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Some lives encompass a great slice of history connecting an earlier age with the modern world of 2008.

Several times a year Dr. Walter Soboleff drops me a line. He recently wrote that when his mother first traveled to Angoon from Sitka, a century or more ago, she paddled in a small wooden boat.

It was with great pleasure that I attended the Northern Light Church on May 18 to hear Dr. Soboleff deliver the sermon. It was not a brief recital, but a talk of about 30 minutes, made extemporaneously without notes or other assistance.

Soboleff is 99. I attended his birthday party in November of last year.

I wish I could repeat his entire sermon. How powerful and sincere it was. His message was that we are called to be doers of good deeds, just as the leaders and prophets of Israel were.

"I am made up of flesh and mind and spirit," he said.

In a humble way I've followed his career, as he began to serve in Juneau at the Memorial Presbyterian Church in the 1940s. This was where the fire hall is today, right across from the Federal Building.

Soboleff told me that he often made a pilgrimage along South Franklin Street to my dad's cramped office, next to the steam room, where the fish house workers dried their clothes, to say hello, and to wish God's peace.

"Your dad," he once told me, "usually made a contribution to the welfare of the church without being asked."

I had a fascinating early religious experience in Douglas, where I lived as a boy from 1935. I became a member of the Douglas Gospel Mission, Henry Schlegel, presiding.

I recall the desire to sing as loud as I could in the small church choir at hymnal time. Reverend Schlegel presented me with an inscribed Bible for a year's solid attendance, dated Nov. 29, 1942. There was a reference on the title page to John 3:2:

"They came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi we know that thou are a teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him."

• Lifelong Alaskan Elton Engstrom is a retired fish buyer, lawyer and legislator (1964-70) who lives in Juneau.