"When I married her, I said, 'We're going to Alaska,'" Greer said. "When the war started, that changed the tune."

Greer was born Sept. 26, 1922, in St. Louis, Mo. His family moved to a farm in Wayne County in the Ozark Mountains after his mother died. Al and Jill met as teenagers. Greer worked for a while in Wayne County clearing culverts and doing carpentry, his son said, but after World War II got going and it became clear he'd be drafted, Greer joined the U.S. Marines.

"They needed men, and they needed plenty of them," Al Greer said.

He started basic training in San Diego while Jill Greer was pregnant with Jim. After Jim was born March 15, 1943, Jill Greer drove to San Diego to show Al his son before he shipped off to the Pacific theater. Greer wouldn't see his son again until Jim was 3.

A radio operator in the 5th Amphibious Corps, Greer saw battles at Saipan, Enewetak and Iwo Jima. He carried water up to the Marines who raised the American flag on Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima — the iconic image of the battle taken by photographer James Rosenthal.

At Enewetak, a Japanese bullet shot off Greer's ring finger — and his wedding ring. He was part of the American invasion fleet ready to go into Japan when the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war. Part of the occupation, Greer saw Hiroshima.

"People were scared to death of us," he said. "They didn't think anybody could do what we had done."

After the war, the Greers lived in St. Louis, Wayne County and Salt Lake City, Utah, before finally making the big trip up to Alaska.

They came up in a two-car caravan with Jill's brother, Ezra Yount, and her sister and brother-in-law, Loretta and Bud Robbins and their boy Lee, nicknamed "Hap." They had a 1947 Ford sedan and a 1943 Chevrolet 4x4 truck pulling a homebuilt trailer.

Al Greer

Jim Greer remembered they camped in Homer at a gravel lot on Pioneer Avenue and Lake Street, now the Kachemak Center. When the Greer caravan arrived in May of 1954, East End Road stopped at a gate near Fritz Creek because the road beyond to Kilcher Road was rotten from breakup.

"When I moved here, there wasn't much of anything," Al Greer said — including people. "You could count them on your hand, maybe."

"'I'll try it for one year,'" Al said Jill told him. "She heard of Alaska being real cold. (Homer) never got cold at all."

The Greers built their prove-up cabin, a stockade-style log cabin with two-bedrooms and a bathroom. Jim Greer remembered his dad made $300 the first year here back when Ma Walli sold eggs at her store for $1 a dozen.

"People think they have it hard today, they don't know what it was like," Al Greer said. "They have no idea, no conception what it was like.

"It's hard to believe, but that's the way it was."

Al Greer eventually became mill foreman at Qwik Log, a log-cabin construction company at Fritz Creek owned by Cap King. Qwik Log had cabins all over the state. Greer designed and built — with a lot of his neighbors — the community hall at Fritz Creek, now the Fritz Creek General Store. Greer also hand-split the spruce shingles for the Salty Dawg on the Spit.

When King moved the mill to Anchorage, the Greers soon followed. Al Greer later worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, building schools and health clinics on St. Lawrence Island, Barrow and other villages. Eventually the Greers returned to Homer.

The Greers moved into town about 1993, to a house on Slavin Street across from American Legion Post 16. Jill Greer, who died last fall, was known to many as the interpreter in the Pratt Museum's historical Harrington Cabin.

War might have delayed Greer coming to Alaska, but after 56 years, he's still in Homer.

"I guess I got stuck here," he said.

He has good company. Son Jim and his wife Ann are here, along with three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Michael Armstrong can be reached at michael.armstrong.@homernews.com.