Except for the 10 years they homesteaded in Stony River - where they essentially established the community - Bethel was their home.
When their commitment to the Public Health Service ended, they stayed. Their home in Bethel became a central gathering place for locals and visitors. Bethel was also “accepting, diverse, creative, and non-judgmental,” and, aside from being useful - most people in the region had never seen a dentist - Diane and Bob felt enriched by those who befriended them and by their interactions with the Yup’ik and Athabascan villagers they served. While they loved their time in Ketchikan, the place seemed a bit tame to Diane and Bob, and they asked to be sent to a more “Alaskan” community for their second year.īethel, as Carpenter tells it, was a Wild West kind of place when they arrived in 1956. The first year, in Ketchikan, was filled with adventures, including Carpenter being arrested for illegal fishing when the seiner she was cooking on started fishing well before an opening. Public Health Service and asked to be sent to Alaska for a two-year assignment. When Carpenter’s husband, Bob, returned from service in Korea, the couple had joined the U.S. It was quite a distance from Louisville, Kentucky, where Carpenter was a music student, to 10 years later, living on a Stony River homestead with a traveling dentist-husband and four children, hunting and fishing, flying a plane, running a trading post, operating a light plant, managing a radio system and weather station, and serving as a medical aide for families along the Kuskokwim River. In her new memoir, Carpenter, now 90 years old and living in Mexico, presents her early Alaska years with a deep appreciation for the communities and cultures of which she became a part. Older Alaskans will remember Diane Carpenter, who was - as a longtime resident of Bethel, educator, public servant and social activist - a significant shaper of Alaska beginning in its late-territorial days. By Diane Carpenter Cirque Press, 2023 270 pages $20.
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