������app

“It was his fault that we even met,” Jane teased. The conductor of the Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra in 1978, Gordon Wright, was a close friend of the Aspnes’ long before they moved to Alaska.

Gordon “owned a music store and when I showed up to grad school there you had to get all your books and things at the music store,” Jane said of her arrival.

Jane showed up at 9 a.m. The store was in an office building basement with a narrow hallway leading to the door. “Gordon Wright’s Music Store” was lettered onto the glass.

When Jane arrived, nobody was there. She figured they must just be running a few minutes late, so she sat in the hallway and waited. Shortly, a man made his way down the hallway. 

“What, they aren’t open yet?” he said and sat down across from her.

After several minutes of awkward silence they engaged in a little small talk. His name was John Aspnes. 

It turned out Gordon, the proprietor, ate pancakes every morning at his favorite restaurant and didn’t open shop until 10. Little did he know his breakfast ritual played matchmaker. It was love at first pancake -- even if Jane and John were not the ones eating. Forty years of marriage and seven dogs later they still laugh at the happenstance of their meet cute.

“We have always teased Gordon about that,” Jane said as she and John reminisced about the first years of their life together. 

Jane and John Aspnes have been a part of the UAF family since 1978, when they moved to Fairbanks after John accepted a position in the engineering department. Alaska fit their outdoor lifestyle -- backcountry hiking, bird watching and volunteer search and rescue expeditions with their dogs filled their time. 

“We both agree that the outdoors is our home and that our house is our shelter,” Jane said. “The more that we are outside, the happier we are.”

Aside from their love of the outdoors they also have a fierce passion for music. Music has run through their veins since they were young. John grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin. He quickly discovered playing the violin with the Madison Orchestra relieved him of his cow milking duties, and so began his musical journey. Jane grew up in Mason City, Iowa, home to the beloved musical “The Music Man.”  The couple plays myriad instruments, but Jane’s focus is the French horn, while John adores the violin. They have played in the Fairbanks Symphony for over 35 years, joining the year they moved up to the North.

Recently, John and Jane created a new scholarship, J² Scholarships for Polymaths and Creative Leaders. It seeks to help the modern day Renaissance person. The scholarship provides $5,000 per academic year to the recipient and has been allocated to UAF’s Resilience and Adaptation Program (RAP).

RAP is unique and is one of the only of its kind in the world. 

“The Resilience and Adaptation Program is an interdisciplinary training and education program focusing on sustainability in times of rapid change,” according to their website. “The Resilience and Adaptation Program prepares scholars, policy-makers, community leaders, and managers to address issues of sustainability in an integrated fashion.”

For Jane and John, the heterogeneity of thought at UAF tops the institution’s attributes. They have dipped their fingers in many different departments and even across colleges at the university. John functioned as an engineer, Jane in resource management, both of them in the symphony. In their experience, they have been impressed with the support bridging the gaps between the different worlds.