The Lakeshore Excellence Foundation has announced this year’s Distinguished Alumni will be Bob Adkins, of the class of 1958. Lakeshore Alumni Association President Chad Deja tells us Adkins was the first graduate to be handed a Lakeshore diploma at commencement that year, making him Lakeshore’s first graduate ever. After high school, he moved to Alaska and began a long career in education and photography. Deja says Adkins is a fitting choice for the honor.
“When you find individuals like this that graduate from a small community like Stevensville, and there’s probably more out there all over the world,” Deja said. “We try to seek them and hopefully get nominations for them to be able to reward them.”
Over the years, Adkins has captained his own commercial fishing boat and sat in the cockpit of a Haines Airways plane, where he served as a bush and taxi pilot, and later, as a commercial pilot. His photographs have been published hundreds of times. Deja says Adkins has been a busy guy.
“Everything he’s done – not only his career but hobbies and things like that – and how he had the time to fit in all that, I was wondering when he slept. That was my first question to him because it seemed like he’s just done so much.”
Deja says Adkins will be at the June 2 commencement and will address students. There will also be a reception for him. Adkins, tracked down in Alaska, says he can’t “begin to express how grateful and humbled I am to have been chosen for such an award.”
