Familiar Face-Art Carney

June 3, 2007

By JJ Harrier

Frontiersman

Art Carney is an old loner, of sorts.

At the Teeland's Bistro in Wasilla, Carney orders a Philly steak sandwich and starts carefully choosing his words, responding with delicate precision. For you see, Art Carney is also a stage actor. Even though becoming a thespian was not his elected career choice, it is evident he admires the arts by the way he tells his life story: dramatic, captivating and extremely precise.

Art's real name is Wayne Arthur Carney. He immediately confesses the story of how he got the name he uses today. When Wayne was 6 months old, his 18-month-old brother stepped on a rusty nail and fell ill. In the hospital, Wayne's brother frequently yelled out his little brother's name before passing away soon after. His mother couldn't bear the name ever being uttered again, and so he has been called Art ever since.

&#8220My mother was a good person, but she had her problems,” Carney admitted.

Born in New Lexington, Ohio, in 1935, Carney was raised as the eighth child out of 10 and was the youngest male.

&#8220We were Catholic,” he laughed.

New Lexington at that time was considered the cornerstone of small-town America during the 1930s. Coal mines and hillside farms stretched across its landscape and Carney remembers that &#8220not a whole lot happened” growing up.

Feeling like something was missing in his life, Art began a life-long journey to discover what his greater purpose was. His older brother had become a priest at a local church in Indiana and Carney was &#8220advised” to follow suit.

&#8220My mother called all the shots in our house,” Carney said. &#8220She had hopes I'd be just like my brother, and in reality I really didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. So I decided to just start by leaving home as soon as I graduated high school.”

Trying to still plant the biblical seed into his life, Carney's mother got him a job at St. Mary-of-the-Woods College in Indiana.

&#8220It's a nunnery,” he said with a grin. &#8220I remember once a day the nuns would sit in these chairs outside in a circle and giggle and cackle to each other. It was funny because I guess I envisioned them taking this huge vow of silence for the rest of their lives, and here they were being human like you and I.”

Though he only had the part-time job for a few months before being let go, Carney recalls most of the jobs he had for the early part of his teenage years - from boiler fireman, chauffeur to an electrician's helper- ended abruptly and he was again off on another search to find his calling.

But he had reason to be concerned of his wayward lifestyle: Art Carney was a drinker.

&#8220It was causing all kinds of problems, and I was getting fired from all these jobs, mostly for not even showing up,” he said. &#8220Problem was I never really saw how bad it was affecting everything around me.”

Carney soon packed up his bags and went to live with a cousin in Chicago, a decision that angered his mother. He worked as an aluminum caster in Elmhurst, a suburb of Chicago. There he created more chaos for himself, and his drinking problem increased.

In 1953, Carney's older brother, Dale, had moved to Alaska to homestead in the Mat-Su area and decided to drag his irresponsible little brother up to &#8220make a man out of him.” Carney was unsure what to expect of the Last Frontier. He was forced to take odd jobs with little pay or potential.

Eventually Carney did find a place he enjoyed working: the Matanuska Experimental Farm in Palmer, researching sustainable agriculture, land reclamation and other environmental issues. After six months, he was on the go once more.

&#8220So here I was, working on a great farm, in 20-below-zero weather, and I'm in an area with the most snowfall on record for that year, and I'm unhappy,” he said. &#8220All I could really think about was how much I was missing women! At least that's what I was telling myself. Truth was I was drinking so much I was really afraid I'd end up dead in the snowbank.”

Carney quickly moved back to Ohio, got a job at a fiberglass factory and met Wanda, his first wife, at a bar in Bremen, where he married her in 1958.

&#8220It was love at first sight. It really was.”

The kids came quickly - six total - and the drinking problem intensified. Carney increasingly missed work and Wanda got a job at a local water company, all the while their marriage was suffering under the shadow of alcohol.

&#8220I was a mess,” Carney said. &#8220I would come home with glass fibers in my fingers from the factory, covered in oil and very tired, and meanwhile we had these kids who needed attention, which was very hard to do.”

Carney decided he was going to quit his job (which he lost after failing to report to work during a union strike) and be a stay-at-home dad. In 1962, he finally quit drinking for good and began a spiritual journey that, unbeknownst to him, would take another portion of his life to finish.

Carney worked well under the conditions of House Dad for a while, but slowly realized he was a product of the 1950s mentality, where he believed a woman should ultimately be home with her kids and tending to domestic affairs. Tensions grew, and the two finally separated in 1971.

&#8220It was really a dysfunctional situation. At first I was very happy with our decision to end this miserable relationship because we hadn't been speaking to each other for quite some time,” he said. &#8220But then reality kicked in and I was in complete denial, dreading being alone. So I tried to save the marriage, but it failed. When I left I cried like a baby for weeks - alone, of course, away from everybody.”

On Valentine's Day, 1972, Carney met his second wife, Betsy, a recently divorced preacher's wife, at a singles dance in Ohio.

&#8220She was a fairly liberated girl, being Baptist and all. She was kind of prissy, but I started going to church to harass her, and before you knew it, we were married.”

The bliss was short-lived, and the two divorced in 1974.

Carney's life to that point had produced little and carried no purpose, in his opinion, and he claims that his destiny to determine this course had always involved God. Maybe, he thought, that was the problem, that God's will was not his will. So he made a decision to abandon all beliefs he had about God and become agnostic. It was a mid-life crisis that would last 20 years.

In 1976, Carney asked his aunt if he could live with her in order to start over anew in Alaska, once more. She agreed, and Carney quickly sold all of his belongings and made the drive up to Wasilla.

&#8220I had a tool box , some clothes and my truck. Nothing else.”

A year later, Carney returned to the place he knew he had enjoyed 14 years earlier: the Matanuska Experimental Farm in Palmer. Living in a camper and later farm apartments, Carney spent many years improving the farm's researching conditions and honing his green thumb.

Happy at work, Carney also begun trying his hand at acting in local stage productions at the then Valley Performing Arts Center in Wasilla. He has since played numerous roles in theater he says are designed just for him.

He also began a 16-year stint serving on the Mat-Su Council on Alcoholism, hoping to give back to the community what was so freely given to him back in Ohio.

With things looking up, Carney still felt something was still missing from his life and was unable to let it go.

He wanted a wife.

He had tried numerous unsuccessful attempts to get Betsy back, failing on all counts, and gave up at dating the local singles scene. He finally surrendered and decided that it just wasn't meant to be. He began his new life as a loner in solitary comfort.

&#8220Once in a while I feel like I'm missing out on something, but quickly realize I'm not. I am happy being single today.”

Today, Carney owns 5 acres of land near Wasilla where he cultivates his own vegetables. He has been retired from the Matanuska Experimental Farm for 20 years.

In 1985, qualifying for early retirement, Carney and a couple other friends decided to raise and sell chickens, goats and gardening space to interested locals.

Finally, Carney said, he felt like he had arrived.

&#8220When I turned 62, something amazing happened,” Carney noted. &#8220I was walking along this river bed by my home and it was like all of a sudden, out of the blue, everything in the world just made sense. I had this great epiphany of sorts. I suddenly felt uplifted and free, similar to the feeling I got when I quit drinking, and there I was, again believing in God and believing I now had a purpose. It was amazing.”

Carney believes, and has been researching, that human intelligence and emotions are characteristics of space and matter, obeying the laws of physics.

&#8220I don't want to sound crazy, so I won't elaborate,” he said. &#8220But I have a higher purpose today, and that's what I had been looking for.”

Carney and his four sons reside in the area and he makes a yearly trip to Ohio to visit his family. He spends most of his summer days tending to his chickens and gardens and enjoys his farm home enough to never leave it again.

When Carney's teenage granddaughter committed suicide in 2001, he was overcome with grief. Using the opportunity to inspire him to increase his spiritual growth and document this process, Carney has begun developing a novella about his spiritual findings.

In 2002, Carney's 96-year-old mother died, a period Carney noted as again a difficult and sad one.

&#8220The very last thing she asked me was if I was going to church yet, and when I told her ‘no,' she was very saddened. She fought it to the end,” he smiled.

Believing change is a good thing for the Valley, Carney takes it easy and watches growth consume the surrounding communities he once considered good to him.

&#8220Change is a part of life,” he said. &#8220I'm not complaining, and I think everyone shouldn't be either. Being true to yourself is all that matters and finding out what you are and who you want to be, that's what change is all about.”

Contact J.J. Harrier at

352-2270 or valleylife@

frontiersman.com