children while attending courses or field training. In addition, he had earned several college degrees in his younger years, so he had the skills needed to pass the classroom portions of the training without a lot of difficulty. Then, as now, what he loved most was the part of his training that sent him out to the field to work with patients. “It is very satisfying to end up with positive outcomes in difficult situations,” he explains.
There were two ways Jon was different from most of the other students: he was older, with children in their late 20s by that time, and he was male. He says the only time those qualities seemed to make a difference was that patients, many of whom had only met female health aides, assumed he was a doctor. In fact, in some ways, Manley is the perfect place for an older health aide because the average age of the population is higher than in many villages. Jon says that the number of young children can be counted on one hand and is not sufficient to support a school, so those youngsters are home schooled or sent to Minto for the school year.
In a community that at the last census count had 168 people, everybody wears multiple hats to keep the village going. Jon has volunteered for the fire department and been a member of the local governing body, the Manley Association. When he is not working, volunteering, fishing or hunting, he can be found piloting his own plane, or fixing things. He brought his machine shop tools from Michigan to Manley and now uses them to make parts for cars, boats, and 4-wheelers. In his younger years, he participated in the sport of competitive shooting, so he can also make parts for guns. Asked if he had any talents or hobbies that might surprise people, Jon said, “I sew. I recently made a beaver hat. It is a good hobby to have in the cold of winter.”
Jon has no plans to leave his job as a health aide or his home in Manley. He feels fortunate to work for Tanana Chiefs, where the program works hard to support the health aides and where being one of two health aides in the town gives him flexibility in terms of arranging clinic hours as well as his on-call duties. It took a lot of detours, but he ended up with an exhilarating and active lifestyle in a town he never knew existed when he was a young man, with a rewarding career in a field he dreamed about but could not join until he was older.