Hope for life

WASILLA — When its homegrown voice became threatened by head and neck cancer, the Valley showed the best of what it is.

Ken Peltier does not give figures about how much money and other donations that have been raised on his behalf. But that’s not the point.

“The fact is that it’s too much. That’s the bottom line,” he said. “Why raise money for me and not all the other people who get it?

“I am so humbled and thrown back against the wall for what the people have jumped up and done. ‘Thank you’ is a sincere thing, but it seems so small.”

Peltier’s story is similar to many in the Mat-Su. He moved to a farm by Palmer-Fishhook in 1985 and went to Palmer High School. Despite a strong family background in music, he only briefly played trombone with the band and held a few garage sessions with his wrestling buddies.

He graduated from Palmer High four years later and, a self-described outdoors buff, knew college wasn’t right for him.

Peltier applied for an apprenticeship as a heavy-duty mechanic and went to work for Wilder Construction for the next 14 years. During that time, and with the support of his union wages, Peltier developed his deep voice and rock- and blues-inspired country guitar. In 1992, he started playing seriously when a band called Kid Country pulled him out of the crowd at a bar.

“I sat in one night, and they just kept inviting me up to sing after that,” said Peltier. “I think I surprised them. I was just some kid walking in the bar. Everyone want’s to sing, you know.”

He played with Kid Country until 1996 when he started his own band. Just two years later, he was opening for Tim McGraw and Clint Black at the sold-out Sullivan Arena and released his first CD. Just as things were going well, Peltier suffered his first major set back.

That year, Peltier lost his index and middle finger on his right hand working an auger on a hot asphalt plant. Instead of ending his guitar-playing days, losing his two pick fingers was just more motivation for Peltier.

“I became a better guitar player because of it,” said Peltier. “I had to work twice as hard to get back to where I was. I didn’t want to give it up, so I taped my thumb picks to my hand.”

Once he got back to his playing level, The Ken Peltier Band quickly gained regional notoriety.

“Actually, I didn’t want that name,” he said. “When people don’t know you, they see your name on the sign as ‘The Ken Peltier Band,’ it does strike a bit of a ‘This guy’s an egomaniac’ chord, but it’s really more of a business thing than anything else.”

And that’s exactly how Peltier runs his band. With his professionalism, people book his band knowing they are going to be there and be there straight, said Peltier.He credits his business model to the lessons he’s learned in his day job. After a few career changes, he is now back at Wilder running the apprenticeship program he came up through.

“Apprenticeship basically is young people, for the most part, starting their careers making less money than the journeymen, and they earn until they get better. I do that in the band” said Peltier. “I really run two apprenticeships in a way.”

Soon his band was being booked for bars, functions and fundraisers all over the state. While he has toured in the Lower 48, most of his shows remain in Alaska.

“By choice,” Peltier said. “I love Alaska, literally. I love it here.”

Recently, Alaska has had a chance to show that this love goes both ways.

At the highest peak of his musical career, halfway through recording his third CD in Nashville, the singer was diagnosed with head and neck cancer in December of 2008.

“I knew ‘08 was too good to be true,” said Peltier, but far from being defeated, he accepted the disease and is only thinking forward toward treatment and cure.

“It’s like I’ve told everybody that said ‘Why you?’ I’ve said ‘Why not me?’ I’m just another human. I don’t like it, but I’m not going to cry about it,” said Peltier. “The timing wasn’t perfect, but when is a good time to get cancer?”

In the same way he skipped the “Why me?” question, he quickly lost interest in finding the cause. Other people, he said, have tried to pin it on second-hand bar smoke.

“While that probably didn’t help any, I’ve ran an asphalt plant for 10 years. I’ve been a mechanic my whole life welding. Solvent. Gas. All that stuff I’ve breathed doesn’t help,” he said. “But [my doctor] said it really doesn’t matter. We’re going to find it and get rid of it.”

To get rid of the cancer, the doctors removed both tonsils and 47 lymph nodes, leaving a J-shaped scar from the base of his jaw to the top of his chest down the left side of his neck. As soon as that healed, he had all his wisdom teeth and four molars removed to protect against infection.

“They cut all the way out into my shoulder through all the nerves” Peltier said. “My left ear is still numb. The left side of my head is still numb. The top of my shoulder is still numb from all the nerve damage.”

But that was the easy part.

Peltier is now on his third week of radiation and chemotherapy. He said the chemo cycles through his body in an eight-day period. With the constant dry mouth, food and drinks tastes like metal, and the nausea is awful. He has to go in for radiation once a week. By the third week, he’s told, it will really start to take a toll on his neck. Even with this, Peltier is fighting to stay off pain killers, knowing he has a long way to go.

“I want to be alert for my kids,” he said.

Without the drugs, he has relied on his family and friends to get him through. His in-laws bought him two overstuffed, heated recliners, his brother is moving in temporarily, and his friend drives up every week from Soldotna to visit.

“I’m like the commercial you see with the Verizon network guys. That’s me with my family and friends,” he said. “You certainly see who your friends are.”

Among those friends, he cites James and Mary Hastings from the Mat-Su Resort, fellow country singer Hobo Jim, everybody from the fairgrounds and many more.

“Probably when I get back, we’re going to have a free concert. Maybe a big barbecue. I don’t know. We’re going to do something fun. Fun, that’s No. 1. I got to do something to start paying people back, and I probably never will.”

Always the teacher, Peltier is planning on becoming a cancer educator once healed. He’s played functions to raise money for different causes before, but his journey over the past three months has given him a new perspective.

“When I play again,” he said, confident that it is “when” and not “if.”

“When I look someone in the eye that I’m playing a fundraiser for like that, or they’re telling me what they’re going through, I get it.”