Arleen E. McCarver

Arleen Eleanor McCarver, 87, died peacefully in her sleep Sept. 12, 2013, in Cloverdale, Calif., surrounded by family.

Funeral services are 3 p.m., Sept. 19 at Palmer Church of God, 439 E. Arctic St., with burial to follow.

Arleen was born April 5, 1926, in Bismark, N.D., to Herbert and Gladys Ward. At the time of her birth, her parents and brother were living on her grandfather’s extensive wheat ranch. The family moved to the west, first to Portland, Ore., when she was 4 years old in 1930, then to Nampa, Idaho, for six years where they lived on a small farm. Her dad had a job fixing small motors at the hardware store during those years, then was laid off in the Great Depression. The family lived in various locations around Horseshoe Bend, Harris Creek and Meridian, Idaho, before settling in Cambridge, Idaho, where her father purchased a ranch and operated a machinist shop during World War II.

Arleen was the eldest girl in a family of eight children. She helped her mother care for her younger siblings and did a variety of chores on the farms, including milking the goats. As a teenager, she worked outside the home and contributed to the family income. She married Wesley Isgrigg in the late1940s. They moved to an Indian reservation at Klammath Falls, Ore., where she took in foster children and took college courses. Believing she may not be able to have children, she adopted a daughter, Romona. Several years after her marriage, she gave birth to her first child, Esther, and then had seven more children in the next several years. She told her children a story about praying to God to let her have children, and God heard her loud and clear.

Arleen raised her children for a while in Nyssa, Ore., and Payette, Idaho. A talented cook who had worked in several restaurants through the years, she opened her own café in Payette called the Top Hat Café. Her large extended family — her brothers and sisters, dad, nieces and nephews — joined Arleen and her children at the cafe for big holiday meals.

At some point, she sold the Top Hat Café when business slowed during a 1960s recession.

During the building of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, she moved her large family to Alaska, where most of her children were raised.

While working as a cook at Flap Jack Jim’s Restaurant in Anchorage, she also saved money to purchase a 10-acre farm in Palmer. Her dream was to build a house that would be large enough for all of her children. It was a three-story home that over the next 30 or so years served as the gathering place for homecomings for most of her nine children and their children. Judy, her daughter with Down syndrome, remained with her into adulthood, so she always had a “child” at home.

On the farm, she kept a small garden, canned foods, tended chickens, geese, ducks, pigs at times and occasionally a calf. Arleen loved animals of all kinds. She kept much of her farm wildland where raspberries and currants grew, and she liked to gather the berries for making jams and jellies. The Alaska State Fair was hers and Judy’s favorite annual event. Both of them submitted many entries through the years and brought home many ribbons. One of the prizes was for a rosehip jam she made, others for her zucchini pickles and fireweed jelly.

Arleen was a devoted mother and a devout Christian throughout her life. She did many kindnesses for her extensive family, lived close to the land and practiced the old fashioned arts of hand-sewing, making food from scratch and appreciating what nature provided for food. She enjoyed dipnetting for hooligan at Portage and being outdoors for long stretches of time. She also picked up carpentry skills and built or contributed to the ongoing projects of her farmhouse.

In her later years, she decided to keep journals to write down stories from her life. Her children will appreciate this for many years to come.

Arleen was preceded in death by her daughter, Romona; and son, Robert.

Surviving are daughters, Esther Munoz of Seattle, Naomi Klouda of Homer, and Victoria Martineau and Judy Warren of Cloverdale, Calif.; sons, Curtis Isgrigg of Bethel, John Warren of Wasilla and Arthur Warren of Palmer; grandchildren, Sophia, Nicole, Danielle, Chance, Matthew, Joey, Shane, Jonathan, Victoria, Jessica, Nolan, Rosanne, Lance, Porche, Jeremy, Lexi and Mercedes; and six great-grandchildren.