passing of an era

Jean Keene passed away yesterday, at age 85, of natural causes. As a local woman who fed eagles from the banks of Kachemak Bay on the Homer Spit, for 30 years, she impacted many locals and visitors alike. We had the privilege of knowing her personally, and count it an honor to have rubbed shoulders with such a kind, and generous individual.




-Eagle Lady Jean Keene passed away-

~ For many of the 31 years Keene lived on the Homer Spit, she fed the eagles~

By Naomi Klouda
Homer Tribune
January 14, 2009 at 02:15 PM



Homer's Eagle Lady, Jean Keene, passed away Tuesday afternoon at her home on the Homer Spit where she helped thousands of eagles survive winter in the past 30 years.
Memorial services will be announced later this week, said her son, Lonnie Keene. Likely the memorial will be a celebration her life, he said.
The Homer Spit will never be the same, said author-photographer Cary Anderson, who wrote a book on Keene's life and became a close friend over the past 25 years.
"I'm going to miss Jean. The Spit will be a very different place now," said Cary Anderson, author of "The Eagle Lady."
Keene celebrated her 85th birthday Oct. 20. She was born on that date in 1923 in Aitken, Minn., where she was raised assisting her family with the livestock and like her dad, developed a love for all animals and birds. She taught her horse, "Ace" tricks that would one day be useful in the rodeo. In 1952, when Keene was not yet 20 years old, she applied for a job as a "trick rider" when the Red River Rodeo came to town. With a new horse by then, Flinder, she qualified and joined the traveling rodeo circuit.
In the 1970s when Keene traveled to Alaska to attend her cousin's wedding, she said fell in love with the state.
"I loved the mountains, the ocean and the wildlife," she said. Amongst the Alaska town choices, Homer she felt was the best fit for her. She drove here in 1977 in her truck pulling a trailer. On the Homer Spit, she parked it and found a job at Icicle Seafoods. She has lived there ever since.
Keene first noticed the eagles those early years on the Spit during the winter time when, alone with the birds and the tourist season long over, she began to save scraps for them from the fish processing plant, she said.
Few people were aware Keene fed the eagles from her home near the Land's End Resort on the inhospitable Spit nearly 25 years ago when Anderson met her.
"She toiled in obscurity for the most part. As the word got out, she attracted photographers from not only around the country but around the world," he said.
Keene never charged a dime to the dozens of photographers that wrote to her and planned out their Alaska trips around getting time in her yard to photograph the eagles. One photographer, Jose Hernandez, won an honorable mention in the National Geographic nature category for 2008.
This winter was different from the previous seasons of her octogenarian years. Having survived several bouts of illness, she knew she wouldn't be heaving any boxes or barrels of fish donations over the bed of her blue Sierra GMC pickup.
"I can have a friend help bring the boxes to where I can throw it," Keene said. "I'm not as young as I used to be. I'll never be as strong as I was."
Keene had two spells in the hospital this summer and got around with the aid of a walker. Yet her blue eyes lit up as she talked about greeting the eagles she had devoted her life to carrying through winter for the better part of three decades, in an interview Nov. 12.
"I love eagles and all wildlife. They have a hard time in the winter," Keene said during a visit to her home. "My family back in Minnesota, my parents, they fed a lot of little birds on our farm. My dad had a lot of birdfeeders. There's no point in putting food in the garbage if you have something to give it to."
The Homer City Council granted Keene the right to feed eagles between Dec. 20 and April 1 of each year until 2010. She hasn't missed a winter since the late 1970s when, as an employee at the Icicle Seafood Plant, she gained permission to use fish discards to feed the eagles.
From those few buckets or barrels to start with, she figures it now takes about 40,000 pounds "minimum" to supply the eagles with fish the 130 days she is allowed to feed them.
"That's not much when you figure each eagle eats about two pounds per meal," she said.
Keene has come to learn a lot about eagles through the years. In a lifespan of up to 25 years in the wild, many are repeat visitors whose personalities she has come to know.
"There's one pair I call Lloyd and Mabel, after friends of mine. They stay together on the Spit. It's unusual to see eagles stay together as a couple," Keene said.
"Another is a rehab bird, Betsy, that is 15 years old, at least. She hangs out and sits pretty close to me whenever I come out."
She encounters the wounded that might not otherwise make it through the winter, one-eyed or one-legged soldiers from battles Keene can only guess at. One was an eagle with its lower beak shot off. It couldn't eat fish in the usual way, so it needed a more liquid meal of egg clumps it could siphon up, as if using a straw, she said.
Keene reports the injured birds to the Fish and Wildlife Service. Usually they are picked up and taken to Dr. James Scott at the Bird Learning Rescue Center in Anchorage. One that Keene named Spirit Dance seared off its white head feathers after it ran into a cable. It was healed at the center, and then was returned to Keene to release it back to the wild. The bird doctor was able to save an eye the bird nearly lost.
Eagles "whack" Keene occasionally across the cheek or head as they spread their wings to take flight, but the Eagle Lady said she's never been attacked by one of the birds.
"And I never hand feed them. I don't want them to become that brave," she said.
These days, a flock of finches also eat at Keene's birdfeeders, enclosed inside the yard formed by two trailers acting as windbreaks with her own home, facing the brunt of winds off the Spit. Eagles don't arrive until Keene sets the food out, "then they have a big pow wow and tell each other about it," she said.
Then suddenly, just as quickly comes a day in March when many disappear all at once to build their nests in the wild.
"I'll look out and there will be 100 less over night," she said. "They mate right in front of me. I'll see sticks they're planning on maybe using to build nests. Sometimes they'll drop them."
Keene's lone spot on the Spit, lashed by heavy storms in winter, is lush with flowers in the summer that won her a beautification award from the Homer Chamber of Commerce. Decorated with caribou antlers, antique mementos, bird feeders and a scenic fence painted by local artist Bill Cummings, there's even a laminated Ripley's Believe it Not clipping on exhibit. It reads: "Jean Keene has fed a flock of over 300 eagles near her home in Homer Spit, Alaska ever morning for the past 20 years!"
With the help of a friend, Keene was able to feed the eagles starting Dec. 20, each morning. On Jan. 13, the day of her death, about 100 eagles or more were showing up at her home.
"I plan on doing my best. I'll plan on having a friend help me. I can stand out there and send fish over the fence," Keene had said, matter-of-factly. "I'm not as young as I once was, but I'll keep my dancing shoes on."