Eva Summers

Anchorage resident Eva Joan Summers, 77, died Oct. 2, 2007, in her sleep of a probable stroke at Providence Extended Care Facility.

A funeral service will begin at 5 p.m. Saturday at Valley Funeral Home at 151 E. Herning Drive in Wasilla. Graveside services and burial will be at Roff, Oklahoma at Dohlberg Cemetery.

Summers was born in Enid, Miss., moved to Oklahoma as a teenager and graduated from Roff High School in 1948. She met Larry Summers in 1950 at a dance in Sulphur, Okla., where the band was Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. Their mutual love of music grew and so did their love for each other, and they were married Aug. 13 of that year and moved to Alaska the following spring.

Larry Summers likes to tell how he arrived in Alaska on April Fool’s Day 1951. Joan Summers and her older brother, Vance Reynolds, drove the Alaska Highway and arrived that summer on July 7.

In 1953, the couple left Anchorage and homesteaded five miles west of Wasilla on Wallace Lake. Although they sold the property in 1970, the developer named a street “Summers Drive” in their honor.

They moved back to Anchorage after they began having children. Their first son, Larry, was born in 1954, then Marty in 1955 and daughter Vanessa in 1958. To accommodate a growing family, they added onto the house they built themselves. Joan Summers (who had been a bookkeeper) then became a full-time homemaker.

Nicknamed “Jo-Go” by her family, Summers enjoyed loading up the camper and making annual drives Outside with the kids to visit family and see national parks in the United States and Canada. She lost count of the number of times she had driven the Alaska Highway. In later years, she and Larry had the opportunity to travel extensively in Europe and the Orient.

Summers treasured the time she spent with her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She was always ready to lend an ear and offer her calm encouragement and support to loved ones.

Summers was preceded in death by older brother Vance A. Reynolds, who helped raise her during the war years while her mother worked on P-38 airplanes as a “Rosie the Riveter” and her stepfather fought in Europe.

She is survived by her loving husband, Lawrence L. Summers, of Anchorage; sons Lawrence R. Summers of Yukon, Okla., and Martin F. Summers of Houston, Alaska; daughter Vanessa Joan Summers of Anchorage; granddaughters Candice Nagl and Jessica Sandoval, both of Wasilla, and Caylor Summers of Los Angeles; grandson Martin L. Summers of Houston; great-grandchildren Darius Sandoval, Zander Sandoval, Kiley Nagl and Brian Nagl, all of Wasilla; daughters-in-law Mary Jane Summers of Yukon, Okla., Sally Summers of Houston and Cynthia Simkins of Wasilla; step-grandchildren Forrest and Amy Cooper, both of Houston; and many other family members and friends.