PIONEER SPIRIT

If the three most important things in business are location, location, location, a close second is recognizing potential.

Acting on that potential is what defined Lee Hartley, the 92-year-old patriarch of one of the Valley’s most prominent businesses and families. Hartley’s Aug. 5 death brought the family together again at their 40-acre Springer system spread — all 50 of them, except for one who has a commitment for military basic training.

Hartley’s life is more than an example of a successful businessman as founder and owner of Hartley Brothers and later the Valley’s first Ford dealership. It’s also a story of achieving the American dream while colonizing the Matanuska Valley with his wife of nearly 70 years, Maralyn.

In fact, if it weren’t for her, there may not have been Hartley Brothers.

“Lee and I were going together and his folks lived at the Butte,” Maralyn said. That courtship took him past the familiar location of Hartley Brothers at the corner of Arctic Avenue and Valley Way.

“He would pass that corner every day and say, ‘What an ideal place for a service station,’” she said.

Lee and Maralyn Vasanoja would marry Oct. 30, 1940, and in 1947, he teamed up with his brothers and father to open Hartley Brothers, a fuel service and repair station in Palmer. It’s a partnership that continues today. The family still owns the property, now a Harley Davidson dealership, with the familiar “Hartley Brothers” on the building.

Although Lee never finished high school and spent time during the Valley’s colonization in 1935 and 1936 digging ditches, being a business owner “was in his blood,” Maralyn said.

“He was just born that way,” she said. “His dad was a businessman, so he was born into that. His dad said if he wasn’t going to finish school he had to work. His dream was to always have a service station.”

As the years went by, Hartley Brothers became a key business in the growth of Palmer, she said.

“I know a lot of kids in Palmer grew up selling gas at the gas station. Lots and lots of them, that was their first job,” she said, adding there was always a humble pride in being part of the town’s progress. “We were just amazed (at the growth), because we grew with it. We helped it grow. Lee never said, ‘I did that, I did this.’ He never bragged about things that happened. It amazes me now (when) driving to Wasilla or even to the hospital.”

Lee went on to build Hartley Motors Inc., the first Ford dealership in the Valley, but sold the dealership to Harold Nye in 1984 after the Ford Corp. continued to pressure him to become bigger than he wanted to be, Maralyn said. The family still runs Hartley Motors, now a Honda dealership.

While the Hartley name is familiar in the Valley, many didn’t know the real Lee Hartley, said his granddaughter, Denise Hubbard.

“A lot of people know him from the business, but he was really, really a family man,” she said. “Grandma and grandpa have 40 acres here on the Springer system they bought in ’61 and a lot of the kids all grew up together here. He was very generous and patient. We all grew up working at the business. It was family run and owned, and they believed in that.”

In fact, in the Hartley family, indoctrination into the business came early. By the age of 5 or 6, children and grandchildren were helping out with whatever they could, including the bookkeeping, Hubbard said.

“As soon as we could count, we were in charge of putting invoices in numerical order and fastening them to organize them,” she said, adding her grandmother was always the final number-cruncher in the organization.

Don’t take things for granted

Lee retired at age 66 and suffered from Alzheimer’s disease before his death. The work ethic of her grandparents is one of the legacies he leaves, Hubbard said.

“The thing that strikes me as an adult now is when you work the whole day, you’re tired,” she said. “These two ran a business that was very successful and still had time to work with a slew of grandchildren.”

It was no accident the family lived on a large spread, she said.

“He would always say you should have enough land to feed your family if everything went crazy,” Hubbard said. “Because they went through the Depression, I think that affected that attitude. That was just engrained in me, so now I live on five acres (in Washington state). … He was a complex man, but he always had time to help people.”

And then there were the quirky quips.

“If someone wasn’t real bright, he would say, ‘Man, oh man, if brains were castor oil, he wouldn’t have enough to physic a piss ant,’” Hubbard recalls, laughing. “And he came up with nicknames for all us kids.”

There’s String Bean, Moose Meat (a moniker reserved for Scott Briggs, who’s now an Alaska State Trooper) and her nickname, Magee.

Even when the Alzheimer’s was affecting him, Lee “was still full of life,” Maralyn said. “He never had a speck of arthritis and even the last 10 days he wanted to go somewhere and make money.”

It’s this last story that brings a chuckle to his wife of nearly seven decades. It was the middle of the night and he apparently got it into his head he could make some money fishing and cutting timber.

“He was pulling me out of the chair and he said, ‘We’re going to go fishing,’” she recalled. “I said, ‘You never asked me to go fishing in my life.’ He changed (focus) and said, ‘We’re going to make lots of money cutting timber.’ And I said, ‘I’m an old lady, I never cut timber in my life and I’m not going to do it now.’”

Aside from wanting to go on a nocturnal fishing and timber cutting run, the couple’s marriage is a testament to old-time values, Hubbard said.

“He treated her like a lady every day,” she said. “She is his lady and he’s a very fine example for the boys in the family. He never took her for granted. He’d say, ‘There’s my sweetie.’ And he always, always, every time, thanked her for every meal she ever cooked. … That’s fuel to keep you going forever.”

A week following Lee’s death, Maralyn admits the reality of the situation is difficult to grasp. One minute your life partner and husband for nearly 70 years is thanking you for the latest meal she cooked, the next he’s gone. She said his death is “very sad,” but that she “has no regrets, none whatsoever” of their life together.

“A lot of people said how could your marriage last so long?” she said. “It’s simple. Never carry a grudge, don’t stay mad. Lee was really good at that, too. He grumbled about some people, but he was himself. Don’t try to be somebody you’re not.”

Maralyn hopes her husband is remembered as someone who made a positive difference for Palmer and the Valley.

“I hope they remember he was a kind man and he always treated people good through his business,” she said. “He was a gentle man, a fun person who loved life. We’ve had a good life here, and all I can say is I’m thankful we had that life together.”

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