Roll Call Tribute

Mark Adams Sizemore 

February 18, 1951 - June 20, 2024 

Mark Adams Sizemore was born February 18, 1951 in Colorado Springs. His father Bobby was an Air Force colonel with a Haines, AK connection. He had flown missions over “The Hump” in Myanmar during WWII along with Alaska tourism pioneer Chuck West. His mother Evelyn Adams was a homemaker. They moved every few years. He attended school in Japan and in several states before graduating from high school in the Rio Grande Valley near Brownsville, Texas. Afterward, his family headed to Germany and he stayed to work on Gulf of Mexico shrimpers. He started as a “header” on the F/V Blood and Guts and was a captain by the time he left 10 years later to attend the Merchant Marine Academy in Galveston. He graduated in 1975 and from Texas A&M University Galveston in 1979. He sailed the world as a merchant seaman on cargo ships and tankers, working his way up the ranks. Home base was outside Austin, Texas. (He loved the music.) He was married and divorced. After becoming a captain, he worked almost exclusively for Keystone Shipping on crude oil tankers traveling from Valdez to pipelines and refineries in Panama and Washington.

Sizemore wed Joan Arnold in Santa Barbara on Memorial Day weekend in 2000. They had met working on a ship. They moved to Ketchikan, AK for her work piloting in the Inside Passage. She called him from Haines weekly. “It would be a beautiful day here and raining buckets there,” she said. They have been in Haines ever since. Sizemore retired in 2009 and bought a sport fishing boat. He enjoyed a pint of local stout and died just before the Haines Brewery’s 25th anniversary. Friends raised a glass in his honor.

In addition to Joan, Sizemore leaves brother Robert (Carol); sisters Molly and Margaret Sizemore, and numerous nieces and nephews.