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Wilma Rutherford
Wilma Rutherford
Wilma Rutherford talks about getting to know the Creamer family at Creamer's Dairy.

Digital Asset Information

Archive #: Oral History 2008-04-07

Project: Fairbanks Communities of Memory
Date of Interview: Apr 3, 1996
Narrator(s): Wilma Rutherford
Location of Interview:
Location of Topic:
Funding Partners:
Alaska Humanities Forum
Alternate Transcripts
There is no alternate transcript for this interview.

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Sections

Coming to Alaska and meeting the Creamers

Mrs. Creamer's kindness

Mr. Creamer's smile and feeling like I had been a pioneer

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Transcript



For whatever it's worth, I came up on June 21st, 1952, but I'd been after my husband who'd come up in the military the year before and homesteaded.

We'd stay in town during the winter, and go out to the homestead during the summer. Then we started acquiring animals; pigs and chickens. We had chickens and pigs in town between 22nd and 23rd Street back then and that's how I met the Creamers.

We'd go out to buy feed from them, and I don't think there was any other feed place there at the time. And hay for the animals and of course my husband was great at picking Mr. Creamer's brains for anything he could about animals and whatnot.

As soon as we stopped moving back and forth to town he had a big herd of cows.

But what I guess they wanted me to tell was you know, the Creamers are lovely people.

I really love them; they were easy to get along with and friendly, but one day I was going out to Creamer's to buy some feed, and there's an old bridge across Peede Road, and a car came charging around the corner, right at me, and I scraped the whole side of the bridge with the car.

He didn't even look back, he just kept on going. And my heart, I have a funny heart beat; it was acting up really crazy by the time I got to Creamer's. And even though I'm brown completed, I must have lost all my color, because Mrs. Creamer looked at me and she said, "What's the matter with you?"

And I said, "I feel like I'm having a heart attack." And I told her about the car. She said, "You come in here, you come in here." I said, "I'm great." "You come in here!"

And I had the feeling nobody really argued with her. I went in. Into the kitchen, sat down, and she made me sit there and drink coffee and talk.

And she kept looking at me, and I said..."No, you sit down." And I sat, and after she felt like, "You doing ok, now?" My color must have returned.

She said, "Ok, you can go." And I said, "Thank you, Mrs. Creamer." And I never forgot that because I felt like she really cared and then through the years they were always, always friendly.

Mr. Creamer had the loveliest smile. I loved his smile. The years before he passed, I would go to the Pioneer's Home and take X-Rays, and he always had a smile.

Smile, just sweet. Sometimes he'd talk to me, sometimes he wouldn't. Mostly he just smiled and you felt like well that was enough to get that smile out of him.

My husband got to pick them a whole lot more, because he would talk about the animals and growing things. And right away he would talk to him.

But I always remembered that they were just absolutely pleasant people, and anything they could tell you to help you with the pioneering here.

And I felt like I was a pioneer in '52 because Cushman Street wasn't paved. Anything they could tell you, they would to help you. I think that's about it.