A holiday portrait of Eleanor Frisby, who turns 100 this month
Eleanor and Rob Frisby.
Eleanor Frisby in the 1940s, before her move to Alaska.
Eleanor Frisby in the 1940s.
Eleanor Frisby's granddaughter thinks this is the practical nursing program graduation in roughly 1970.
Eleanor Frisby has always written. Here is one of her poems, inspired by her faith.
Another of Eleanor Frisby's poems.
One of Eleanor Frisby's poems called "Life's Highway."
When Eleanor Frisby smiles, the entire dining room at the Palmer Veterans & Pioneers Home seems to brighten. Staff and residents say she has always had that kind of warm, steady and unmistakably strong presence.
Frisby, who will celebrate her 100th birthday on Jan. 25, built her life on hard work, family devotion and an unwavering instinct to care for others. It's fitting she now lives where she worked as part of the original trio of staff hired when the home opened in the early 1970s. Even on her first day as a resident, she instinctively slipped back into nurse mode by checking on tablemates, pointing out who needed help and directing staff with gentle authority.
Michigan Roots and a mother's strength
Frisby was born in Detroit, the oldest of six children during an era of economic hardship. Her father worked in the automobile industry before dying of diphtheria when she was 10. The loss forced her to grow up early. Her mother, Florence, a 4-foot-9 powerhouse, refused to let the family be separated. With a small life-insurance payout, she bought a 10-acre farm, complete with an apple orchard and space for a cow and chickens.
Life revolved around farm chores, sewing, gardening and stretching every resource to feed six children. On the hardest of days, dinner was "hasty pudding": flour, water and a pinch of salt. But what Frisby remembers most is her mother's love of music and storytelling. Neighbors flocked to their home for taffy pulls, piano sing-alongs and evenings of laughter.
Those early years shaped Frisby's resilience, creativity and lifelong love of reading and writing. She filled notebooks, penned scrap paper and the backs of envelopes with poems, letters and reflections. Her family has saved them all.
A blind date, a love story and a war
Eleanor met her future husband, Robert, on a blind double date arranged by a mutual friend (Bob's cousin). They went to see a Laurel and Hardy movie, each stealing glances when the screen lit up the dark theater. She thought he looked "pretty sharp." He was equally smitten.
Bob later joined the service during World War II, and like many young men of that era, got tattooed overseas, including one with Eleanor's name. Believing it might be "too much too fast," he had it covered with a yellow rose, representing friendship, before he returned home.
After the war, the couple eloped. They researched which state had the shortest waiting period for marriage and drove to Vermont, only to discover the law had changed to a three-day delay. They waited. They married. And they remained devoted partners for the next 50 years.
Moving a family north
By the mid-20th century, Detroit had grown dangerous and unpredictable. With young children at home, the Frisby family worried about their safety. Bob traveled to Alaska with his brother-in-law to explore job prospects, returning enthusiastic about the opportunities. The family packed up, towing a homemade trailer filled with canned goods Eleanor insisted on bringing. They blew more than a dozen tires on the trip up the Alaska Highway but arrived determined to build a better life.
They lived in Chugiak before filing a homestead claim in Chickaloon. Their first winter in Alaska was brutal. The family lived in a draft-ridden former horse paddock where snow sifted through the wall cracks and settled on their blankets each morning. The children upstairs slept huddled around a single stovepipe for warmth.
During the weekdays, while her husband worked 80 miles away, Frisby ran the homestead alone. With a chainsaw too heavy for her to start, her sons fired it up before school and again at lunchtime so she could cut firewood all day. She once tried using a horse to haul logs before deciding the horse was "more trouble than it was worth."
The next year, the family built a sturdier cabin. Later in an act of Alaskan neighborliness, friends handed over the keys to their Farm Loop Road farmhouse with a handshake agreement. To Eleanor, it felt like "moving into a mansion." That farmhouse became the center of a multigenerational family community where cousins were raised like siblings and children walked wooded trails between relatives' homes.
A calling to care
When her own children were mostly grown, Frisby earned her nursing license, and didn't know how to drive before enrolling in school. She began her medical career at the local hospital and when the Palmer Veterans & Pioneers Home opened, the head nurse requested "one good woman," then another. Eleanor became one of the home's earliest nurses through that referral, helping to build the foundation of elder care in the Mat-Su Valley.
A century of lessons
Her advice for younger generations is simple and delivered with a wry smile: "Go visit Grandma." When asked the secret to her longevity, Frisby jokes, "Because I didn't die." She never smoked or drank; she ate homegrown food and lived a life grounded in service, faith and community.
"Life is living. Sometimes the wind blows, and sometimes it slows down. Sometimes it stops altogether for a while, and then you start up again."
