ALASKANS HAVE A REPUTATION FOR BEING helpful but one local went out of his way this winter to help people learn how to skate ski.

Kent Peterson, a Skyview High School music teacher, athletic director and skiing coach — a man who would be well within his rights to charge a significant amount of money to imparts his 20 years worth of skiing experience on anyone, instead spent most of January teaching twice-a-week lessons to anyone who wanted to learn.

As he describes it, he was out on a trail around Christmas break and saw a few people struggling on their skate skis. Originally, he offered two days of one-hour instruction but that ballooned into twice a week for most of January before it became apparent that this winter wasn’t going to be conducive for skiing.

For a man who has as much going on as Peterson, the effort to teach 12-15 people per class how to ski must have carved out a lot of time he could have been using for other things.

In fact, Peterson’s Sundays are the only day in the week he’s guaranteed to have off. We applaud Peterson’s willingness to sacrifice so much of his personal time to help the community.

We’re sure his generosity will not going unnoticed and we hope those he spent time teaching will, in turn, lend their talents to someone in need.