Valley Life connects to the human side of the news

By J.J. Harrier

Frontiersman

MAT-SU — More than violence and robberies made the news this past year in the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman. The human side of the Valley was featured each week in the Sunday Valley Life section of the newspaper. From community columns to centerpiece features, there was much to remember from 2007.

From the touching (“Relay for Life,” March 6) to the controversial (“Hell House,” Oct. 28), Valley Life delivered a year of laughter, tears, anger and true-life stories of real life people and real situations.

One such memorable story was printed April 15, when Valley Life reported on the closing of a staple in the entertainment scene of Meadow Lakes, Lucky Lisa’s Dead Dog Saloon. Since 1962, the Dead Dog, which had changed names many times over the years, had been the hub for the local social scene with celebrity pictures, a unique tropical fish tank and arguably the best frosty beer in the Valley.

Spring in the Valley brought more stories of people and the great Alaska outdoors.

On the May 6 cover of Valley Life, “Relay For Life” featured the cancer survival and recovery walk held at Wasilla Lake, profiling a community pulling together to show its support for a cause worth fighting for.

In June, Palmer again showed it could party with the best and show off its history at Colony Days. “Let The Good Times Roll” was a lesson on how to run a bed race in front of an entertainment-hungry crowd as members of the Greater Wasilla Chamber of Commerce and Midas rolled down Alaska Street on June 9. That same issue saw a heartfelt goodbye to Hale’s Pony Wheel Ranch, a long-standing favorite destination for kids and adults.

Summer was prime time for “The Dirt Divas,” Sally Koppenberg and Brooke Heppinstall, adding a third diva, Hally Truelove, to the mix. The three perennial experts gave local gardening buffs what they asked for with their popular Sunday column.

Early August took “Homefront” columnist Tiffany Horvath to an Inupiaq village with a handful of Valley kids to check out a beluga whale boneyard and northern Alaska culture. A week later, Valley Life talked to University of Texas at Austin students, who took a break at Mirror Lake in Chugiak on their 70th and last day biking from Texas to Alaska, raising money for cancer research. The 40 students made up the Texas 4,000, where each biker was responsible for raising $4,000 for the trip.

Jaime Rodriguez showed us his “Garden of Eden” before summer’s end and warm weddings took up much Valley Life space as well in August.

September was all about the Alaska State Fair, as the Frontiersman celebrated 60 years as the local news source in the Valley.

“Fe Fi Farm Fun” featured kids at the fair learning the importance of making good, healthy eating choices through puppetry while adults chipped in to help 4-H youth sell livestock at the farm exhibit. California’s Powerhouse dancers took the stage to “Tear Down the House,” Ron Durheim went scuba diving with the physically challenged and stay-at-home dads rocked the house. In Palmer, Cub and Boy Scouts gathered together to test their endurance and dedication to Scouting for a Colonial-style weekend retreat in a feature headlined “For Life! For Liberty!”

In what turned out to be the most commented story ever on the Frontiersman Web site, www.frontiersman.com, surfaced in October with a story about “Hell House,” a Wasilla church’s haunted house depicting the evils of the world. Daniel Bracken, pastor at King Chapel, said his church’s Hell House was meant to show youth the divine judgments that await unrepentant sinners and the torments awaiting the damned in Hell.

“Hell House is not a haunted house, but rather a real-world display of the world today,” Bracken said. “This is a guided tour of real-life situations aimed at exposing the real evil in America.”

More recently, Valley Life visited a local couple that brought oak to the cabin building community in “Oakey-Dokey,” a local dancer brought her “Dance Fever” to classrooms in the Valley and the newspaper helped St. John’s Lutheran Church in Palmer mark its 70th anniversary with a story that illuminated tradition in the Valley.

Readers also visited local war heroes in “With Honor” and then wrapped a lot of shoe boxes for Operation Christmas Child (OCC) in “Boxes of Joy.”

“We got a lot of calls from many people after the story ran and are planning already for next year,” said Dianna Boucher, Wasilla resident and coordinator for OCC. More than 1,000 boxes of toys were collected locally for children across the United States.

Horvath, who writes each week about life as a mother and the wife of a deployed soldier, saw her husband finally return home in December after an extended tour in Iraq, making “Homefront” still one of the most popular features of Valley Life.

As the new year begins, look to the Sunday Valley Life features to keep in touch with the human side of the news.

Contact J.J. Harrier at valleylife@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.