Carolyn (Connie) Mahoney

Longtime Alaskan Carolyn (Connie) Mahoney, 71, passed away at her home on Loon Lake July 14, 2015, after a lengthy battle with cancer.

She was born April 20, 1944, at St. John’s Hospital in Fargo, North Dakota. She spent her early years in the Fargo/Moorhead area, moving to LaMoure, North Dakota, in 1956. After graduating from LaMoure High School in 1962, she moved to Seattle, Washington, to find work during the World’s Fair. She began a career in the food and beverage industry, working for three years in the Seattle area.

She came to Alaska with a family friend seeking work that was plentiful after the 1964 earthquake. Her first job in Anchorage was for the new Captain Cook Hotel, and she later worked at the Chef’s Inn, Idle Hour and Sheffield House.

She married Mike Mahoney in 1971 and together they owned The Trade Winds Bar and Motel from 1972 to 1975. They then went on to manage the Porter House for a short time until they moved to the Mat-Su Valley in 1977.

After losing her husband in a plane crash in October 1978, Connie remained in the Valley raising her daughter Maureen. She worked tending bar and feeding the locals at The Rainbow Bar for “Scatter” Edwards for the next 11 years. After The Rainbow was sold, she worked as a cook for Underwater Construction during the 1989 oil spill, then cooking for The Roadside Inn, Silver Fox Inn and Sully’s Sourdough Inn, until finally deciding to go into business for herself opening her own restaurant, Mahoney’s, in Big Lake in April 1996. She operated it nearly 10 years before she retired as a “frequent fryer” on Dec. 31, 2005.

She had a wonderful sense of humor. She loved to tell jokes and pull pranks. She was a fabulous cook. She loved fishing, arts and crafts, gardening, snowmachining, boating and she loved living in Alaska, watching it grow and change over her 50 years here.

She was preceded in death by her husband, Michael J. Mahoney; parents, Bill and Lorraine Glaser; sister, Charlotte Charles; and brothers, Charles and Virgil Glaser.

She is survived by her brother, LeRoy Glaser of Grafton, N.D.; daughter, Maureen Graham (and husband Troy) and her grandson Shawn-Michael of Houston, Alaska; stepson Michael T. Mahoney (wife Silvia) and step-grandchildren Sean and Meghan of Buena Park, California.

A celebration of life will be held at her Loon Lake home at 2 p.m. August 9, 2015, (2149 N Ray Street Wasilla, 99623). Memorial donations can be made to Mat-Su Regional Home Care & Hospice, 950 E Bogard Rd., Ste 132, Wasilla, Alaska, 99654.