Eva McGown (née Montgomery) (1883–1972), the "hostess of Fairbanks," was best known for her three decades helping newcomers, military wives, construction workers, students, and visitors to find shelter in Fairbanks, Alaska during periods of time — particularly World War II — when the demand for housing far outstripped supply. Named official hostess of Fairbanks and honorary hostess of Alaska, McGown was featured in an article in Reader's Digest and a broadcast of the popular biographical television program This Is Your Life, and was the basis for the character Bridie Ballantyne in the 1958 novel Ice Palace and its 1960 film adaptation. She died in 1972 in a fire in the Nordale Hotel, where she had lived the last 28 years of her life. Early life and marriage Eva Montgomery was born on June 23, 1883, in Antrim, Ireland. Little is known about her early life other than that she was director of a choir in Belfast in the early 1900s. In 1914, when she was 31, she came to the United States to marry Arthur Louis McGown, the part-owner of the Model Cafe in Fairbanks, Alaska. Her travel from Belfast to Fairbanks included a voyage across the Atlantic Ocean on what she later described as "a filthy boat" and a cross-country journey by train to Seattle, Washington, where she boarded a steamer bound for Valdez, Alaska, followed by over a month's winter travel by horse-drawn sleigh and dogsled to Fairbanks, staying at roadhouses along the way. "There were rough and tough men on the trail", she later remembered. "But never a cursing word did they say in my hearing. They gave me hot bricks for my feet and wrapped furs around me." She arrived in Fairbanks on February 26, 1914 and was married to Arthur McGown the same evening. Arthur became ill five years into their marriage and remained an invalid for the remainder of his life. He died in 1930 of a bone tumor. Hostess of Fairbanks Soon after, Eva left the cabin where she had lived with her husband and moved into Room 207 of the Nordale Hotel on Second Avenue in Fairbanks, where she lived for the rest of her life. She supported herself by selling magazines and taking odd jobs, and occupied herself as a hospital visitor and by visiting lonely women newly arrived in Alaska, doing what she could to make them feel welcome. When