I’ve had a request for some stories about my parents in
Alaska. The Miners are studying Alaska history this year and are looking for
some family stories that happened in Alaska. I’ll begin with my mother:
PHYLLIS MAE ERICKSON LONG KEYPORT
Phyllis was born in Duluth, Minnesota on April 26, 1926. Her
parents are Ben J Erickson and Mary Charlotte Schwartz. She grew up in an area
of Pine County, Minnesota called Groningen. Groningen is in Dell Grove
Township, close to the town of Sandstone.
Phyllis started school when she turned 6 (in April) and
walked at least a mile to school and then home again by herself for two months
until school got out for summer. There were other kids walking the same route,
I’m sure, because once she told me about some boys that would hide on the side
of the road or under a bridge and jump out and scare her when she walked past.
The last week of April and most of May were the only days of first grade she
attended. When she started school again in the fall, she was in the second
grade. She was still so advanced in her learning that she skipped third grade
entirely, so she graduated two years ahead of schedule; she was only 16.
When she got out of school Phyllis went to St
Paul/Minneapolis to live with her aunt, uncle, and cousin, Merl, Cora, and Aldean
Dahl. She got a job as a stenographer there and was very, very good at
shorthand. I don’t remember why she left that job, but at some point, she got a
job at a bank in a small town called Kerrick which is 20 miles NE of Sandstone.
That was far enough away from home to require finding a place to live, so she
roomed with a couple who had little kids. This is when she met her first
serious boyfriend, Ed Keyport. He had a girlfriend, but he dumped her and
started dating Phyllis.
Ed left for the war (WWII) but called Phyllis and asked her
if she would marry him. She declined, because, she said, she was too young and
wanted some adventure in her life. She had always wanted to meet a Mountie, a Canadian
policeman, often written about in romance novels, but she didn’t tell Ed that.
Phyllis loved her job at the bank and the people of Kerrick,
but her boss found out that she was only 16 and had to let her go since she was
too young to be employed full-time. He was as sad to lose her as she was to
have to leave.
A friend told Phyllis about a nursing program at St Luke’s
Hospital in Duluth that she could enter, and it was paid for by the government
because the nurses were used in the war once they graduated. She signed up and
spent the next four years in nurse’s training. The war ended before Phyllis
graduated from nursing school, so she knew she’d be looking for a job when she finished.
One day she was reading an Alaska Magazine and saw an ad for nurses needed at a
hospital in Palmer. She and her friend applied and were hired. They began their
journey north by taking a train to Seattle and then they flew to Anchorage on a
prop jet. When they landed there was no one there to meet them. They waited and
waited and finally took the last bus out to Palmer. The hospital had either forgotten
to send someone or they were busy with an emergency and didn’t have anyone
available.
In 1949 Valley Hospital was made up of 2 Quonset huts side
by side. A lady named Claire Kopperud was the head nurse. Another lady that
would become one of Phyllis’s best friends, Jane Pettit, worked in the office. Years
later they told stories of things that happened in the hospital in the old days,
like the one about Dr Bailey who was operating on a woman and accidentally
dropped her intestines on the floor!
Phyllis and her Minnesota friend lived in what was called “the dorm.” The dorm was a building not far from the hospital, and close to the co-op and the school where the single teachers and nurses lived. One of the things they did for fun in those early days of Palmer was to learn to fly. Phyllis joined the fun and worked on flying until she earned her pilots’ license. It is interesting to note that as she got older, one of Phyllis’s great fears was flying.
It was at the old Valley Hospital that Phyllis met Merritt
Long. Merritt had driven to Alaska with another guy who just needed a companion
for the trip. Since Merritt’s brother, Erv (Erwin Lloyd Long) was living and
working as a civil engineer in Anchorage, Merritt decided to go along and visit
Erv. Some miles before arriving in Palmer, there was a crew working on the
highway. Merritt and the other guy must have stopped to talk and before they continued
their journey, Merritt had landed a job with the Road Commission. He must have
gone on to see his brother but returned to Palmer to work in his new job.
One day Merritt landed in the hospital with bursitis in his
shoulder. When Phyllis got to work that day the head nurse, Claire Kopperud,
told her that there was a very handsome man in one of the rooms. Phyllis took
his chart and looked at it, commenting that he was too old for her as there was
an 8-year span between their ages. There must have been some laughter and
bantering back and forth about Merritt’s looks and Phyllis’s unmarried state.
Claire told Phyllis to take Merritt’s pills down to him, but Phyllis declined.
Claire then told Phyllis it was an order, and she went.
The pills that Merritt was to take consisted of 8 tablets,
probably pain pills and muscle relaxers. The way the story was told by Phyllis,
Merritt took all 8 pills at one time, swallowed, and choked, coughing and
spitting the pills all over the room. Merritt swore later that nothing of the
sort happened. Anyway, that is how and where they met. The two of them had
their first date on the day Merritt got out of the hospital.
That was in the spring of 1950. Merritt and Phyllis were married on August 16, 1950, at a friend’s house on the Springer System. There was a reception at the dorm building after the ceremony. And that was the beginning of a "Long Story."
