Homer Alaska - News

Family ties brought Betty and Ralph Miller up to Alaska. Betty, daughter of Anchor Point homesteaders Bill and Verna Clendenen and the little sister of Larry Clendenen, had been wanting to be with her family after she and Ralph married in 1951. Larry and his wife Inez Clendenen had moved to Alaska in 1947 and convinced their parents to come up, too.

It was Ralph Miller who made the decision, though.

"Pack up. We're moving. We're going to Alaska," he said one day in 1956.

The Millers, both 77, were born seven days apart in January 1933, in Lebanon, Ore., in the Willamette Valley. They fell in love at age 15 in high school and married June 17, 1951, a year after graduating. Betty went to beauty school in Eugene, Ore., and became a beauty operator. Ralph was a mechanic and driver for a logging company. Their two girls, Cris and Sandy, were born before moving to Alaska.

They drove to Alaska in a 1956 Chevrolet pickup pulling a 36-foot trailer, arriving in Anchorage on April 16, 1956, "with $18 and broke," Ralph said. The Millers had planned to homestead in Anchor Point.

"We saw that as sort of futile," Ralph said. "We thought, 'Let's go to Homer and go to work.'"

Living their first two years in that 36-foot trailer on East End Road, Ralph worked in construction, welding and fishing. Betty set up shop as Arctic House of Beauty in January 1957, first in Harry Feyer's old building on Pioneer Avenue, now called the Pioneer Building, and later in a mini-mall Ralph built that's now the Homer Jean's building. The Millers didn't have running water at the time. Betty would trade baths for haircuts.

Betty and Ralph Miller

"We traded milk at the dairy for haircuts," Betty said. "There was a lot of bartering."

The Millers even bartered their trailer as down payment on "the big house," a Cape Cod home they bought further down East End Road where they lived for 17 years before building their current house on Hopkins Way off East End Road.

Ralph built Barefoot's Welding on the lot that's now WKFL Park. Ralph also built Miller's Welding and Steel on Ocean Drive just before the turn toward the lake. He also drove trucks and heavy equipment. Still does, in fact, for Cliff Shafer.

"I got him his first job when he got to Homer, and now look where he's at," Ralph said of Shafer.

In the early 1960s, Ralph worked at the U.S. Air Force Distant Early Warning radar station on Ohlson Mountain. In later years he also worked for MarkAir, where he did "everything but write tickets," he said.

Betty started collecting antique hair implements, like curling irons, and she'd go to flea markets. Instead of asking for hair implements, she asked for "hair stuff" — and got combs. Thousands of them, eventually. Miller has the largest known collection of combs, at one point about 3,000. For years they ran the Miller Hair Comb Museum and the Miller Museum, a collection of Eskimo artifacts and other ancient and historical treasures.

The biggest change in their lives came when they accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior in 1959. They're longtime members of Glacierview Baptist Church, and went to Bible school from 1963-68. Ralph got a little closer to Jesus when he fell overboard off the F/V Violet Ray while fishing for king crab in lower Cook Inlet. He kicked off his boots and treaded water for 10 minutes while the boat turned around to get him. Gus Weber pulled him out of the water.

"I couldn't breathe and couldn't talk for three days," Ralph said.

"That's when the Lord spoke to his heart," Betty said.

Homer has changed a lot in 53 years, they said. They used to see marmots and snowy owls. Fishing was a lot better in the bay.

"You could get king crab. You could get all kinds of crab, the different kinds of shrimp," Betty said.

What hasn't changed is the erratic weather. They have seen all kinds of weather, from blizzards like this week to tulips growing in January.

"When people say 'we haven't had a summer like this or a winter like this,' we say, 'You haven't lived here long enough,'" Ralph said.

The Millers used to winter in Arizona, but Betty found it hard to travel. People assumed that they would settle in Arizona.

"When you can see the view we can see out our windows, never would I live in Arizona," Betty said.

What keeps them here is family, too: their daughters, Cris Beachy and Sandy Miller, and grandchildren and great-grandchildren — four generations of Millers in all living in Homer.

"We've never been sorry we moved up here in the first place," Ralph said.