99-year-old returns for visit to ‘my Alaska’

PALMER — Eleanor Jackson, a 99-year-old woman who moved to Alaska by herself when she was 65, returned to the state for a visit the week of June 8.

Jackson grew up in Pennsylvania, near the state’s capital, Harrisburg. She lived in Pennsylvania surrounded by family, but with an eye for adventure and a deep sense of religion, she decided to leave all of her relatives behind and move to Alaska. Jackson was originally inspired to move by her pastor.

“He was talking about people needing the Lord. And they needed places up there to talk about the Lord and I listened,” she said. “He said anybody that feels like maybe they want to do anything, just put up your hand. I found my one hand up in the air.”

Soon after that Jackson received a call from her friends Ruth and Barney Furman, who were already in Alaska working with the church.

“My phone rang and the first words were: ‘Oh Eleanor, we have so much to do, we don’t know what to do, do you know anybody that would want to come?’ So that was the answer, I went,” Jackson said.

In 1981 she traveled up from Pennsylvania in a small Mazda with her daughter and son-in-law. Jackson decided to stay in the Last Frontier, and the Alaska Bible Institute (now an InterAct ministry) on Lazy Mountain was her first home. She experienced a sizeable earthquake the first night she stayed, an event that marked how intimidating it was for Jackson to live alone.

“I’m just getting ready to step in bed, and all of a sudden everything shook. Well, wouldn’t you be scared? Well, I was. I said, ‘lord you just brought me here, you didn’t bring me here to knock me down, did you?’” she remembers.

But Jackson quickly found solace in her work with the church and new friends. She helped with the children’s home at Alaska Bible Institute, and also wrote to students in rural Alaska as part of a correspondence Bible study. Jackson would assign readings and work, in addition to answering any questions, to students in a number of rural locations through the mail. She continued her work with different churches for her entire stay in the state, and also helped at Matanuska Valley Credit Union.

She met her closest friends one day when she visited Lazy Mountain Bible Church. Jackson immediately hit it off with the Schuetter family, especially mother Debora and daughter Rebecca, and ended up moving to a house in the Butte near her new companions.

“We told her we could take care of her if she lived right behind us, so she moved in near us,” Debora said. “Her and Rebecca were really close, they had an almost grandmother-granddaughter relationship.”

That link is ultimately what brought Jackson back to Alaska; Rebecca had to have Jackson at her wedding, which was celebrated the week the nonagenarian visited. Jackson enjoyed Rebecca’s wedding, according to Debora, but also appreciated the potluck open house that was organized for her at InterAct, and the ways that Alaska and the Valley have changed since she left in 2004.

“It looks like it’s someplace else, but it’s nice,” Jackson said. “I’m so glad that some of the new things are here.”

Just as she did when she was 88 in 2004, Jackson left Alaska for Pennsylvania June 11 on an evening flight — though she was reluctant to leave behind the place she calls “my Alaska.”

“Even as we took her to the airport, she was saying that she didn’t want to leave,” Debora said.

Contact Kaden Weaver at 352-2270 or kaden.weaver@frontiersman.com.