AUTHOR’S NOTE: Thirty-five-year-old Rex Hanks homesteaded in the Happy Creek valley in 1946. He remained a bachelor until 1953, when he married registered nurse Irmgard Matz in Seward. Together they had two daughters, both stillborn. Rex built a modest home for himself and his wife south of the creek and near the beach above Cook Inlet.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Happy Valley resident Rex Hanks began his own private cemetery in the winter of 1951. By the end of 1958, the little graveyard’s inhabitants numbered four. The problem was that Hanks and his wife didn’t own the cemetery land. Kenai Peninsula road-builders had other plans for that location, so all the graves had to be moved.