Margaret James

"Go out to the campfire, and do it with your kids - no matter how rough. Just go."

Margaret James with great-grandaughters Victoria and Angel.

Born in 1918 to Birch Creek James and his wife Agnes, Margaret James lived by the campfire. "My father keep us going," the Matriarch of Birch Creek Village remembers. "He always tell all us kids to get wood with dog team. We girls are doing housework, sewing, helping our mother. When we were little, in the fall time my father take us out in the boat. It's cold. We get water, make fire. When he kill a moose back by the lake, all of us, even tiny kids, are packing meat to the river."

As a young mother, James raised 11 children "by the campfire" - four of her own and seven who came to her from relatives who had fallen into difficult times. There, she taught them the skills she had learned. She took a hand in raising many grandchildren and great-granchildren, also by the campfire.

She has seen great changes. Few children have to work the way she did, she notes.

James has also seen the terrible damage caused by alcohol abuse. She has felt the sorrow of bringing a child up by the campfire, witnessing the child do well in school, grow to be a promising adult and then to suffer a violent and pointless death because someone was drinking. "No matter how rought it is," she advises parents, "Go out to the campfire, and do it with your kids - no matter how rough. Just go."