STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK
Edith Conrad never had to look out the window to see if it was snowing when her husband John worked for the Idaho Transportation Department.
They’d get a call from headquarters—usually in the middle of the night—telling John he needed to start plowing the highway.
“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 along with Betty Murphy, Grace Eakin and Sue Rowland in a ceremony open to the public at 3 p.m. Sunday, June 11, at the Liberty Theatre in Hailey.
Having grown up in Dietrich, Conrad had to swallow her pride when her husband was transferred to Carey from Mackay in 1966.
“I’d said I never wanted to live in Carey because they were our school rivals. But it turned out it was a great place to live,” she said. “It’s quiet. You can have a garden there. And it was a good place for our four kids to grow up.”
Conrad got involved in 4-H on behalf of her children, raising bum or orphaned lambs, cows, horses chickens and peacocks on the acre and a half farm her family owned.
She taught sewing. And, once, she ended up doing a lot of unplanned brushing, as well.
“When my son was in high school, he had just finished washing his lambs for the 4-H show when the field across the road caught fire and the sheep turned black with soot,” she said. “It’s not easy to brush sheep but we did.”
During the 1970s Conrad served as president of the local chapter of the women’s section of the American Farm Bureau Federation, which was organized in 1920 to enhance the lives of those living in agricultural communities. She later served as president of the regional Idaho Farm Bureau chapter.
She and now-State Rep. Maxine Bell organized conferences and luncheons to educate women on the issues. And one of those issues was the then-fledgling women’s liberation movement.
“It was a new thing. I didn’t even realize women were not equal until that came along,” she recalled, adding that she was generally pro-liberation.
When her youngest daughter graduated from high school, Conrad and daughter Robin began working at King’s Variety Store in Hailey, a job Conrad held for 13 years.
She enjoyed the work, in part because she had good bosses. But the 30-mile drive could be hair-raising during winter.
“One time we went via Timmerman Hill and it was a sheet of ice,” recalled. “We did a complete circle in the middle of the highway. I thought other cars were coming when we started, but fortunately there was no one around when we finished.
“Another time we were driving down Gannett Road and it was snowing so heavily you couldn’t tell where we were or even if we were on the road or off it. But we made it home.”
She paused.
“I’m sad to see King’s close. It had a lot of things you can’t get anywhere else. Even the Family Dollar store doesn’t have everything it had. Plus, it gave high school kids a start in life and a little pocket money.”
Since retiring, Conrad has been involved in upping the culture quotient of Carey, helping to organize calligraphy and Spanish classes.
“My son was in Uruguay at the time so I tried to learn Spanish. And I have a grandson-in-law who is from Mexico. But I just got the basics.”
She also helps to lead Fit and Fall-Proof exercise classes at the Carey Senior Connection.
“Got to keep those old bones moving,” she said.