Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

Martin "Wolf" Schroeder, 64, died March 1 at a Union Street apartment.

Schroeder was a homeless man of which little is known with certainty. He carried no identification card and had variously claimed to have been a contractor in Montana and a boat-builder in Pennsylvania, but by the time he arrived in Haines about a decade ago, his health was failing.

"His heart was bad enough he couldn't do much at all," said resident Alan Miller, who met Schroeder eight years ago at a Fourth of July gathering and gave him a place to live. "He came for dinner and never left."

Schroeder claimed to have served several tours in Vietnam, but he was not receiving veterans' benefits and no military papers were found among his personal effects.

"There were a lot of inconsistencies in what he said about his supposed military service," said Terry Pardee, a retired Army master sergeant who served five terms as commander of American Legion Post 12.

In the absence of proof of his service, Schroeder didn't qualify for Legion support for his burial. Instead, volunteers built a coffin and paid the $350 fee to the Haines Borough for internment at Jones Point.

Schroeder told Miller that he grew up on a Montana homestead and was a mason, roofer and contractor. Miller said Schroeder also told him he had spent time in prison twice: for shooting a man who had raped his sister, and for beating an assailant with a mop wringer.

In the account Miller heard, Schroeder spent time in an orphanage and had three daughters and an adopted son from Belfast, Northern Ireland. He also claimed to have a brother in Yellowknife, N.W.T., and another who was a minister in Montana.

Police, however, this week said that phone numbers Schroeder kept no longer worked. "He was like a ghost," said officer Brayton Long, who has been unable to reach any family members. Long said he found Schroeder's given name and birth date from papers he left behind, including an old identification card.

Miller said Schroeder enjoyed reading, but otherwise would cash his public assistance checks at a local bar, where he also spent them. "He broke his hip falling off a barstool and he never really recovered," Miller said, adding that Schroeder also had suffered several strokes.

"I have a suspicion there's more in his past. That does seem to happen in Alaska," Miller said.

Don "Montana Jack" Perkins said he met Schroeder in April 2008 when the two were camping out in the woods north of Juneau. Perkins, an oilfield worker now living in Oklahoma, said Schroeder was homeless. "He lived wherever he could lay his head," including on a boat in Juneau, in exchange for doing work on the vessel.

Perkins said Schroeder told him he was from Pennsylvania and had been a boatbuilder. "He didn't have an exact job but one thing he could do was he built dories. He made boats of all different sizes. That was the biggest trade he ever knew."

Perkins said Schroeder "kind of gave up on life... he doesn't play well with others." Miller said: "He didn't fall through the cracks. He saw the crack and dove for it."

Perkins' and Miller's accounts agree that Schroeder had a daughter by the name of Hillary Graham. Miller said he thought she lived in Montana. Perkins said Pennsylvania. Neither could provide her hometown.

Perkins said Schroeder contacted Graham only once in a great while. "He died with honor," Perkins said.