Learning life's lessons

PALMER -- One look at the array of do-it-yourself projects Nancy Puvogel has completed in her home tells you there's more to her than meets the eye. From the hand-painted suns-moons-and-stars border that lines her bathroom walls to the new roof that covers her 6,000-square-foot Palmer home and the re-built three-stall barn on her property, this 5-foot-tall, feisty-blond woman has done it all.

"My dad always said, 'The word "can't" can't be in your vocabulary,'" Puvogel said.

She took her father's words to heart and has spent the better part of her 50 years conquering everything from construction to cancer.

Puvogel married right out of high school. Though money was tight, she and her husband left their families in California and headed to Spokane, Wash., where she studied commercial art at Spokane Falls Community College. She held down two jobs in order to put herself through school. She spent the next 10 years doing freelance work, designing things like T-shirt logos and store-front signs. While she enjoyed that type of work, Puvogel says nothing compared to the feeling of empowerment she had when her husband taught her to swing a hammer.

"I was in a man's world," she said. "I had to prove myself every day. Once I got that feeling, I just kept wanting more and more."

She began doing all types of construction work, from laying foundations to doing finish work. Puvogel says she became known as the "woman who can do all that [man's work]," in the small Kansas town where she and her husband settled. And when her first marriage ended in divorce, she became known as a survivor.

"I was young and naive when we got married. He was an alcoholic. During the last five years that I was with him, he was beating me," Puvogel said.

After her divorce, she started a program for victims of domestic violence. She helped open safe houses for men, women and children in three counties in Kansas.

"I've tried to teach my children to take a bad situation and make it good," Puvogel said.

She says she's proud of the fact that all three of her children from that marriage are successful and have strong families of their own. Chad, her oldest child and her only son, is now 32 and is a second lieutenant in the Marines. He was just 10 years old when the couple divorced. Her oldest daughter, Lynnette, is a 32-year-old florist living in Anchorage. And 28-year-old Ericka is a health-care worker, also living in Anchorage. Between the three children, Puvogel has six grandchildren.

"People say kids from divorced homes have lots of problems. I think it's all in what you instill in them," she said.

She says she's always worked hard to instill confidence in all her children. And, she says, her children have grown up hearing the same words that her father spoke to her: The word "can't" can't be in your vocabulary. She's done more than just recite the words though. She's shown them, time and again, that there is nothing she can't do.

When a car accident claimed the life of her second husband in 1994, she bought an 18-wheel Peterbuilt truck and started driving truck to support her two young daughters from her second marriage and Ericka, the only one of her older children still living at home at the time. And when her in-laws threatened to sue for custody of the youngest girls, Amy and Amanda, Puvogel moved to Tulsa and started working day-labor construction jobs.

"To keep the kids, I had to not be in the truck. So I started swingin' my hammer again," she said.

She continued "swingin' her hammer" until a car accident in 1997 left her with bulging disks in her upper and lower back. When her oldest daughter, Lynnette, gave birth to a 2.9-pound baby boy in Anchorage the following year, Puvogel sold everything she had and moved to Alaska to help her.

"When I thought about everything I'd been through and, now, what she was going through, I just figured I was supposed to be here," she said. "All material things went."

She drove a 20-foot motor home, pulling a pick-up truck with a camper on it, up the Alaska Highway. She worked as a hostess in an Anchorage restaurant and did some construction work, as she tried to build a new life for her young children.

Shortly after arriving in Anchorage, Puvogel was diagnosed first with cervical cancer and then, three months later, with breast cancer. She stopped working for about 18 months and concentrated all her energy on healing.

"I know the Lord will never give me any more than I can handle," she said.

She credits her recovery to her will to survive and to Natural Herbal Healing, a line of herbal products Puvogel now sells from her home in Palmer.

She and her partner Bill, whom she met in 1998, bought the home and 10 acres of land a year ago. The two live there along with Amanda, 15. Amy is a senior in high school and lives with her grandparents in Kansas. Puvogel says the 17-year-old plans to attend Kansas State University in 2004 and is trying to establish residency so she won't have to pay out-of-state tuition. As with her older children, she says she is proud of the choices she sees her younger children making.

"I tell them that, whether they're male or female, they have to get out there and give everyone their best. And they're doing it," she said.

Puvogel continues showing her children how to take a bad situation and make it good. She says that, after she's finished renovating her home, she'd like to build small cabins on her land and open a healing center. She says she feels she can make a difference in the lives of people suffering from the sorts of injuries and illnesses she has suffered.

"We get out of life what we put into it. The more we give, the more we get," she said.