Palin made lasting impression

By FOSS FARRAR
Traveler Staff Writer
reporter@arkcity.net

Luke Smith and his mother are Republicans so it’s not surprising they voted for McCain-Palin for President and Vice President on Tuesday.

But Smith’s vote was a “debt of honor,” he said Thursday at the family’s Arkansas City home. Sarah Palin helped him get his Eagle Scout Award.

That was 11 years ago when Smith and his parents, Jim and Sherry Smith, lived in Wasilla, Alaska., population 23,000. The family moved to Wasilla after Jim Smith, then in the air force, was assigned there.

Luke was 17 at that time and was trying to finish his community project for the Eagle Scout Award. But the Wasilla city council was putting up roadblock after roadblock, he said.

Smith’s plan was to build a 28-foot by 44-foot wood pavilion at a newly developed park called Wasilla Wonderland.

By the way, Wasilla is “all I saw” spelled backwards, Smith noted. “Alaskans have a different sense of humor.”

He wanted to build the pavilion to provide shelter for park-goers when it rained, he said.

But city council members wouldn’t approve the project for some reason, Smith said. They told him that the only way he might get it built would be to make it earthquake-proof.

So Smith and his father worked together with an architect to get a pavilion design that would include 10-inch by 10-inch uprights driven 3 1/2 feet into the hard ground.

They later found out how difficult it would be to lay a foundation for the structure since the park was built over a former airstrip and the ground was basically gravel, he said.

“We used a back hoe to dig the foundation for it,” Smith said. “We broke three back hoes doing it.”

Smith attended just about every city commission meeting for six months trying to get his plan approved. Finally, Palin, who was the Wasilla mayor at the time, got angry about opposition to the plan, he said.

“After awhile, Sarah Palin got mad at them opposing it,” he said.

Sherry Smith added: “She opposed the good old boy network.”

Palin attended planning meetings with Luke and his father Jim to get the project going, Sherry Smith said.

She would show up for the meetings wearing sweats after working out in the gym where the meetings were held, Luke Smith added.

“We built it shortly after what they call ‘break-up’ in Alaska,” he said. “They don’t use the word spring.” Break-up describes the breaking up of ice and snow that has accumulated during an Alaska winter.

Smith added that he was required to direct every phase of the operation but that he had help from several volunteers. “It took about a week to build,” he said.

Eventually, even the city council got on board and associated themselves with the project.

Luke and Sherry Smith say they were surprised when they learned that the former mayor of Wasilla became governor of the state. They were even more surprised when McCain named her his running mate.

“It totally blind-sided me when they announced it,” Luke Smith said. “I thought, ‘That’s really cool.’”

Smith said Palin impressed him as a strong, independent woman who was serious and committed to the town of Wasilla. “She helped me and at that time there were a lot of things that needed to be straightened up and she helped get that done.”