Valley ‘kids’ compile local history project

WASILLA — What started as an idea to celebrate the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman’s 65th anniversary culminated recently in a community history project brought to life by a group of Colony and Millennium “kids.”

Wasilla Middle School teacher Emily Forstner said she didn’t know what to expect when she began working to bring her seventh-grade students together with a group of Mat-Su old-timers.

“Throughout the month of September, my kids learned to take notes from stories, made connections with stories, wrote summaries and even told their own stories,” she said.

After school was out, Forstner said she made phone calls and set up meetings with the “Colony Kids” — now in their 70s and older — and other longtime residents to put together a list of important local events from the Frontiersman’s archives.

Forstner said she wasn’t sure where the idea would lead when she began working to bring together these two key Valley demographic groups.

“When Oct. 17 finally arrived, I was more than a little nervous,” she said in a story she wrote about the event for her students.

Based on the seniors’ list of important events, Forstner borrowed 20 bound archive volumes from past years’ Frontiersman newspapers and placed them at several tables in the Wasilla Middle School library.

Longtime Valley residents — including Pat Lawton, Evelyn Mielke, Bob and Ruby Church, Wayne Bouwens, Ben Compton, Maraley McMichael, Ray Carter, Vinnie Vinette and Barbara Hecker — worked with Forstner and her students to put together a list of highlights from the Valley’s last 65 years.

“I was ready for the awkward silence to begin,” Forstner wrote.

But she wasn’t prepared for anything that might go awry.

“However, I wasn’t ready for the steady buzz of conversation or the lengthy notes taken by my students or the smiles and oohs and aahs. I wasn’t ready for the learning I saw taking place around old newspapers telling the story of how it used to be,” she said. “I was awed.”

Oct. 17, the Colony and Millennium kids used the Frontiersman’s archives to look up coverage from historic events like the 1964 earthquake and 1994 when Tommy Moe won Olympic gold.

For longtime residents like Mielke, she could trace her life story from high school graduation, to her wedding to the birth of her children in the pages of the Frontiersman. Compton, whose grandmother wrote for the Frontiersman for many years, said he was thrilled to open up an archived volume and see her byline on the page.

Bouwens sat surrounded by a stack of archives and four students eager to hear his stories of life here.

Harlan Horwath plays basketball on the Wasilla Middle School junior varsity team. He said it was interesting to learn more about Moe, the first Alaskan to win Olympic gold.

But there was something about seeing Moe skiing for the gold in a 1994 edition of the Frontiersman that made that page of history come alive for him, he said.

“It was a really cool picture of him,” Horwath said. It was different than seeing the same image though a Google search or something, he said.

Hunter Townsend said Bouwens talked a lot about the history of sports in the Valley, including the Palmer-Wasilla hockey rivalry.

Townsend said Bouwens is a Colony Kid who came to the Valley in 1935 with his parents and the other Colonists.

Horwath said when Bouwens kept going on and on about hockey, he finally asked why.

“He said when you play for the Wasilla team, it is really cool because you’re representing where you live,” Horwath said. “When I play JV basketball, I’m representing Wasilla. That’s what he was saying.”

Christian Sonnier also talked to Bouwens. He said it was interesting to think what Palmer looked like when Bouwens got off the train there as a child.

“It was mostly just trees and a few tents,” Sonnier said. “Palmer today doesn’t look like the Palmer he described.”

A lot has changed in Bouwens’ lifetime, he said.

“Thirty years ago there wasn’t much here,” Sonnier said.

“Now we have the iPhone 5,” Horwath added.

Whitney Briggs and Allina Magbual interviewed Bob and Ruby Church, who were happily surprised to come across the birth announcement for their first child in the Frontiersman’s archives.

The two said this project was interesting and taught them more about their community.

Briggs said she’s used to reading books or watching the Discovery Channel to learn about history. But this was better. “Here, you were actually talking to a person who lived it.”

Magbual said her favorite stories from that day are about a seal that used to chase Bob Church when he’d deliver hay to a local horse ranch and another story about his father who cut off his own ear with a double-sided axe. Far from medical help, his wife — Bob Church’s mother — stitched the ear back on.

Hailey Hotchkiss talked to Mieleke about her memories of the 1964 earthquake. Mieleke said she was in the gym in the borough building at a basketball game when the quake hit.

Hotchkiss said she knew about the earthquake before talking to Mieleke, but didn’t know details like that the damage was mostly in Seward, Anchorage and Valdez.

Josh Godwin and Bryon Knapp talked to Compton about growth in the Mat-Su Borough and the role oil development has had on the region’s population growth.

“The pipeline brought more money and people to the Valley,” Godwin said. “The pipeline defines Alaska.”

Knapp and Godwin said they didn’t know much about the Trans-Alaska Pipeline system that carries oil from the North Slope to Valdez before interviewing Compton.

Compton told the two that for him, progress here was both happy and sad. It was nice, he said, when the Valley was a small, sleepy community and Anchorage was a long drive away over bad roads.

“We were talking to someone who was actually there and they were telling their stories,” Knapp said.

Contact managing editor Heather A. Resz at 352-2268 or heather.resz@frontiersman.com.

1947 to 2012 Mat-Su Valley highlights

1947 Frontiersman’s first edition printed

1948 Wasilla linked to Palmer by telephone

1947-8 Valley Hotel built

1949 Lake George break-up August 22

The 49ers The 49ers

1951 Palmer incorporated with a 3 percent sales tax

Independence Mine closes- after mining close to $6 million in gold

1952 Palmer’s first football team

1953 Grasshoppers infest Butte area

MTA incorporates

First TV stations in Anchorage KTVA, KFIA

1955 342.7 miles of road in Valley (now 1,014 miles)

Palmer High School on South Chugiak (now Palmer Middle

1957 Max Sherrod grows 61-pound cabbage

(138.25 pounds new World Record set in 2012)

1959 Valley population 6,000 (88,000 now)

Alaska becomes a state

1961 First stoplight in Palmer

1962 Alaska Highway completed through Canada

1964 Mat-Su Borough incorporates

Good Friday Earthquake, March 27

Sea Land begins to ship to Alaska year-round

1966 Last Lake George break-up

Anchorage to Palmer highway opens

1967 Iditarod Trail Committee begins

Wasilla Museum opens

1968 Jonesville mine closes

Oil discovered in Prudhoe Bay

1969 Co-op garage burns

1970 Valley starts landfills

UAA started

Parks Highway upgrades

1971 Flooding in Butte and Sutton

Pioneer Home in Palmer opens

Alaska Native Settlement Act

1972 Depot in Palmer opens as community center

Alcantra built

1973 First Iditarod race

Wasilla incorporated as a town

1974 Haul Road completed

11,910 acres harvested in Valley (10,760 acres in 1999- 9,000 of that in hay)

Independence Mine becomes National Historic Place

1976 Valley Green Giants play at Herman Field in Palmer

PFD established

1977 The “Rock” on South Cobb Street flattened

1979 Valley devastated by 100 mph winds, schools closed for six days

1981 Iditarod school fire

1984 Stoplight in Palmer at the Carrs store installed

Palmer gets home mail service

Valley Hospital gets addition

Wasilla earns ‘fastest growing community in America”

1986 Flooding Montana Creek

1990 Golf course opens

1993 200,000 people attend Alaska State Fair

1994 Tommy Moe wins gold in the Olympics

Valley population 50,000

1996 Miller’s Reach Fire

What: The community is invited to an open house at the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman.

When: from 3 to 6 p.m., today.

Where: at our offices at 5751 E. Mayflower Court.

Why: Celebrate our 65th anniversary and be present at 5:30 p.m. for the announcement of the 2012 Mat-Su Good Neighbors.