By Barbara Brown
For the Journal

Listen to this conversation online (9.2Mb MP3)

Editor's note: In partnership with Leadership Anchorage, the Alaska Journal of Commerce will publish portions of conversations from Leadership Anchorage's on-stage conversations, held at the Z.J. Loussac Public Library. This year's theme is "Rising to the Occasion: Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things." Several exemplary individuals talked about their personal experiences with rising to the occasion. Had their lives prepared them for their courageous responses? Was it instinct, training or character? Or was it just a question of "Who else?"

In 1987, Dixie Belcher of Juneau took the first performing group to Russia, thus opening up the border between Alaska and Russia.

When Dixie began organizing this in 1985, "the Russians said, 'We don't even let Russians in there, to the Far East.' It was full of missiles, on both sides. And we got the same sort of response in Washington. This was a terrible idea. Back then, the Russians were our enemies."

But for the St. Lawrence Islanders, those Russians were often relatives - even brothers and sisters - that they hadn't seen since the 1940s. In Little Diomede, as Dixie remembers, "There was a big official United States Army sign that said, "If the Russians attack, surrender."

Fear was one motivator: "I was very worried about it, the Soviet Union and the United States. I thought we were going to blow each other up, and I thought there wasn't anything I could do to help because I'm just one person."

But at their first performance in Russia, "the whole audience stood up. And this was ... our enemy. It was overwhelming. I lost maybe half the singers at that point. Everybody started to cry."

Dixie had already discovered something about people and music and bridging differences. In the late 1960s, a folk rock group began in Juneau. "We had people that looked like they had been electrocuted, with hair out to here. Then we had people in the Coast Guard, captains and commanders that always had their uniforms on ... We had housewives ... and a Hell's Angel. They had no business being together at all, and they came together because they really liked music."

Dixie realized that "there was just something about music that just cut through like that. I thought, I want to do this in the world for peace. I hardly even said that to people because it was something I wanted to do so badly, but I was afraid I would never be able to do it."

So how did Dixie rise to the occasion? How did she move forward to opening a volatile international border and now, continue doing such work in the Middle East? It begins, she said, by taking a first step, following your passion. "You just can't follow something out of fear. You have to do something that you really love doing." That first step creates some sort of magnetism which brings other things to you. Things grow from there. Alaska gives us better access to making change, Dixie believes. "I don't know if I could have pulled off what I pulled off if I lived in Chicago."

Listen in and put yourself in Dixie's shoes: If you followed your passion and things opened from there, what first step would you take?

On Sept. 19 at 7 p.m., KSKA FM 91.1 will air the on-stage, Leadership Anchorage conversation with Dixie that took place before a live audience at the Z.J. Loussac Public Library. The broadcasts continue every Tuesday evening at 7 p.m. through Oct. 10. Programs can also be accessed at www.kska.org.