PIONEER SPIRIT

PALMER — Norma Jean Benson’s love for travel took her on numerous trips up and down the Alcan Highway and to six continents, but the Valley was home.

An original Matanuska Colonist, Benson was 4 when she moved to the Palmer area from Michigan with parents Joseph and Naomi Loyer as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal colonization project. Like many from what Tom Brokaw dubbed “The Greatest Generation,” Benson was a prime example of the hardy, tough and community-driven folks who settled the Valley, said Al Strawn, CEO for Matanuska Valley Credit Union.

That was one of the messages Strawn delivered Saturday at Benson’s memorial service. She was 79 when she died Nov. 17 from complications due to lung cancer.

“Norma was absolutely very representative of that group,” he said of her generation. “They brought a lot of those Midwest values to Palmer and the Valley, and they still serve us well today.”

Benson’s priorities were “always family first,” he said, but that didn’t stop her from being involved in numerous local groups. She completed a 31-year career at Matanuska Electric Association and was Mantanuska Valley Credit Union board president for three decades. Add time spent on the Alaska State Fair board, Little League board, Pioneers of Alaska, Women of the Moose, the Elks Emblem Club and more, and Benson leaves a legacy that reaches beyond her status as a Colonist.

“She was just a wonderful example of how to live your life,” Strawn said. “She talked a lot about the early days of Palmer when everybody knew everybody, everybody went to church together, and she had this huge sense of community.”

Benson’s strong will and willingness to take charge made her a woman ahead of her time, said daughter Deana Johnson. She was the second of 11 children and the oldest girl, so had the responsibilities that fell to daughters of her era. She also had an independent spirit that inspired her children to know there were no limits, Johnson said.

“That was her role model for me,” she said. “I remember her as just one hell of a woman. She was so out there, always doing things and had a friendly smile. She was a one-man woman, and after my dad died, she kept doing the same things they would do together.

“She could debate with the best of them and she certainly was no pushover, but she would be horrified if I said she was a feminist.”

A new life

Benson was born March, 31, 1931, in Harrisville, Mich., but her life of adventure began at age 4 when her family, the Loyers, traveled to Alaska to settle. She graduated from Palmer High School in 1949 and married Richard R. Benson that same year. They would enjoy 41 years of marriage before his death in 1990.

Perhaps it was early remembrances of that long trip from Michigan to the Last Frontier that sparked Benson’s lifelong love of travel, Johnson said.

“She actually remembered quite a bit (from when) they were on the ship,” she said. “It was a big adventure, and for my grandparents too, who were not very old themselves. One of the most significant things about the actual trip was our family getting the measles and having to be held back.”

Norma and Richard would enjoy two trips to the Orient before 1969, and later took advantage of Johnson’s family discount as an Alaska Airlines employee.

“My father was adventurous too, and before they were married their trips consisted more of Alcan driving trips,” she said. But her mother would always come back to Palmer and was very proud of being a Colonist, her daughter said.

“She’d talk about how it was a unique situation during that whole New Deal,” Johnson said. “My family was not originally on the list. They were able to, at the last minute, be picked up.”

That was because Benson’s father knew creamery work, which was a skill that would come in handy in the new agricultural community.

Community mattered

When Benson was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer in May, she was resolute in continuing to live her life as she always had, said Gerry Keeling, curator of the Colony House Museum and lifelong acquaintance and friend of Benson’s.

Keeling was the first baby born in the new hospital built in the Matanuska Colony and worked with Benson as members and officers with the Palmer Historical Society.

“Norma graduated four years ahead of me,” Keeling said. “I remember her to be an extremely good student at school.”

With the historical society, Benson was instrumental in getting the documentary film “Alaska Far Away” made, Keeling said.

“She was so dependable and devoted to the museum, even after this spring when she was diagnosed,” she said. “We relied on her hugely. After the diagnosis, she was very stalwart and quiet, making the best of every day, never a complaint.”

Which is what Keeling would expect from a Colonist.

“The people of that age and era, in general, had not started life with a lot of assets,” she said. “They had done without much of the comforts of life as we know them today. They dealt with great hardship, but they also had a great deal of can-do attitude and could do as much as possible with little. It would be good if we could re-learn that. She was not one to toot her own horn.”

There are few Pioneers like her grandparents and mother left, said Johnson, which is a shame.

“You’re not going to see a group like this again, especially the children,” she said. “The parents were tough and the children they produced were rugged. I look back on it and picture every time they’d go to town, my grandmother wore a dress, she put on gloves and a hat, and my grandfather always wore a gentleman’s hat and a coat. My mother came from that, and you don’t see that anymore. I don’t think you see that kind of elegance anymore.”

Next generation

Keeling said Benson’s passing “just grieved my soul. She faced this final game with great inner courage and strength. The last time I saw her, she walked up the stairs to do early voting at the borough and I could see she was really having a challenge from the chemo. I did not realize that would be the last time.”

The only Colonists left now are those who were children when they came to the Valley, Keeling said.

Like the daily passing of World War II veterans, the Valley’s Colonists will someday soon all be gone, but that doesn’t mean they, like Benson, won’t leave a lasting legacy.

“There will always be the next generation,” Keeling said. “You might have The Greatest Generation and this generation, but there’s always the next generation.”

Contact Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.