KATHLYN RUTH PIPPEL

Kathlyn Ruth Pippel died in her sleep of heart failure on Feb. 14, 2001, in Tucson, Ariz., one day short of her 84th birthday.

A memorial service will be held Wednesday, Feb. 28, at 3 p.m., at the Palmer Moose Lodge. All of Mrs. Pippel's friends, neighbors and coworkers are invited to celebrate the life the pioneer Alaskan, who called Palmer her home for nearly 60 years.

Kathlyn Ruth Smith was born Feb. 15, 1917, in Royalton, Ill. She moved with her family to Ziegler, a southern Illinois coal mining town, where she grew up. She graduated from Ziegler High School in 1934. She worked several WPA jobs to help support her widowed mother and three younger siblings.

She married Lamont Hamby, in 1941. Seeking more opportunity, they moved to Seattle that year, then arrived in Palmer in 1942. The couple had a son, Bill, who was born in 1945. She worked as the assistant to the director of the Alaska Rural Rehabilitation Corp., the corporation that ran the Matanuska colony. Hamby died of cancer in 1948.

In 1948, while marketing potatoes she had grown, she met Bob Pippel. They married in 1949 and had two sons, Mike and Tony.

Mrs. Pippel opened the first insurance agency in Palmer, working evenings and weekends. In 1949 she became assistant to the director of the new USDA Experiment Station in Palmer, a job she held until her retirement in the 1970s.

Mrs. Pippel went back to work at Pippel Insurance Agency, which her husband, with her after-hours help, had been running since 1951. They sold the agency and retired in 1986, spending their summers in Alaska and winters in Tucson, Ariz.

Mrs. Pippel was very active in the community. At the ARRC, she handled all the land sales and deeds. She volunteered for the Altar Society at St. Michael's Catholic Church and organized and ran their annual bazaar and food booth at the Alaska State Fair. She was a member of the first planning and zoning board in the city of Palmer. She served on the Valley Hospital board in the 1950s.

Mrs. Pippel was always busy. She knitted, crocheted and sewed; she loved to hunt and fish — September moose hunting trips were her favorite times. Gardening, berry-picking, and a summer cabin at Horseshoe Lake filled her time. Mostly, she loved to cook. Nobody ever visited her house without being offered a meal. Visitors would learn to drop by around dinner time.

Her family said: "Kay was an incredibly hard worker. She was ambitious for her children and grandchildren, and strived to provide them with the opportunities she had been denied. She was a voracious reader and a great conversationalist. People were comfortable talking with her, often about things they would not discuss with others. She was a strong, smart, determined, outspoken woman at a time when that was unusual."

She is survived by her husband of 51 years, Robert W. Pippel of Palmer; son, William, and his wife, Phyllis of Tucson; son, Anthony, and his wife, Mimi of Palmer; grandsons, Robert and William of Palmer; and sister, Marian Laughren of Jacksonville Beach, Fla. She was predeceased by her sister, Vivian; brother, Bill; and son, Robert Michael.