Retired educator nestles back into the Valley life

March 4, 2005

Neighbor/BOB MARTINSON/Frontiersman reporter

She speaks with certainty and distinction. Her friendly eyes tell you this woman has a lot of history. There is a commanding presence put forth from this slight, 87-year-old woman that tells you she could still take on any college classroom and make students sit up and pay attention.

This pioneer educator, Dr. Betty Boyd Beu, will be 88 in May. Her soft voice speaks from worldly experience, of being one of the founding educators in the University of Alaska's system as it began in Anchorage.

Boyd-Beu began her career as an educator and never quit. She actually sounds as if she feels guilt over retiring from Mat-Su College two years ago at the coaxing of her second husband, Edwin Beu Jr.

Born in Fresno, Calif., on May 4, 1917, she grew up there and began classes at Fresno State College for more than a year. The Great Depression hit and Boyd-Beu had to leave school to make some money.

"I had to find employment to make some money to pay some more tuition, but instead, I took a civil service exam and got sent to Washington, D.C., with the Army Air Corps' A-3 training session … that was in September of 1941 and I worked there for about two years," she said. "Then I got the urge to take an overseas assignment and there was an opening for an educational advisor at Kinley Air Force Base in Bermuda, so I applied and got it and went to Bermuda for about 18 months and then there was an opening at Hickam Air Force Base in Honolulu, so I applied, got the job and moved there."

Boyd-Beu finally took some time off because she had accumulated 120 days of leave time and had to use it or lose it, so she went to go to her sister's wedding in San Francisco.

There, she met her first husband, Keith, who was also in the service with the Army. The two had a whirlwind romance and got married. He was sent to Fort Richardson for duty and Boyd-Beu decided to go along after she found an Alaska job as a troop information education officer at Elmendorf.

Only one or two of these positions were available at each base and Boyd-Beu felt lucky to have landed a job, as she was usually in competition with men.

The couple decided to come up the Alaska-Canada Highway in the late summer of 1945.

"We could have come by military aircraft, but he liked the frontier idea and we decided we would like to see a lot of Canada and the new highway," she said.

The Alcan was constructed during World War II, and was still a muddy, challenging road to negotiate.

They found a couple of men who were also headed for Alaska from San Francisco and the four of them took off in a 1942 Chrysler station wagon.

"Keith said, 'Let's go with these guys, it's only two hundred bucks,' so we drove through Oregon, Idaho. It was dusty and rocky and you name it, and these guys had so much gear with them, it was really congested in the car with all their tools. When we got up around Fort St. John, B.C., we broke an axle on the car, and luckily, there was a military outpost there and these military guys just took the whole bunch of us and just took care of us."

The axle was repaired and they continued on their journey. They had three flat tires in one day with that heavy load and Boyd-Beu said it was a very memorable trip. She still has pictures from it.

Once in Alaska, her husband was determined to own a chunk of land and qualified for a special lottery, which was first available to veterans, for 40-acre homesteads in Alaska.

"Keith was there on the steps of the building waiting for them to open and got his name in first and won a homestead property," Boyd-Beu said.

In 1950, he was awarded a patent on the property, situated on the south shore of Lake Lucille in Wasilla, which Boyd-Beu's family still owns. The cabin that once was their homestead was burned as a donation to the fire department for training purposes.

"There is still one little remnant from those days," Boyd-Beu said. "Our tool shed that we kept all of our stuff in is still there, our daughter was sentimental about keeping that, but the roof has blown off."

When they lived in the cabin, the couple would bring in all the large staples for winter, as soon as the lake froze. The cabin was across from the Hallea Lodge, which is where the Lake Lucille Best Western Hotel now stands.

Boyd-Beu said her main job responsibilities at Fort Richardson and Elmendorf were to enforce the U.S. Armed Forces Institute programs, which was the correspondence method of study for those in the military who had not completed high school or who wanted to start college-level work.

In addition, the institute offered the general-equivalency diploma test for soldiers who quit school to enter the service and then discovered they needed a high school equivalency certificate to be able to qualify for the service. This became her niche.

Boyd-Beu was able to check the files of each soldier to find out who was missing the required educational papers, and bring them in for the required classes.

She gained approval from the territorial education department director so they could bring college-level courses onto the base in the spring semester of 1950. Boyd-Beu coordinated programs through the University of Alaska in Fairbanks and Fort Richardson to teach the soldiers. This was when the U. of A. Goose Lake Campus began, and that was the start of today's University of Alaska-Anchorage.

One of Boyd-Beu's first UAA professors hired on her staff was a young Nick Begich Sr., who taught all the government and political science classes on the base and went on to become a Alaska congressman.

Begich, father of Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, died in a mysterious plane crash. Boyd-Beu said she ran into Mark Begich at a luncheon and told him, "Your dad used to teach for me and I knew you when you were in diapers."

She had 55 students enrolled in 1950 and when she left for Shreveport, La., in 1961, Boyd-Beu had more than 1,200 students enrolled.

In Shreveport, she received another military transfer, to Tindall Air Force Base in Panama City, Fla., from 1968 to 1973, before retiring with more than 32 years of military service. She received her doctorate degree in 1980 in California.

Boyd-Beu's daughter, Kathleen, eventually coaxed her back to Wasilla.

After returning to Alaska, Boyd-Beu began working at the state human resources' adult learning center in Wasilla, on Knik-Goose Bay Road, helping adults get their GEDs. She then taught at Mat-Su College until she was 85, just two years ago.

Boyd-Beu and her husband keep busy and spend most of their time traveling around the globe.

This week she spoke at the Anchorage Senior Center as part of Fur Rendezvous festivities, on the subject of pioneer homesteading in Alaska.