Cupid's finest

Couple set to mark 60 years together

February 14, 2006

DAWN DE BUSK\Frontiersman reporter

PALMER - Thirty-year Valley resident Jack Straayer remembers when he first met his future wife, Gina, at the Grand Rapids, Mich., high school they both attended prior to World War II.

&#8220I was only 15 when I met Gina. I liked her height - she was shorter than I was. Not many girls were. She's still shorter than I am. She's been awfully good to me all my life,” Jack said.

Throughout their years of marriage, which will total 60 on April 6, Jack has presented Gina with gifts of jewelry. With his silversmithing skills, many of those gifts were handmade.

&#8220She usually gets a ring or something. Never a new dishwasher or washing machine, she'd throw me out of the house,” Jack said.

One year, Gina surprised Jack and purchased a jewelry store for him. She placed all his hand-crafted items in the store as merchandise, and customers purchased everything on grand opening week, he said. They hired two apprentices and their daughter, who put their noses to the grindstone and created new items to put on the store shelves.

This Valentine's Day, the couple doesn't plan to break

from their routine. Gina will go swimming at the Palmer pool, as she does every Tuesday night.

&#8220We don't make much of those kinds of holidays. We give each other gifts whenever we want,” Gina said.

Their romantic get-away and chance to slip away from Alaska's spring breakup is a few months away.

The couple just received their itinerary for their 60th wedding anniversary celebrations - a trip to San Luis Obispo, Calif., which will include relaxing at a beach house nearby, touring the area, and sports fishing which they both enjoy.

After almost 60 years of marriage, two daughters and two sons, nine grandkids and one great-grandchild, Jack said one of the secrets of a long marriage is getting to know the other person first.

As high school sweethearts, their dates included going to the soda shop or watching the latest movie at the theater. Later experiences in life, such as taking care of a wilderness lodge near Lake Iliamna during the winters, would bring the couple even closer.

Jack and Gina knew each other for more than half a decade before they tied the knot.

&#8220We didn't even consider getting married before the war because we were so young,” Gina said.

He was 19 and she was 21 when they walked down the aisle.

&#8220It seemed like for the first 25 years we were raising family, and pretty much went separate ways, staying busy,” Gina said.

&#8220We came to Alaska in 1976, and started spending time together,” she said.

At first, the Straayers lived in Anchorage and managed an apartment complex, but one night Jack decided they weren't living their Alaska dream, so they answered an advertisement for lodge-sitting during the winter. The lodge was located on the Kvijak River near Lake Iliamna, and the commitment was from October until Mothers' Day in May.

Did their newfound remote lifestyle bring them closer?

Gina said it did.

&#8220You couldn't get away from each other. So we had to solve any differences. It was real good to have just the two of us,” she said.

Jack agreed.

&#8220When we lived in that little bitty cabin, we were bound to be closer. Everywhere I looked, I saw Gina,” he said, adding that the lodge wasn't completely built until a few years later.

At night, they played gin rummy or read books by gas lantern. Jack rigged a bread-baking oven out of tin, and placed it on their wood stove. Gina baked loaves almost daily in addition to the occasional lasagna. They harvested their own meat: snowshoe rabbit, caribou, porcupine and lynx. He learned to trap and tan hides with alder bark. Later, she took classes on skin sewing and beading, and created elaborate slippers.

&#8220In winter, the river was like a highway, with snowmachines and trucks and four-wheelers,” Gina said.

Jack wrote &#8220free coffee” in the snow on the riverbank and soon Alaska Natives traveling between villages stopped in for hot joe and Gina's homemade doughnuts.

They enjoyed it so much that they returned for seven more winters. As they both approached their sixth decade of living, their daily existence meshed together, especially since during the periods prior to the river freezing and during the thaw they didn't see anyone, Gina said.

Their grown children, whom they'd left behind in Michigan, had gravitated to Alaska, and the Straayers spent the summer driving a motor home across the state, visiting kids and grandkids. Meanwhile, they were storing their possessions at the home of their son, Jim, who was living in the Valley, and decided it was time to settle down in one place. In 1988, the market crash left inexpensive homes available, and the Straayer purchased a house near Valley Hospital.

Back in civilization, Gina volunteered for the Palmer Senior Citizens' Center and now works part time as a receptionist there.

&#8220I worked in the morning and he had the house. Then, in the afternoon he volunteered at Bishop's Attic. We had our evenings together,” Gina said.

Jack doesn't volunteer at the thrift store anymore, but he keeps busy - he collects copper teapots, wooden carvings and Alaska Native baskets, and he paints.

He said he does the dishes, too, but Gina clarified that he only rinses them and loads them into the dishwasher.

&#8220I always have the last word,” Jack said. &#8220It's ‘Yes, dear.'”

Contact Dawn De Busk at 352-2252 or dawn.debusk@

frontiersman.com.