isionary businessman with bold ideas and the passion to make them happen. Astute deal maker with a gift for connecting with people. Ardent community activist with a heart for improving lives. The Dancing Bear: the nickname Alaska villagers affectionately gave to the jovial, former leader of Alaska Commercial Company, or AC, as it is commonly called.

These are just some of the words colleagues and friends used to describe Allan David Gallant, one of the original Alaska Business Publishing founders, who passed away on July 24, 2021 at the age of 87. Though he had not lived in Alaska since 1985, Gallant’s legacy remains strong through the success of the AC stores that continue to enhance the lives of Alaskans throughout the state.

In a way, community activism and the grocery business were in Gallant’s blood. He spent some time in the South advocating for civil rights, particularly economic equality, and worked with the Ford Foundation and National Council for Equal Business Opportunity to promote minority-owned grocery stores throughout underserved communities in the country. He grew up in Baltimore, Maryland working in the family wholesale grocery business operated by his parents—Louis Gallant and Sarah Green Gallant—and founded by his grandfather.

It was this background that made Gallant an ideal person to lead AC, known previously as the Northern Commercial Company and originally as the Russian American Trading Company. Gallant, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and a certified public accountant, was recruited to run AC while consulting with The Commercial Enterprise Development Corporation of Alaska (CEDC), which later changed its name to Alaska Village Initiatives.

At the time, CEDC, a nonprofit entity, was in the process of purchasing the AC stores from the Northern Commercial Company in 1978 with the help of a grant from the US government, according to former AC board member Jerry Liboff. “Part of the deal was hiring a capable, competent manager for the stores,” he recalls. “The feds suggested that we talk to and possibly hire Allan Gallant… Allan thoroughly impressed everybody. His family started the largest wholesale grocery distributor in Maryland, and Allan cut his teeth working for his father’s company and learned the ropes of retail from that experience. So he was well qualified to lead Alaska Commercial Co.”

And lead he did. Gallant had a distinctive, confident style that proved to be a major factor in AC’s growth in Alaska. AC stores, which mainly sold groceries and general merchandise, were the largest bush retail locations in the state then. When Gallant took the helm, there were eleven AC stores in remote places like McGrath, Nome, and Unalakleet and about 180 employees. He quickly added stores in Bethel, Cordova, Dillingham and, by 1985, had doubled the size of the retail operation to twenty-three stores and more than 400 employees.

Despite his huge success with expanding the company, Gallant’s avant-garde approach to business was not always agreeable with the more reserved style of the AC board. In 1985, Gallant was dismissed without cause from his leadership position. After that, he returned to Baltimore, where he was born, and continued exercising his love for retail and community activism. Gallant furthered his work to bring grocery stores to underserved neighborhoods. Ultimately, he became chairman and CEO of Bagels Inc., which operated shops throughout Baltimore and Westminster.

After Gallant relocated to the Lower 48, he and Liboff remained close friends. “When he left AC in the late ‘80s, we kept in contact,” Liboff says. “Every two years or so, I would go see Allan either in Baltimore or in Los Angeles, where he and his wife, Carol, had moved later. I was treated royally over the years.”

Liboff described his long-time friend as a “schmoozer” who loved having one-on-one conversations with people at parties, events, and various other places. One of his strong personality traits, Liboff says, was the ability to connect with respect and interest with anybody—whether it was the governor of Alaska, a customer in an AC store, or a complete stranger in an elevator. “Allan had that quality to be able to listen intently and have an interest in someone—and it radiated out as sincere and meaningful,” he says. “There are very few people I know who can interrelate with people that way.”

Gallant was especially attentive when someone made a suggestion pertaining to the AC stores. For example, in the early ‘80s when a husband and wife he had met in a Bethel AC store recommended placing benches in the windbreak so customers could sit and socialize, Gallant listened—and promptly responded. “Over the next six months to a year, they put benches for people to be able to sit in all the AC stores,” Liboff explains. “It was something very inexpensive and simple, but it was a positive experience for everybody to have those benches. Allan had enough empathy that he realized it was something people wanted and needed.”

To Rex Wilhelm, Gallant served as an important and inspirational mentor. He hired Wilhelm in 1984, enticing him to relocate from Washington state to rural Alaska to work as a grocery manager. Wilhelm, who worked his way up to become store manager, president and CEO, and vice chairman of AC’s board, says Gallant was the driving force behind buying the Northern Commercial Company stores and setting them up to be community-owned. “The whole idea was to create some development in the rural communities that would employ local people,” Wilhelm says. “Allan’s vision was to bring quality products at a lower price and to set up the stores so they would have buying power.”

Food stores fit naturally—and practically—into Gallant’s penchant for community development. “People have to eat, and while we have a subsistence lifestyle in Alaska, there was a need for stores to have a good selection and quality products,” Wilhelm explains.

But it was difficult and expensive to keep products in stock back then, especially fresh produce. Gallant’s inventive use of the bypass mail process significantly reduced transportation costs and made it more feasible to get quality products to rural Alaska.

Gallant was a financial genius who could structure deals that made sense for both sides; he could size people up and knew what their needs were. This allowed him to create win/win deals—although his negotiation skills were not always appreciated. “He could sometimes come across as a bully, but it was only because he was passionate about what he was doing,” Wilhelm says.

That passion was infectious. Gallant had a big heart, Wilhelm says, and he could make people feel excited and passionate about his vision. “There are always those people that just have a vision,” he says. “But very few are good at communicating those visions. Allan’s biggest gift was to see opportunities and getting other people to see the visions.”

Wilhelm adds: “He was a great leader. He had the whole package, and that’s what made him special. He would butt heads with people if he felt he was right—which was probably his undoing. He was one of the founding fathers for what we do in retail in Alaska today.”

Perry Eaton, former CEDC president, remembers Gallant as a man with a mission in life, someone who genuinely believed in helping communities. “He was into diversity before diversity was a term,” says Eaton, referring to Gallant’s civil rights work. “He was a classic Jewish cultural kind of individual who had a desire to reach beyond the family.”

Allan Gallant in Anchorage in 2007 in front of the Alaska Business Publishing Co. offices; he was in town to attend Vern McCorkle’s funeral.

Sam Gallant

Still, when he first met Gallant around 1980, he was skeptical of him. “White people show up to save us on a regular cycle,” says Eaton, an Alaska Native artist born in Kodiak and currently living in Anchorage. “After I took over CEDC, and we sat down together, we became good friends because we have kind of the same mission. We were collaborators and cohorts almost from the beginning.”

Gallant was an entrepreneur with a social goal that encompassed food distribution, which was his obvious forte. He was a guy that got things done. “He focused his Alaska career on growth, often to the detriment of capital expense and maintenance,” Eaton says.

However, Gallant had a tendency to overreach himself, Eaton says. He always had a goal on the horizon that was almost like a quest, and sometimes this got in the way of the results of the day. “I think when he left Alaska, he was not terribly happy,” Eaton recalls. “His parting with AC was sort of strained. I think he was satisfied with his overall achievement, but he hadn’t reached the ultimate goal he had set.”

As part of his community development efforts, Gallant did some consulting work with the Alaska Community Development Corporation (Alaska CDC), a direct provider of housing and energy efficiency programs throughout Alaska. Gallant helped the nonprofit agency evaluate business options to expand its base of housing- and energy-related services in the state. “Allan Gallant was a smart businessman and a good leader,” says Patrick Shiflea, executive director of Alaska CDC. “He knew how to look at the big picture of things and lay out the best plan to move forward.”

Regarding Gallant’s legacy in Alaska, Shiflea says: “Allan Gallant played a vital role in the success of Alaska Commercial Company, which had a tremendous impact on the local communities that were served by Alaska Commercial Company. His leadership helped to build a strong delivery network of products in the local communities.”

Gallant’s legacy in Alaska persists through AC’s positive evolution in the retail industry. In 1992, Alaska Commercial Co. was purchased by The North West Company (NWC) from then-owner The Commercial Enterprise Development Corporation of Alaska. The acquisition by NWC made the combined companies the largest North American rural retailers and one of the largest employers in Alaska.

The impact Gallant had on Alaska is also evidenced by the indelible impressions he made through professional and personal relationships. For example, when David Gottstein met Gallant, he was working as a senior buyer for his father’s grocery business—J.B. Gottstein & Co. Inc.—which supplied the AC stores with merchandise. “Allan was a loving, confident, smart, energetic and go-getting kind of guy,” says Gottstein, who worked closely with him. “He was a force. The grocery business is not a simple business, and the supply chain pieces were vital and complex. Together we were able to develop a glove-and-hand relationship such that we were able to modernize grocery delivery, produce, quality, and selection.”

Gallant had a sense of enthusiasm that was contagious, Gottstein says. “I think he was a well-loved person, and people had respect for his intelligence, energy, and community-minded thinking.”

He also had a love for cookies. So Gottstein made sure to have a box waiting whenever Gallant made frequent business trips to his office. “I always had cookies for him in my drawer,” he says.

Over the years, Gottstein’s professional association with Gallant deepened into an enduring friendship marked by recurring social visits—with the last one happening shortly before Gallant died. “He was a wonderful guy,” Gottstein says. “I will miss him greatly. I think the world is a lesser place without him.”

Liboff concurs. Gallant, an immensely attentive family man, had a lot of positive influence and impact on many people. “He’ll be remembered by everybody who knew him—and many who didn’t but who, unbeknownst to them, are enjoying the fruits of his labor,” he says. “Allan was a very successful businessman who gave his money and time to help people in need. He was one of those unique characters whose light shone all the time.”

Eaton says Gallant was an intellect and a visionary who was always thinking ahead into the future (not just tomorrow, but next month and sometimes years). He was also always effervescent and cheerful—which made him irresistibly likeable. “You could not not like Allan,” Eaton says. “He was goofy, crazy, and fun to be around; I never saw him down.”

“The Dancing Bear, I miss him,” Eaton says. “I miss people like him. The world today could use more Allan Gallants.”