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Rusty Lancashire backs up the family tractor so her husband Larry can connect it to the disc for their fields. (1954 photo by Bob and Ira Spring for Better Homes & Garden magazine)

Community

The Lancashires: Evolving lives on the evolving Kenai — Part 3

AUTHOR’S NOTE: By March 1948, a month before his 30th birthday, Larry Lancashire had already experienced an eventful…

Larry and Rusty Lancashire (at left) pose in front of a B-24 bomber in the early 1940s with another unidentified couple. Larry was a B-24 co-pilot during World War II. (Photo courtesy of the Lancashire Family Collection)

Community

The Lancashires: Evolving Lives on the Evolving Kenai — Part 2

Author’s note: In 1939, Rusty Tallman, an Illinois woman who had done some modeling and loved parties, married…

[1a—] After doing business in the Kenai Commercial Company store, Rusty Lancashire climbs into family station wagon, with its sagging back bumper, to head for home. (1954 photo by Bob and Ira Spring for Better Homes & Garden magazine)

Community

The Lancashires: Evolving lives on the evolving Kenai — Part 1

In the summer of 1948, while Soldotna homesteader Howard Lee was helping Ridgeway homesteader Larry Lancashire build a…

Clark Fair photo This plaque was created in the 1980s to memorialize persons known to have been buried in Homer Community Cemetery. The plaque was considered necessary because so many of the graves here had lost their markers or had never been marked.

Community

Homer Community Cemetery: Difficulties in filling a public need (Part 2)

AUTHOR’S NOTE: After many years of making do with an absence of an official local burial ground, some…

Clark Fair photo Homer Community Cemetery was first established in 1928 and has been closed to non-reserved burials since the early 1980s.

Community

Homer Community Cemetery: Difficulties in filling a public need (Part 1)

Two important events—one strategic, the other tragic—occurred in the Homer area on Sept. 21, 1928. Although they happened…

Mable Smith pecks away at her typewriter in the Cheechako News office in Ridgeway, circa mid-1960s. (Cheechako News photo)

Community

Don’t stop the presses

The Mable Smith Story — Part 2

Cheechako News photo Mable Smith came into her own as a reporter for the Cheechako News (central Kenai Peninsula) in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Community

Don’t stop the presses

The Mable Smith Story — Part 1

tease

Community

Windy Wagner: Breath of fresh air or just a blowhard? (Part 3)

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The last third of Charles Wagner’s memorable life involved occasional run-ins with the law and, later,…

Photo courtesy of the Knackstedt Collection Charles “Windy” Wagner was an adept gardener who liked sharing his produce and telling stories about its quality.

Community

Windy Wagner: Breath of fresh air or just a blowhard? (Part 2)

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Former longtime Kenai resident Charles Wagner was a memorable character. After living for about a decade…

Windy Wagner enjoyed entertaining company at his home along the Kenai River. (Photo courtesy of the Knackstedt Collection)

Community

Windy Wagner: Breath of fresh air or just a blowhard? (Part 1)

Most folks seemed to enjoy Charles A. Wagner. They appreciated his hospitality and generosity, his stories and good…

Photos courtesy of the Brennan Family Collection This photo of John Floyd King was taken during his U.S. Army service during World War I. Written beneath the photo was “Some soldier, eh!”

Community

The Separate Lives of the Man Who Fell — Part 3

Alec Hardin MacDonald appeared in the census count as a resident of Takotna Village in Interior Alaska

John Floyd King served in the elite Rainbow Division during World War I. By the end of his tenure, he was a machine gunner fighting in France. (Photo courtesy of the Brennan Family Collection)

Community

The Separate Lives of the Man Who Fell — Part 2

John Floyd King disappeared from the record and Doc MacDonald came into being

When Takotna resident Alec MacDonald registered in February 1942 for the military draft, he falsely claimed to have been born in 1900 in Chautauqua County, Kansas.

Community

The Separate Lives of the Man Who Fell — Part 1

Even now, with much more of the truth laid bare, mysteries remain