Greg Roczicka died Sunday night at his home in Bethel at the age of 61. His death is a loss for the community. Roczicka grew up on the Kuskokwim, living a subsistence lifestyle and dedicating his career to championing and preserving the way of life that he loved and knew the region depended on.
The last audio that KYUK recorded of Roczicka was in April at a federal hearing on restricting king salmon fishing along the Kuskwokim River. At that hearing, this is how Roczicka introduced himself:
“Greg Roczicka, representative of many different state, federal, and tribal bodies.”
It would have taken him a long time to introduce himself by his affiliations. To list every body he served on throughout his career could have swallowed the meeting. Over the decades, Greg Roczicka served on an exhaustive and nearly comprehensive list of international, federal, state, and tribal bodies dealing with fisheries and game along the Kuskokwim.
Greg was a founding member of the Kuskokwim Intertribal Fisheries Commission. He was also a founding member of the Kuskokwim River Salmon Management Working Group. He served on the Board of Game and the federal subsistence regional advisory committee board.
The list continues back to the 1980s, spanning issues of salmon, moose, brown bear, caribou and waterfowl.
At the time of his death, Roczicka worked as the Natural Resources Director for the Bethel's ONC tribe.
And at these constant meetings, Roczicka brought a rare intelligence, able to weave together and understand government regulation, Western science, and subsistence.
For 15 years, John Linderman, with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, worked with Roczicka and said that the state depended on him for this approach.
“He basically had a reputation that built up that we can count on Greg to help us with this. We can count on Greg to give us the clarity and understanding that we need to make difficult decisions,” said Linderman.
Roczicka’s ability to reconcile complex information, and his generosity with this knowledge, permeated his interactions. LaMont Albertson, a longtime friend and a former Executive Director of the Kuskokwim River Intertribal Fisheries Commission, had a story about the way his friend operated:
“Last summer when I had a desk 15 feet from his desk in the ONC building, a lady came in from Kipnuk, and she had some challenges dealing with the English language and understanding some of the documents that had been forwarded to her by some Western governance organization," said Albertson.
"And Greg sat right there and explained to her what all that information meant, and what she needed to do, and ended up volunteering to help her get those things done. And this was above and beyond the work he was required to do for ONC or for the Intertribal Fisheries Commission.”
Albertson says that this is just the kind of person Roczicka was, and a lot of that compassion he learned from his family.
His mother was a school teacher who moved to Bethel with him and his brothers when Roczicka was an adolescent. He graduated from Bethel Regional High School and attended classes at UAF Kuskokwim Campus. Later he married his wife, Josie, who was from Kwethluk. Together they had two sons, Basil and Norman.
His many friends say that Roczicka loved Bethel. He loved the life a person could live here, and he lived that life entirely.
“He was very much a Yup’ik that’s not a Yup’ik," said Timothy Andrew, who helped organize the Kuskokwim River Intertribal Fisheries Commission that Roczicka sat on.
“He did the steam bath, the wood gathering, the harvesting of resources, bringing it all home for his wife, for his family, to share with the community. And he was able to understand a lot more Yup’ik than any other non-Yup’ik person would.”
With this deep perspective of both the Yup’ik and Western worldview, Roczicka’s friend, LaMont Albertson, called Roczicka a peace maker between the cultures.
“Because he knew how both sides looked at things," said Albertson. "He knew the challenges of the different interpretations that people can get from information, and he worked to resolve those sort of miscommunications and misunderstandings.”
And where there were these gaps, Roczicka helped to close them. For instance, he helped develop a program where subsistence fishermen would get paid to collect biological data for the state. The program still exits and brings fishermen and managers into a shared process.
Beverly Hoffman was a witness to this work as she served alongside Roczicka on various tribal, state, and federal bodies. She says that building these bridges of understanding is what Roczicka dedicated his life to.
“And he was so great at it. He’s going to be missed, and it’s going to take two or three people to fill his shoes."
Roczicka’s distinct, gravelly voice was a pillar not only in fish and game meetings, but also on KYUK. Here’s a clip of Greg Roczicka from last summer, during a KYUK call-in show on fisheries. In it, he explains to a local caller why gear restrictions were needed amid declining king salmon runs.
“Depending on what size kicker you’ve got nowadays... it reminded me of my father-in-law saying that when they used to come to Bethel to buy groceries it was a three-day trip. It took you the afternoon to come down, a couple hours to take care of business, and two days to row back," said Roczicka.
"So that’s part of this struggle and why we’re in conservation mode and continuing trying to give people as much chance as they got, but recognizing the extreme efficiency we have now with modern technology— gear that affects all our lives and has changed it so dramatically just in the last two generations.”
A memorial service for Greg Roczicka will be held at the ONC Multi-Purpose Building on Saturday, May 27, at 2 p.m. The building is located at 267 Akiak Drive in City Subdivision beside Pinky’s Park. There will be a potluck after the service. The family asks everyone to bring a dish and a story to share.
