What is a Parkite? While spellcheck doesn’t recognize it as a word, it broadly means someone who calls Park City, Utah, home. Today, it generally means someone who’s truly a local (not just someone who owns a house here). In that sense, some of us are more Parkite than others. Someone who wa s born here, for example, might have the truest claim, especially if they still live here. Someone who has been here over 50 years could certainly identify as a Parkite. Even someone who has been here five to 10 years is a Parkite if they are invested in the community. Blanche Fletcher’s identity as a Parkite was never in question. She was born March 28, 1888, in a small house at 262 Grant Av., a street that barely exists in modern Park City. Her year of birth was just 20 years after settlers started a mining district in the Park City area and just four years after Park City had incorporated as a town. Her father, Henry Wiest, was one of the first barbers in Park City. As a girl, she witnessed Park City’s most formative experiences: The Panic of 1893 that caused chaos among mine finances. The Great Fire of 1898 that destroyed Main Street, Chinatown and parts of Park Avenue and other streets, as well as the subsequent resolve of Parkites to rebuild their community. The incorporation of the Silver King Mining Co. and the continued success of other large silver producers. The Daly West Mine disaster, when 34 miners in the Daly West and Ontario Mines lost their lives and had the whole community mourning their tragic deaths. Just to name a few. Blanche was a lifelong piano player and organist, having learned to tickle the ivories at the St. Mary’s Sisters School in Park City. She taught piano in Park City for seven decades, giving the gift of music to many a fellow Parkite. She was the organist every Sunday for St. Luke’s Episcopal Church just up the street from her home. She would also provide her skillset for special events and funeral services, with The Park Record noting, “even when others felt the deceased did not deserve such attention.” Her piano playing also gained her a job as the accompanying musician for silent films at the American and Dewey theaters (as well as the Egyptian later on). At the theater, Blanche met Alex Roy Fletcher, Park City’s first projectionist. They fell in love and started a family that would eventually spawn five children, 10 grandchildren, and at least 20 great-grandchildren before she had turned 80. And in her golden years, Blanche, as the ever-present citizen of the Park, was chosen by then-named Park City Resort to be the model for their 1967 national ad campaign. Though she had never skied, Blanche dressed in the latest ski fashion and posed for the ads, which were placed in Ski Magazine, Western Skier, Skiweek Magazine, a special ski edition for The Los Angeles Times, among others. Blanche Fletcher saw it all, from the mining boom to the transition to a resort economy to — shortly before her passing — the official end to mining in Park City. She taught her community members how to play the piano and played them out at their funerals. She graced the glossy advertisements of a burgeoning local ski resort. To top it all off, Blanche was Park City’s oldest resident when she passed away on October 14, 1982, at the age of 94. So there’s no question: Blanche Fletcher was a Parkite through and through. Dalton Gackle is the Park City Museum’s research coordinator. The post Way We Were: Blanche Fletcher, great-grandmother, pianist, model, Parkite appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less