OUR NEIGHBORS: Craftsman harkens back to bygone era

WASILLA — His Apache name is “Running Two Bears.” He acknowledges he should have been born a century or so earlier than 1946. None of this has prevented a Wasilla man from carving his niche here.

“I love to create,” explains Robert Warren “Bear” Kelsey. His mediums include iron, wood and leather. “I think I come by it naturally.”

His grandfather six generations back, according to Kelsey’s wife, Bootsie, who does genealogical research, was an employee of the Hudson’s Bay Co., chartered in 1670 for fur trade. He married into the Cree Nation.

“I’ve always been fascinated with wilderness,” Bear Kelsey said. “For years and years I wanted to go into the wilderness with a sleeping bag and a knife and just do it.”

The native of northwest Montana drove his family in his 1956 Studebaker to Alaska, in concert with his brother Dale in his 1960 Buick station wagon loaded down so heavily that his brother’s four boys had to lay flat on top of the belongings on the long trip up the Alaska Highway.

It was May 1973 and the economy in northeast Washington was bad. The spotted owl protection controversy had shut down the logging industry, and Bear was a logger.

“The only job I could find in the Lower 48 was chipping concrete off used bricks for a penny a brick,” he said.

The Kelseys had heard stories about big money to be made in Alaska, so they packed up their families for the trip. But when the men checked at the employment office in Anchorage, the only job Bear was offered was pumping gas for minimum wage. Discouraged, they started back. But the old Studebaker broke down. The Kelseys ended up in Haines, where Bear got work at a sawmill for three years, before returning to Southcentral, working in Anchorage as a mechanic, millwright and welder. He moved to the Valley in 1987.

Along the way, he learned leather work from his niece’s husband, who’d learned it in prison. He picked up the skill readily, and honed it over the years.

“It was so simple,” Kelsey said. “I fell right into it. I’ve been doing it ever since.”

He makes leather hats and holsters, sheaths and purses. Each is hand-cut, dyed and tooled. For a while he had a shop in Anchorage. That’s where he met Bootsie, several years after his first wife left him. It took two marriage proposals — the second on the phone after Bootsie, who was active-duty military, had transferred out of Alaska — for the two to hook up with a buckskin wedding; they’ve been married 24 years. Bootsie was soon a top-notch muzzleloader shooter and attends Alaska muzzleloader rendezvous with Bear where they can both “step back in time.”

“There’s been many times I thought I was born 150 years too late,” Bear said.

Between them, they have four children, including Bear’s daughter Roberta Adams and son Russell, both of Wasilla, as well as four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Bear said his oldest grandson Jonathon has his own spin on artistry — he’s a Wasilla tattoo artist.

Retired, Bear Kelsey does leather work and makes knifes as a hobby and a sideline, with Two Bears Leathery. He will be at the Alaska Gun Collector Association Show this weekend at Raven Hall at the Alaska State Fairgrounds, and expects to sell his goods at the new Homesteaders Country Store at the corner of Parks Highway and Big Lake Road. He sells items to people all over the world. He made a ticket holster for a bobby in England.

“Sometimes I wonder how they find out about me,” he said.

For Kelsey, it’s just a way to keep busy, as well as to keep that connection with the arts and lore of a bygone era.

He is also a member of the McKinley Mountain Men Muzzleloading Rifle Club and an avid cowboy-action pistol shooter.

He said he is happy to keep his handicrafts as a hobby.

“I don’t want to get too busy,” Kelsey said. “I want to take off and go hunting or fishing if I want to.”

Kelsey admits he’s never held the same job for more than three years at a stretch; he’s always looking for new frontiers.

“I guess more than most men, I’ve fulfilled the dream,” Kelsey said. “I always had to see what’s on the other side of the mountain.”