Charlie Vandergaw, the "bear man", is back in the news.

Anchorage could have a new international celebrity: a nearly 70-year-old retired teacher who has spent the past two decades hiding from the public eye in an effort to conceal his intimate love affair with a large gang of black and grizzly bears.

After the existence of Charlie Vandergaw's Susitna Valley bear farm was revealed in the Daily News last spring, the former Dimond High School wrestling coach decided to come clean with his unbelievable story.

British documentary filmmaker Jon Alwen spent 51 days with Vandergaw at the farm last summer. His hourlong documentary, which aired on television in Great Britain two weeks ago, provides an up-close view of Vandergaw's life with a collection of black and brown bears that are treated more like, and sometimes behave more like, family dogs than bears.

Except, of course, when the family dog puts its paws on you they usually aren't on your shoulders, and even if they are, they aren't tipped with four-inch-long, razor-sharp claws and the dog's head doesn't tower three feet above yours.

Alwen filmed a scene like this and others equally shocking. Vandergaw, however, said the young filmmaker "didn't even get the best stuff."

I have written about Charlie Vandergaw before and mentioned that I was student of his almost thirty years ago at Dimond High School. Charlie was my science teacher and a frequent visitor to the weight room where I often hung out after school. Charlie was the wrestling coach, and every year would try to convince me to go out for the team. I was a good athlete but disliked team sports. I did wrestle for another school when I briefly lived with my father during my sophomore year. Charlie never failed to mention that I needed to make amends since I had wrestled for an opposing team. I never did, and he never stopped making me feel guilty about it.

Charlie was a good guy and I really enjoyed his enthusiasm for science when I was in his class. He did these great experiments with electricity in his room and even made a small explosion one day, which as a teenage boy I thought was freaking awesome.

I am actually happy to be given the chance to write about this topic again because the last time I made a mistake in saying that Charlie had an identical twin brother named Glenn who had once been my math teacher. This was something that I and all of my peers thought to be true. But in the comments section of the last post Charlie and Glenn's brother wrote to say that they were not twins though many people believed that they were. He also said that Glenn also spent time at the bear farm as well.

Anyhow I apologize for providing any disinformation, I do so try to get the facts right.

If you are interested in seeing the YouTube video advertising this upcoming documentary you can find that here:


By the way as for the right and wrong of feeding these bears and acclimating them to humans I am going to have to stay agnostic. Growing up in Alaska I have been taught my whole life to keep my garbage cleaned up so that it does not attract bears, and not to feed the moose, or the geese, or any other wild animal I may encounter.

But Charlie is clearly in a different category. He offers a unique opportunity to see bears interacting with each other and him in an environment where the laws of nature seem to have been suspended, allowing the bears to be seen as complex social creatures who can learn and adapt in ways that perhaps was never fully understood before. According to Charlie these bears behave like bears when they leave his property, which seems to serve as a wilderness version of Switzerland, offering an oasis of neutrality for potential combatants and enemies.

Like I said I knew Charlie so I will take him at his word.

Good luck Mr. Vandergaw and thanks for the science lessons, which it is clear you are still providing.