Colonist, docent remembers simple life

PALMER — Gerry Keeling says she has a “natural love” for her hometown’s history.

“It’s my own family history,” she said.

Paired with the note-taking nature Keeling says she’s always had, her personal connection to the Colony House Museum — and to the Colony chapter of Valley history — makes her an exceptionally knowledgeable docent. She’ll tell you about the original, bright colors of the walls and why some rooms are sponge-painted; she’ll tell you what some quilts of the time were made of and why; and she’ll name more Matanuska Colonists off the top of her head than the number of extended family members most people can probably recall.

And, for the most part, Keeling can even name which family owned which piece of furniture, as the museum is now home to pieces from different Matanuska Valley Colonists of the Depression era.

But she’ll ask you to use your own noggin on a tour of the museum, too. For example, if the Colonists spent all their time clearing land and building houses that first summer, and couldn’t grow anything during the winter — except children — “What do you think our best crop was?” Keeling asks.

She knows the answer, not because she’s a formally trained historian, but because she was one of those cream-of-the-crop “Colony Kids.”

In 1935, Keeling was the first baby born in Valley’s first hospital, built after an outbreak of measles. The disease and the lack of amenities available when the Colonists arrived in Alaska on former president Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal dime drove some people back to their home states — they hadn’t expected starting over financially, in the middle of the Great Depression, would require pioneering in all other aspects as well.

But for the families who stayed, “just make do” became a popular — and necessary — catchphrase, Keeling said.

“They were serious times but they were can-do times,” she said.

That mentality was largely reflected in the way children played.

“Kids never ran out of things to do,” Keeling said. “You never would’ve said there was nothing to do.”

And in 70 years, that’s changed.

“Nowadays you can have a youngster, they can have their room full of stuff and they’ll think there’s nothing to do,” Keeling said. “God bless those youngsters, they have not learned to use their imagination.”

In Keeling’s time, “you could play with a stick and dust on the ground,” a tin can or a magazine, she said.

Not that everything was hunky dory all the time, for everyone in the Valley of the 1930s.

“I’m sure (life) was (hard) for my parents, but as a typical kid … I wasn’t astute enough to pick up on it,” Keeling said. “I tend to be a half-full glass kind of person.”

And while some of her favorite phrases like “gee willikers” and “hoop-de-doo” and “egads” — which you will probably hear from her at the Colony Days celebration this weekend — have fallen out of style in recent generations, kindness, Keeling said, should not.

“I don’t think it’s not stylish to be courteous,” she said.

To illustrate her point, Keeling literally twisted my arm — she’s still got significant strength — and offered me an invisible gift.

“This is not kindness,” she said.

She released her grip and offered the invisible gift again.

“This is kindness.”

Past, present, future

Over the years Keeling has traveled to her parents’ homeland of Minnesota (though not the specific farm, she said), climbed to the top of the Washington Monument and the Statue of Liberty and experienced Niagara Falls. She spent two years at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks and a few more in Pennsylvania. She remembers her days of being a cheerleader for the Valley’s first football team in 1952, and remains a “sports fanatic” today, she said, though only one of her five children became an athlete.

Keeling made more than one appearance in the 2008 documentary “Alaska Far Away” by Paul Hill and Joan Juster with historian Jim Fox, and has helped host numerous fundraisers and Colony-related events. She’s volunteered for city, borough and state elections, and in 2011 was named the Palmer Citizen of the Year. She no longer has a set volunteer schedule at the museum and gave up her position as the president of the Palmer Historical Society years ago, but it’s hard for her to imagine doing anything else, anywhere else.

“The soul of American lives on in its small towns,” Keeling said, quoting herself from a previous interview. “What better place to visit small-town America than Palmer, Alaska?”

But when tourists — related or unrelated to a Matanuska Colonist — come to visit Palmer and the Colony House, Keeling wants them to feel like they’re not just visiting a small town, but a hometown. Not a museum, but the home of a friend or relative between 1935 and 1945.

“We want you to feel like you’ve taken a step back in time,” she said. “Like someone lives here, they’re just not home right now.”

To learn more about Gerry Keeling and the Colonists, get out and enjoy the Colony Days celebration this weekend. Then check out “Alaska Far Away” from a library near you.

Contact Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.