She came home. She got her son back. The record of what she did between September 1921 and August 1923 remains, in the archive at Dartmouth and in the accounts built on it, exactly as she left it: her words, her story, her survival.
## The Name on the Grave
Ada Blackjack died on May 29, 1983, at the Pioneer Home in Palmer, Alaska. Her son Billy placed a plaque on her grave at Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery. Nine words: “Heroine — Wrangel Island Expedition 1921-1923.”
The inscription names her correctly and completely. It gives the role she earned, the event that earned it, and the years of its occurrence. It does not say seamstress, or cook, or Female Robinson Crusoe, or sole survivor, or tragic figure, or victim of expeditionary negligence. It says heroine.
The word is Billy’s choice, and it is the right choice. A heroine acts under pressure in service of something larger than herself. Ada Blackjack went to an inadequately equipped expedition for the most ordinary of reasons — to pay for her son’s medical care — and in the execution of that ordinary purpose she did something that demanded and received the full measure of what she was. She is correctly named.
The Alaska Legislature issued its formal citation about a month after her death, acknowledging that her heroism had gone unnoticed. The citation arrived too late for her to read it, which is how many such recognitions work: institutional acknowledgment follows understanding, and understanding follows time, and time is what individuals have too little of and institutions have too much of.