Matanuska Colonist's life one of hard work

The death of Bob Pippel is marking the end of an era as the Valley loses one of its few remaining Matanuska Colonists.

Pippel came with his father and mother to Alaska in 1935 as a part of the Matanuska Colony farm endeavor. He died last month at the age of 78 in Tucson, Ariz., following a long illness, but his name and memories live on in Palmer.

A celebration of his life is slated for 3 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 18, at the Palmer Moose Lodge. Everyone is invited and, with Pippel's long history with the Valley, it promises to be a large gathering of relatives and friends remembering the family man, insurance salesman, farmer, hunter and active member of the community.

"My dad was a real stand-up guy. He was hard worker. He was fair and honest. He ran a good, reputable business. He was active in his community," said his son, Tony Pippel, who still lives in Palmer. "There may be people who don't like him, but there can't be very many."

Tony Pippel also describes his father as civic minded and says that in many ways it was his modeled behavior that led Tony to become so active in the community. Tony is a member of the Palmer City Council.

His father lives on in many other aspects of the community as well. Today the Pippel Insurance Agency that he and his wife started still bears his name, and numerous houses that he built still stand firmly in the Valley.

As he grew his business and raised his children, Pippel stayed involved with the community. He was a member of the Palmer Elks Lodge, the Palmer Moose Lodge and the Palmer Kiwanis Club. He was on Palmer's first planning and zoning board, served on the credit union's credit committee, umpired Little League baseball and helped organize St. Michael's ever-popular Slippery Gulch booth at the Alaska State Fair.

In many ways he was a pillar of Palmer, but Bob Pippel's beginnings in Minnesota were much more humble.

"He started from nothing. He grew up dirt poor," his son recalls. "When he was a little kid, he didn't have shoes. They were tenant farmers, living in other people's barns. It was tough times."

So when the federal government offered them their own farm, their own land, in the Last Frontier, Bob Pippel's father jumped at the chance. And during the next five years, the Pippels farmed on property near the corner of the Glenn Highway and Palmer Fishhook Road.

While his dad traveled to promote sales of their farmed goods, Pippel ran the day-to-day operations when he was as young as 11 or 12. Tony said he can remember his own young children asking their grandfather what he did when he was their age, and he would tell the how he blasted cottonwood stumps with dynamite to clear the land and then used horses to pull them out.

"He was an experienced farm manager at the age of 12," Tony said. "He was supervising men in the field."

But this experience and hard work also took its toll, and Tony said he got the impression that his father never had much of a childhood, with little to play or ride bicycles.

Those years as a Matanuska Colonist also brought some small measure of fame to Pippel, however. Tony can recall his father's stories of meeting people such as Will Rogers and ace pilot Wiley Post, who in 1935 died in an airplane crash in Alaska.

During those same years, Pippel also got to know the later-famous Alaska Gov. Ernest Gruening. Gruening was a young man at the time and would come from Anchorage to see how the Matanuska farmers were getting along. As Pippel recalled, Gruening would always seek out the children in the fields first and get the inside scoop before visiting with the adults. In exchange for the information, he would give Pippel and his younger brother each a 50-cent piece.

"That was a fair chunk of change to a kid back then," Tony said.

After five years of striving to make their Matanuska farm thrive, the Pippels moved back Outside in 1940. But the next year, they again returned to Anchorage, and Bob Pippel would call Alaska home for most of the rest of his life.

After graduating as valedictorian from Anchorage High School in 1944, Pippel worked as a carpenter building hangars on Elmendorf Air Force Base. He then served in the Army for two years, time mostly spent in Northway where, according to family, he struggled to keep the fire trucks from freezing.

Next, Pippel returned to work the land, homesteading 80 acres near his parents' farm in Eagle River and operating a hog ranch. According to family, much of downtown Eagle River is now built on that property.

In 1949, Pippel married Kay and entered the insurance business. Kay had started the agency a few years before and Pippel soon discovered his own affinity for the business. He and Kay operated Pippel Insurance Agency until they retired in 1986.

A poker player, reciter of poetry, gardener, fisherman, hunter, singer, loyal friend, generous community member -- his family describes him as always optimistic, "a glass-half-full sort of guy."

Even a man as well respected and upstanding as Bob Pippel has a few sordid tales, though, and who better to share them than an old high school buddy?

Valley resident Gary LaRose went to school with Pippel in the 1930s and also recalls him as a hardworking, nice boy. One of his most vivid memories, though, involves some girls and buckets of cold water.

As high school students, Pippel, LaRose and another friend climbed up a ladder and into the rafters and air vents of the high school gymnasium. Below them, a group of girls was playing basketball. From high above, the boys began sprinkling the cold water on the girls, most likely sparking screams.

As the boys began to climb back down, the high school principal walked into the gymnasium. He caught the other boy first and soon had him over his knee for a whooping.

"Bob was already halfway down the ladder, so he was next," LaRose recalled. But still safely hidden in the ceiling, LaRose was spared the punishment.

"They never did tell that I was up there, too," LaRose said with a laugh.

It seems Pippel was a loyal accomplice, as well as a hard working, civic-minded family man.