Keeling is Palmer Citizen of the Year

PALMER — Whoever was in charge of keeping the secret that Gerry Keeling was this year’s Citizen of the Year did a bang-up job.

“Boy was that a nice surprise! That was just too lovely,” Keeling said of the honor she received at this year’s Palmer Pride Picnic. “It was very lovely for me because, being born here and totally fond and appreciative of this little town, I couldn’t have been given anything more special.”

Keeling said she had no idea until her name was called and Mayor DeLena Johnson read a proclamation standing alongside her on stage.

If you don’t know Keeling, she’s just about the go-to person for Palmer history. She’s a charter member of the Palmer Historical Society and works at the Colony House Museum.

“I certainly do not claim to remember probably not even half of anything, but I have certain interests that I would probably be a good person to speak to,” Keeling said. “I was born here in November ’35 and probably for about five years I wasn’t smart enough or old enough to remember anything.”

Keeling’s family came to Palmer from Minnesota as part of the Depression-era Matanuska Colony Project. She wasn’t the first child born here, but happens to be the first baby born at the Colony Hospital.

“The joke for many years was that the Valley’s best crop was its children,” she said.

And the Valley apparently felt strongly enough about that to put most of the kids into a parade celebrating the project’s first anniversary.

“They bunched all the children by the year of their birth and each group held a placard,” Keeling said. “There are pictures scattered here and there that are quite humorous.”

Keeling said she’s not quite sure how she became such a historian. She certainly wasn’t trained in the field, but she said she does think she has always had a propensity for it.

“Of the family members I was the one who tended to make notes of where grandmother came from and grandfather and where were their parents from and all of that,” Keeling said. “I’ve always been of that nature. I can’t really say how my life came to be wrapped around the historical society like it is except that I’ve always had an affection for this town.”

Keeling said she is fully aware that other places in the country have modern histories dating back much further than the Depression.

“But it’s our history and it’s the early history and that of rural America that gave so much bone and sinew and spirit to the growing up years of our history,” she said.

She said lots of people come to the museum and go away in tears, thankful to have been given a chance to reconnect with their childhoods.

“That’s a very special thing to be able to present to people,” Keeling said.

She said she doesn’t know what it is about Palmer that breeds such affection in people, herself included. But she said she’s lucky to have grown up in a place that is so dear to her.

“That finding of where your soul rests is a basic need for many people, maybe everybody, I don’t know. And this type of a small town for many people they can see that need or understand it or appreciate it,” Keeling said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.