Heritage Court 2017
Grace Eakin
Grace Eakin grew up in a one-room schoolhouse four miles north of Gooding—her bedroom stuck in a cloakroom.
The school building resembled an early Forest Service lookout and the wind howled through the windows until someone put on new windows and asbestos siding on it.
Her father was a dairyman who raised Jersey cows, along with potatoes, and onion seeds. And he was deferred during the war, Grace recalls, because he was more valuable on the farm than in a uniform.
Grace Eakin has painted numerous paintings of the wildlife she sees on her ranch.
Edith Conrad
“They didn’t have radios then,” Conrad recalled. “If he got stuck or the snow plow broke down, he ended up walking.”
Conrad has seen more than seven decades of Idaho snowstorms, having been born in Rigby. But she never let a single one deter her from a busy life of teaching Sunday school classes, holding Cub Scout meetings or volunteering with the Parent Teacher Organization for Carey School.
And that dedication earned her a spot on the 2014 Blaine County Historical Museum’s Heritage Court, which honors women who have gone above and beyond in their contributions to making the Wood River Valley what it is today.
Conrad will be honored…
Betty Murphy
Betty Murphy turned down an opportunity to be Miss Universe. But the trade she made opened up a world of new opportunities for the young lass from Toronto, Canada.
She ended up rubbing elbows with such movers and shakers as former President Jimmy Carter and Erma Bombeck. And her path eventually brought her to Ketchum where the former Canadian, who sets out the American flag daily in front of her Warm Springs home, ended up deeply enmeshed in Idaho politics.
Murphy’s work on behalf of Blaine County Democrats, the Sun Valley Ski and Heritage Museum and other organizations has led to her being one of four women named to the 2017 Blaine County Heritage Court. She will be inducted in a ceremony at 3 p.m. Sunday, June 11, at the Liberty Theatre in Hailey, along with Sue Rowland, Grace Eakins and Edith Conrad.
Sue Rowland
When Sue and Frank Rowland moved to Hailey in 1972, their daughter Ginger could wave to the train conductor as he drove the Ketchum-bound train up the track a stone’s throw from the deck of their home on Fifth Avenue.
Today their grandchildren wave at bicyclists passing by on the converted train tracks. And houses and trees now block the open view they once had all the way to Quigley Canyon.
But the heart and soul of the community that brought the couple here remains the same.
Today, in fact, the former Forest Service ranger and preschool teacher are considered part of the heart and soul of the community.