01/29/2006: "Local Connection To UW Med School Endowed Chair"

ig_PPA_Gavora-1 (23k image)
(Pauli, Paul & Alex Gavora)

Paul Gavora is acknowledge as one of the early pioneers of business in Alaska, but in recent years health issues have caused him to be a pioneer of another sort – a participant in an NIH study of vascular surgical procedures – in his case performed by Drs. Alexander Clowes and Carlos Pellegrini of the UW Medicine Department of Surgery. Gavora's successful surgical outcome and interest in the work being performed and developed by surgeons at the UW Medical School gave rise to the idea of funding an endowment for a Chair in Vascular Surgery.

The purpose of a celebration, recently held at the University of Washington Club to honor the Gavora Family, was an object lesson by Paul Gavora in the importance of "giving back". Mr. Gavora, father of Pauli and Alexandra Gavora -long time island residents pictured above - intended for his large family to learn by his example the importance of contributing to the health and welfare of future generations. To that end the University of Washington Medical School held a dinner to thank the Gavora Family for helping to create the Gavora/Shilling Endowed Chair in Vascular Surgery at the UW Medical School. In attendance were Paul Gavora, his wife Donna, their nine children and their spouses, and 13 grandchildren.

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Paul Gavora was an immigrant to this country from the Slovak Republic, and has a unique personal story. In 1948, Gavora was expelled from the 10th grade for questioning the communist ideology that was fast becoming the official ideology of post-war Eastern and Central Europe. Fearing arrest, he decided to escape to the West, but his passage would not be easy. Czechoslovakia had fallen under Soviet domination, and its borders were tightly controlled. Under cover of darkness, Gavora swam across the Danube River and made his way to West Germany where other Czech and Slovak refugees were exiled. He finished high school in West Germany and in 1951 was awarded a scholarship to study in America. Gavora secured passage across the Atlantic by working as a security guard on a United Nations boat carrying Eastern and Central European refugees from communism.

Mr. Gavora did his undergraduate work at Colorado State University, were he met his future wife, Donna Tighe. They married in 1953, and soon after moved to Chicago, where Gavora pursued graduate study in economics at the University of Chicago. By 1958, the territory of Alaska was poised to join the Union, and the University of Alaska was looking for educators to help build the 49th state. Gavora was offered an assistant professorship in economics. With three children and a fourth on the way, Paul and Donna packed up their family and headed for the Last Frontier. But when he reached Fairbanks, the promised professorship failed to materialize. To support his family, Gavora took the first job offered in the newspaper want ads: delivering milk to the residents of Fairbanks.

Then, in 1963, came opportunity. With $7,000 in cash from a mortgage on his home, Gavora bought his first grocery store. In the years that followed, his business continued to grow. In 1969, he opened his first Market Basket, the anchor of what would become Fairbanks' first shopping mall. In the early 1970s, a second Market Basket and a second mall opened. Then it was on to North Pole, and later to Anchorage and as far south as Ketchikan. By 1989, the headline of the Alaska Business Monthly was, "From Milkman to Magnate: Fairbanks' Paul Gavora." That year, Gavora owned three of the five major shopping malls in the Fairbanks area, and three of the six major grocery stores. Alone among Alaska Business Monthly's list of the largest Alaska-owned, Alaska-based businesses, Gavora owned two, Market Basket Inc and Northland Hub.

The story of Paul Gavora's contribution to his community, and now the University of Washington's medical school, is more then the story of a successful entrepreneur. He has been a member of the Alaska State Judicial Council, Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Salvation Army, and President of the University of Alaska Foundation. In 1977, he was the first to receive the Business Leader of the Year Award from the University of Alaska. Gavora is a recipient of the Boy Scouts of Fairbanks' Distinguished Citizen Award, and he has been honored with the Fairbanks Daily New Miner's Public Service Award. He was one of the founders of Youth Football, and the 1975 Chairman of HIPOW, an event benefiting the Catholic schools of Fairbanks. News Miner President Chuck Grey said simply that "Paul Gavora has made Fairbanks a better place to live." The UW endowment gives the additional hope of a better life to those afflicted with vascular disease.