STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Martha “Beaver” Burke was up on her tippy toes trying to reach a box of cereal high on the shelves at Atkinsons’ Market one Christmas when she heard a booming voice behind her.

“Can I get that for you, Ma’am?”

She recognized the voice immediately, as would have nearly everyone in America. It was the unmistakable voice of The Duke—John Wayne.

“He got the box of cereal down for me and walked away,” Burke recalled.

Burke, a longtime Hailey City Council member, has been witness to 43 Sun Valley Christmases since moving here from Menlo Park, Calif., in 1974. As such, she’s seen it all, including the holiday crowds that swell Atkinsons’ Market bringing iconic American figures like John Wayne face to face with valley residents.

She shared some of her holiday recollections on Friday as she enjoyed one of her current favorite holiday traditions—the Senior Connection’s Christmas Brunch of ham, French toast casserole, Buche de Noel and mimosas underwritten by Marty and Mila Lyon and Mila’s parents Chet and Pat Potuzak.

“This is family,” Burke said. “The people here are people I’ve known since moving to the valley. And the staff—they’re family, too.”

Burke and her ex-husband Stoney Burke came here to manage the Christiania motel. They worked split shifts so they could ski each day,  hung out at Slavey’s to listen to Slavey’s steel drum band and took Christmas dinner at the Warm Springs Ranch Inn.

“On holidays the only thing open was the Warm Springs Ranch Inn,” Burke said. “They were there for Christmas dinner, anything that was important in life.”

Once a week Tillie Arnold, a longtime friend of Ernest Hemingway, would invite the Burkes to the Hemingway House, where Arnold lived at the time. Arnold would tell them stories about Annie the Antelope, which used to be a fixture at Sun Valley Resort. And she’d tell stories about some of the town’s icons, like Clara Spiegel.

“Clara, who was part of the Spiegel catalog family, once told her, ‘I don’t know how to rinse out my undergarments. Could you teach me?’ And Tillie said, ‘I know how to do that!’ ” Burke recalled.

Though the town was full of celebrities, no one stood out, Burke added: “No one wanted to stand out. Everyone wanted to fit in. There were no mink coats. The famous people were here to be normal.”

After a few years of living in what Burke called “the ski party town of Ketchum,” she, her husband and new infant daughter moved south to “the family town” of Hailey.

They had no money, but Alba Arndt made a baby afghan and other presents for them to put under the tree that they chopped down in the woods. And Dorothy Burke—no relation—chipped in more homemade presents.

“We hardly had any furniture in the house but we made paper ornaments to decorate the tree. And that still stands out in my mind as the most fun Christmas ever—our first Christmas in our very own home together,” she recounted.

Many of Hailey’s residential streets did not get plowed as fastidiously as they do today. And the Burkes joined “other grownup kids” sledding on Carbonate street between Third and Second streets, which was dubbed “Arndt Hill”

In those days things were a mite rowdier, right down to the Shamrock innertube races that went straight down Dollar Mountain.

“Luckily, no one ever got killed!” she said.

There was no center for seniors to congregate when the Burkes arrived in the valley.

“Probably because none of us ever thought we would be seniors,” she said.

The first senior center was housed in Hailey’s old Miner’s Hall.

Burke herself began taking part in some of the many activities at the Senior Connection after her companion Ike Kola passed away followed by her mother three months later.

“I came campaigning for election and here were all these women I’d known when I was young. I was 40 and they were my age and it was just what I needed. It was like having women to help me grow old gracefully,” recalled Burke, who has two daughters—Sarah, a nurse at St. Luke’s and Laurie, a mother of two living in Missoula, Mont.

“I started coming because I needed them and, maybe, they needed me, too. Mostly, I’m here because it’s good for us. It’s family.”

She’ll get no argument from Judy Fuller, who attended the brunch with her 92-year-old mother Helen Colt, who lives in Bell Mountain Village in Bellevue.

I bring her here twice a week,” she said, as Karen Lukes began striking up a Christmas sing-a-long. “It gives her a place to go and friends to greet.”