When I was running for a seat on the borough assembly in September 2016, friends advised me, “Think of Ray,” referring to Ray Menaker, founder and longtime publisher of the Chilkat Valley News, who served for decades on the Haines Borough Assembly.

Ray was cool, dignified, and smart. He was elected to local office for decades because voters trusted him, even if they didn’t like his politics. I’ve tried to emulate Ray’s behavior, but I don’t have his wisdom, his patience, or his humility.

I can’t be Ray, but I do have his books, four boxes of them that came my way recently when I started asking around about what happened to his personal items. I was curious because I consider Ray a great man, and to understand the greats it helps to know what they were reading.

I was tipped off by “Earth Could Be Fair,” a book of Ray’s I found at our second-hand store a few years ago. Written in 1946 by an acclaimed international newspaper correspondent, it’s a nonfiction account of the lives of tough, bright Dutch schoolboys who grew up to challenge authority, including the Nazis. It’s one of the few books I ever wanted to read twice.

I knew the book was Ray’s because he had affixed a decal printed with his name to its inside cover. Ray had hung onto it and I’m hanging on to it, because great books are like gold to people who attach power to ideas. We don’t let them out of our grasp.

The books in the boxes included what anyone would expect of Ray: Bread-loaf thick anthologies of short stories that Ray read aloud on “Tales and Tunes,” his self-produced show on our public radio station, a collection of all 13 Gilbert & Sullivan operas, a book of haikus, “Tales from the Arabian Nights,” an unabridged dictionary.

There were political and environmental tracts – “50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth,” “The Corporate Planet,” “Who Will Feed China?” – and books about Ray’s apparent political heroes, including Jay Hammond, Paul Robeson and Lincoln Steffens.

One treasure was a copy of “Men of Iron,” a book by Haines author Hjalmar Rutzebeck, which follows Rutzebeck’s literary alter-ago Sven Norman as Svend leaves his Mud Bay homestead and moves with his family to San Francisco to become an ironworker.

Rutzebeck was our town’s most accomplished novelist, an adventure writer whose semi-autobiographical sagas follow a predictable trajectory: A working-class hero gets in a jam and must draw on his wits and brawn to defeat some corruptive force and regain his happiness or the affections of a sweetheart. The books are forgettable, but a hand-written inscription on the title page of “Men of Iron” tipped me to why Ray had kept this copy.

It says: “To my friend and Fellow Worker, Ray Menaker – in memory of one of the best weeks of my life, at the Menaker house and Alaska State Fair in Haines, Aug. 20, 1975. Gratefully, the author, Hjalmar Rutzebeck.”

In conversations, Ray had mentioned getting to know Rutzebeck on that trip to Haines during the fair. Rutzebeck apparently was received well, like a small-town hero returning home. Ray put his picture in the newspaper. In a box of Ray’s papers concerning the Chilkat Valley News, I discovered a pile of pamphlets Rutzebeck had published on how the federal government could eliminate unemployment.

Ray and Rutzebeck shared a common outlook on the world: that it should be kinder to people without means. As a subscriber to that ethos myself, I’ll hang on to “Men of Iron,” as it marks a union between two local greats who worked to help others.

In the meantime, I can’t help but think there are other boxes of Ray’s books I missed, ones containing inspiring accounts like “Earth Could Be Fair.” Helen Mooney, who owned the second-hand store, mentioned to me there were other boxes of Ray’s personal effects, some left out in the weather, which may have been ruined or thrown away.

It was discouraging to hear. The hard truth is that the gold we discover in life may hold little value for those who survive us. Our books and keepsakes are jettisoned in our slipstreams.

But if you find a pile of Ray’s books or papers – in any condition – let me know.