Lazy Mountain Children's Home orphans reunite

June 27, 2006

By Amy Schenck

Frontiersman

The Lazy Mountain Children's Home reunion on Saturday resembled a typical gathering with potluck food, name tags and the hum of reminiscence, but the life of those in attendance was not so typical - they grew up on a mountainside in a family of 70 or so people.

From 1947 to 1971, hundreds of children, who had no place else to go, found home at the end of Clark Road in Palmer.

Ester Pederson-Green, now 72, was one of those children. Until she was 18 years old she lived in the Quonset huts that, for a time, housed the Lazy Mountain children.

When Pederson-Green was 6, living in Kenai, her mother died of tuberculosis, a common disease in Alaska at that time. Pederson-Green still recalls her mother's &#8220tiny little arms” in the days before she died.

Pederson-Green's dad, unable to care for six children by himself, looked for an alternative place for the children to live. Pederson-Green moved from foster home to foster home before finally joining her siblings at the Lazy Mountain Children's Home.

&#8220I always loved it (the Lazy Mountain Children's Home). They were so good to me,” Pederson-Green said.

Like many of the girls who grew up at the children's home, Pederson-Green &#8220married one of those soldiers who came up here.” The ceremony was held in Rev. Kenneth and Vivian Hughes' apartment, founders of the Lazy Mountain home. Shortly after the wedding, Pederson-Green moved with her new husband to Alabama, where she still resides.

A chance to reconnect

A year ago, Amy Tarver, who also lived in the Lazy Mountain home, found Pederson-Green's number and called her. After decades of not talking, they joyfully reconnected.

&#8220We said, ‘We're all getting older, we need one more reunion,” Tarver said.

Vosie Heaton, daughter of the Hugheses, heeded this bidding and organized Saturday's gathering.

&#8220This is the first time I've been able to come home and just be with everyone I grew up with,” Tarver said.

At the reunion, Sidney Lindeke, who helped at the Lazy Mountain home until it closed and who still lives nearby on Wolverine Road, meandered down into the basement of the former Lazy Mountain home. The place, now riddled with ping-pong, foosball and air hockey tables, still holds dusty relics.

Lindeke pointed out a chopping block and meat grinder that he once used to prepare meals of moose and caribou. Whenever road kill was reported, the Lazy Mountain Children's Home would get a call. A group would go out and butcher the animal alongside the road.

Life on the mountain

No road brought Kenneth Hughes to see the Lazy Mountain Children's Home building site, because at that time there wasn't one. But it wasn't long before a bulldozer created a road decent enough to haul in, piece by piece, the donated Quonset huts.

By 1947, enough of a structure was in place to bring children from El Nathan, the children's school in Valdez that had been partially burned the year previous.

&#8220This was just mud holes,” Pederson-Green said, referring to the Lazy Mountain site.

&#8220Because we left Valdez, we thought we were coming to a mansion,” Tarver said. &#8220I remember standing there crying ‘What is this? This is no mansion.'”

For five years, the children and staff lived in the Quonset huts while a more permanent home was built. In the winter, they got traces of heat from pot-belly stoves. In the summer, they worked jobs in the community or tended to the fields.

Tarver recalled when the large three-story home was finally finished. Grouped in threes, the children got to pick the paint color for their new rooms. Tarver chose yellow, a color that still accents her Arkansas home today.

After the house was up and running, the next project was a dairy farm. With a herd of about 30 cows, the children's home sold unneeded milk to Matanuska Maid Dairy.

A 1961 fire in the upper floor of the Lazy Mountain house, which caused significant damage, changed the setup of the school.

&#8220It became more of a group of foster homes,” said Ruth Phillips, the daughter of Walter Phillips who ran the Lazy Mountain Children's Home at the time.

By then, foster care was preferred over large group homes, Phillips said.

Laughs and sighs

As the reunion festivities progressed Saturday afternoon, more and more people flowed up Lazy Mountain to join in. Sometimes it took only one glance to recognize former friends, other times it took a brief introduction to produce the &#8220I'll be damned, how are you doing?” moments.

Sipping hot coffee, the former Lazy Mountain residents searched their memories for the names of every person pictured in the old photos floating around the room.

Crescendoing laughs and long sighs intermittently filled the air.

Sophie Bennett Niver, 73, who lives in Flagstaff, Ariz., articulated the prevailing sentiment at the reunion.

&#8220This was the best children's home I ever (lived) in,” she said, adding after a pause, &#8220after being tossed around.”

Contact Amy Schenck at

352-2269 or amy.schenck@ frontiersman.com.