Anchorage Daily News May 14, 2003

Mr. Nault was a pioneer Alaskan, Homer resident and former POW who died Jan 29, 2003, at Fountain of Youth Spa in Niland, CA.

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Norman Peter Nault Sr., 87, died Jan. 28, 2003, at the Fountain of Youth Spa, Niland, Calif., with his wife, Sharon, at his side. Funeral services were Feb. 9, 2003, at Cascade Baptist Church, Cascade, Idaho. Burial is at the Margaret Cemetery, Cascade, with a special ceremony by the American Legion. A memorial service will be held later in February at the Fountain of Youth Spa and in early summer at the Grace Bible Fellowship in Homer.
Mr. Nault was born June 10, 1915, in Havre, Mont., To Napoleon Nault and Hattie Jarvis Nault. He had four older brothers, Lloyd, Earl, Andrew and Roy. By age 10 he drove a team of horses and hunted and trapped. He helped his father build part of the Great Northern Railroad in Montana. At 16, he left home at his mother's urging and, with some friends, jumped a freight train to California, where they got jobs working on the road to Mount Whitney Portals. He worked as a jack-hammer operator and a powder monkey.

He married his first wife, Dorothy Sutliff, in 1935, and moved with their newborn son, Norman Nault Jr., to Independence, Calif., where he worked on the Los Angeles Aqueduct. He was an extra in many movies and mined for gold in the Alabama Hills. He also worked in the Death Valley talc mines.

Harry Morrison of Morrison Knudson Co. hired him to work in Boise, Idaho, building Gowen Field. Morrison later asked him and a buddy to work in either Alaska or the South Pacific, and they decided by tossing a coin, and Nault got assigned to Wake Island.

He built fortifications on Wake and was there when the Japanese attacked right after Pearl Harbor in December 1941. After the first attack he was sworn into the Marines and fought in the Battle of Wake. The Japanese took him prisoner and he spent the next four years in POW camps in Japan and China, where he suffered numerous diseases and beatings. He made three escape attempts.

His wife had been told four times he died and had begun a new life when he returned. They started a sports and fly-tying shop in Augusta, Mont., but the marriage did not survive. He started a pack outfit up the Sun River into the Bob Marshall Wilderness. On one trip, four grizzly bears stalked him and his horse and he had to shoot them while on horseback.

His family said he was "a man of nine lives," having survived throat cancer, two lightning strikes and a bite from a black widow spider.

After his first marriage, he ended up in Las Vegas where he met and married Nancy McKenzie and had two boys, Ted and Don. He drove a taxicab and had such famous passengers as Jack Benny, Mary Livingston and Phil Harris. He worked on the Atomic Energy Commission on the "Big Shot" test site near Mercury, Nev. He also farmed near Cascade, Mont.

After his second marriage failed, he moved to Alaska in the 1950s. He spent the winter in Delta Junction and moved to Seldovia, where he began a long career as a commercial fisherman, fishing for king crab, salmon and scallops. He lived 17 years on Kodiak Island, but quit the winter crab fishery after losing 19 of his friends in one season. He survived the 1964 earthquake in the village of Akhiok on Kodiak Island.

At age 63 he went back to work for Morrison Knudson on the Alaska pipeline, working at Tonsina Camp on the North Slope, eventually retiring with the company. He once calculated he had worked more than 80 jobs.

In 1981 he married Sharon Paul in Anchorage. They traveled the state and enjoyed the outdoors. In the early 1980s they built a house in Homer. They also traveled remote Arizona doing recreational mining and prospecting. He spent his last years at the Fountain of Youth Spa and the remote desert near Niland, Calif., making many new friends.

His family said, "He had a remarkable love for other people and was known to have given away his very last dollar more than once. 'Well, I can always get more,' he would say, 'but this other man can't.' He had many, many friends, and when he would come into town from trapping or fishing he loved to dance and party and be with them. Norman attributed his return to mental health to the recommitting of his life to Christ. He loved Jesus with all his heart."

Mr. Nault actively attended three churches: Grace Bible Fellowship in Homer, Cascade Baptist Church in Cascade, Idaho, and the Interfaith Church at the Fountain of Youth in California. He was a member of the Survivors of Wake, Guam and Cavite, the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor, a life member of the American Ex-Prisoners of War, the Disabled American Veterans and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. He was an active member of a writers group in Homer.

Mr. Nault is survived by his wife, Sharon Nault; his three sons, Norman Nault Jr. of Lakebay, Wash., Ted Nault of Great Falls, Mont., and Dan Nault of Clinton, Mont; grandchildren Natasha Nault of Missoula, Mont., Zachary Nault of Great Falls, Norman Christopher Nault of Grapeview, Wash., Lisa Nault and Jesse Nault, both of Bellevue, Wash.; great-grandchildren Alexander and Mikkayla and Laura Nault, all of Bellevue; and Tatum "Tater Tot" Kamea Lee Nault of Missoula.