First in a four-part series.
Sally Donart leans her cane against the kitchen counter and fills a teapot with water from the sink. She then wraps her other hand around the teapot handle as she concentrates on carrying it over to the stovetop to her left.
Layers of propped-up, framed photos sit on the counter, the colors vibrant in some photos—like those of her now-adult children and young grandchildren—but dull in others. Two black-and-white pictures sit in the back, capturing her now-deceased husband, Jim, in his youth during World War II. In one, he's sitting in an open-aired cockpit, leather hat strapped around his head and flying goggles perched on his forehead.
More photos line the windowsills of the house. The house itself is a memory for Donart. The house sits nestled back from the east side of Highway 75 about three miles north of Ketchum. Jim designed and built it in 1962 so they could permanently move into the Wood River Valley. In the beginning, the building shared the narrow valley with nothing else except Lake Creek flowing through. But houses have slowly sprung up in the meantime, and now surround the wood-planked structure.
But Donart has no desire to complain about more people.
"We first skied here in 1949," she says, "coming because of the beautiful area and the skiing, but staying because of the people."
Now, those same people are celebrating Donart's commitment to the valley. Donart has been selected as a member of the 2010 Blaine County Heritage Court, an event in its seventh year that honors women of the Wood River Valley who've worked to preserve its history. Each year, community service organizations select a woman from each area: Ketchum/Sun Valley, Bellevue, Hailey and Carey. They must all be at least 70 years old and have lived in the valley for at least 30 years. Ketchum's Community Library chose 83-year-old Donart for the Ketchum/Sun Valley selection.
Donart once worked at The Community Library in the 1970s when it was in the building that now houses the Gold Mine thrift store. Before that, she was editor of the now-defunct newspaper Ketchum Tomorrow. The library holds a bound copy of the editions that Donart published during her 20 months as editor in the early 1970s.
Despite being an editor, Donart had no journalism experience. She earned a degree in political science at the University of Colorado, where she met her husband.
But the weekly newspaper needed an editor. It had gone through three over the past year. Donart took a stab at it.
"I had to pay the printing bill from the former editor before I could print my first edition," she said.
Donart managed to increase circulation from 700 to 3,000, also making the paper free—a first in the valley—and using advertising to support it.
The job's greatest benefit was that it enabled her to quickly become a part of the community after moving here.
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Sun Valley had a skimpy snow year while she was editor. Not many people were in town, so she went to Bald Mountain's Warm Springs ski lift and interviewed the visitors. "Why have you come here?" she asked everyone.
The answer she repeatedly got was that Sun Valley had some of the best restaurants in the country.
"And because people are so nice here," she said she was told.
Donart said the "social ladder" of wealth didn't divide people, even though the wealthy and famous abounded.
"There was no use in bragging about your money because, chances were, the person behind you could buy you out five times," she said.
She told of a winter when she saw Ernest Hemingway shoveling the front doorway of a Ketchum laundromat for the female owner, and many other random stories of Sun Valley generosity.
Donart raised her children in Sun Valley but she's originally from New Jersey. Her husband, on the other hand, was from Weiser in western Idaho.
"Everyone in Weiser thought I was his English war bride because I didn't have a Jersey accent," she said, creating the accent when saying "Jersey accent."
Her husband died of emphysema in 1990, spending the last year of his life constantly breathing through an oxygen machine, tubes running to his nostrils.
But Donart didn't want her husband to have the last moments of his life filled with thoughts of helplessness and discomfort. So she took a large corkboard and stapled on pictures of him and his children in Sun Valley, the couple during their honeymoon and Jim in his airplane flying over Idaho.
"I wanted him to see himself looking vigorous and engaged," Donart said, "not tethered to an oxygen tank."
That same board now hangs over Donart's twin bed, capturing moments of her younger years. In the summer of 1957, she was 30 years old and a swimming instructor at the Bald Mountain Lodge Hot Springs.
"The hardest to teach were the skinny little boys who were shivering there," she said. "They couldn't relax."
The hot springs is now gone and the land is vacant on Ketchum's Main Street. But the Bald Mountain Lodge sign still sits on its post at the First and Main street intersection—a reminder similar to Donart's corkboard hanging over her bed.
Trevon Milliard: tmilliard@mtexpress.com
Heritage Court
The Heritage Court is presented by the Blaine County Historical Museum. Each year, one lady is nominated from each Blaine County community. The lady is selected by a different community service organization for her participation in or efforts to preserve the history of the Wood River Valley. They must be at least 70 years old and have lived in the Wood River Valley for at least 30 years.
The 2010 Heritage Ladies to be honored are:
· Sally Donart, 83, representing Ketchum and Sun Valley, nominated by The Community Library board.
· Phyllis Stelma, 81, representing Bellevue, nominated by the Wood River Lion's Club.
· Fern Stephenson, 81, representing Hailey, nominated by the Hailey Masonic Lodge.
· Jean Pyrah, 90, representing Carey, nominated by the Carey Senior Center.
The ladies will be honored at the Heritage Court Coronation Ceremony on Sunday, June 13, from 3-5 p.m, at the Liberty Theatre in Hailey.
Sally Donart stands outside of her Ketchum-area home. Photo by David N. Seelig
