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An everlasting love
It was the middle of October in 1965. Carolyn Dennis of Walker, Mo., gathered her courage and made plans to go to Alaska to marry her sweetheart, Jack Wallace. She had never traveled alone and her parents tried to talk her out of it. Carolyn and Jack had been engaged for two years and he was facing three more years in the Air Force before he could come home. Enough was enough.
Carolyn and her future mother-in-law, Elnora Wallace made her a white silk suit and veil using a white pillbox hat like the ones Jacqueline Kennedy wore. The Harwood Baptist Church gave her a bridal shower and her mother, Maurine Dennis, and Elnora Wallace packed the gifts and shipped them to Alaska. Jack sent Carolyn a one-way ticket to Alaska. When the big day came, Oren and Elnora Wallace took her to meet the train at Union Station in Kansas City. They looked around for an older woman and asked her to look out for Carolyn. She rode the train with Carolyn to Denver, Colo., where she was met by her aunt and spent three days there, even though she was anxious to be on her way. She had never seen the mountains before and her aunt took her to see them and several other points of interest, but she was anxious to be on her way. At Denver, she boarded a plane and flew to Seattle where she got on the Alaska Airlines and flew to Anchorage.
"When we got there, the runway was solid ice. I thought we couldn't possibly land. We did. It was such an exciting time. Jack met me and took me to his friends' home where I stayed for the two weeks before our wedding. We had to get reacquainted as it had been almost a year since we'd seen each other. It had seemed like forever." Tony and Shirley Storer, Jack's friends, and their family made Carolyn feel welcome and helped her prepare for the wedding even though they had just gone through a terrific earthquake. The Storers stood up with them Nov. 5, 1965, at the base chapel, where they were married by the chaplain.
Carolyn and Jack didn't live in the barracks, but rented an apartment in Anchorage where she settled in trying to live with nine months of winter and total darkness which changed off to 3 months of summer and daylight around the clock. It didn't bother her much and she soon got a job at Elmendorf Air Force Base PX. "We always did our shopping there as it was much cheaper than downtown Anchorage. I worked there until we came home. It was interesting and we had lots of friends to do things with."
When Jack's tour of duty was finished, they got in their old pickup with a camper on the back and began the 4,000 miles toward Walker. The first 1,200 miles of the Alaska Highway was unpaved. When they finally hit the pavement, they looked at each other and sighed with relief.
"We had to have a map of the gas stations because they were few and far between. We also had several flat tires," Carolyn said.
They had called ahead to tell Jack's parents when they would arrive. Carolyn's parents, Maurine and Earl Dennis and brother, Luther, and Jack's parents were all there to meet them. "Three years is a long time to be gone from home," Carolyn said. "I could have kissed the ground and never wanted to leave again, but only 25 days later, we left for Nashville, Tenn., where Jack attended a diesel mechanics and welding school for nine months."
Then it was back to Walker, and Jack started farming in Blue Mound Township and working for Floyd Gammon, the Case IH dealer at Harwood. Their daughter, Dawn, was born in 1970. Carolyn was a stay-at-home mom until her daughter reached the fifth grade; then she took employment at the First National Bank in Nevada. She worked there until Dawn finished high school in 1988 and moved to Moberly to be near Jack, who was working with the coal company there. Jack's dad became ill and they returned to Walker in 1989 to be near him. Later, Carolyn worked at the Heritage Bank at Walker until it closed. She worked at Joe Clark and the Habilitation Center for 10 years until she had a stroke. She has battled through rehabilitation, with her husband's help, and is able to take care of herself again.
"I'm sort of a pioneer," Carolyn said and laughed. "I was never scared or even homesick in the three years we were in Alaska. It was a great adventure. An adventure that has lasted 44 years."