Frank and I came to Alaska in 1935 when you could get a homestead (160 acres) in the Susitna and Matanuska valleys for little more than hard work. It was hard to go to church in those days, and we met in storefronts, tents, and homes.
We had a priest but there was no Bishop in Territorial Alaska. Once our priest told me that there were people in the area that wanted to be confirmed, and wondered if I would stand in as a sponser. When the service started I was sponser for 67 people!
When we moved to Talkeetna with two kids the school was a one room schoolhouse and the only way into Talkeetna was by train, plane, or riverboat. The gravel spur road was built in 1968, and it was paved in 1972. There was no Catholic Church, so we met for mass in an empty trailer that my husband and I owned. Fr. Murphy used to fly into town, land on the old airstrip, and walk over to say mass.
My daughter, Dorothy, (who had kids of her own by then) and I started lobbying for a real church. We began fund raising and Don Sheldon and Lena Morrison donated the land. Fr. Stan Allie and Mr. Beech (a Big Lake contractor) built the church. Fr. Allie stayed at the Roadhouse until a double wide trailer was purchased for a rectory.
Fr. Allie trained altar servers and they served not only St. Bernard’s, but flew with their priest to the two other churches in our parish; St. Christopher’s in Willow, and St. Philip in Trapper Creek. His altar servers loved to tell stories of the Alaska State Troopers giving Fr. Allie a ticket for landing on the plowed highway when he realized the runway was wing deep in snow!