80 years and still a kid's kid

Her voice has a certain gravitas to it, then at turns it is lifted by a whimsical lilt driving a hearty laugh. Free as a kid's laugh, really.

It is her 80th birthday, and a party has sprung up near Scott's Corner south of Carlton. She is flitting around, getting this and that ready. She earnestly thanks everyone who arrives, with theatrical gestures as further exclamation. She dings around on her electric keyboard, playing along with the alphorn player set up under one of the tents.

That whimsy shows again as she goes from station to station in the traveling children's museum she urged over from Wisconsin. One suspects this was a nod to herself as much as something for children to enjoy, for few are here.

"I'm a kid, and I intend to keep being one."

She giggles some more and rambles on with guests.

Those here at the edge of a blooming summer meadow talk in clusters about her unique spirit. "One of a kind," one says.

Jackie Ranko is the woman you'll find playing piano at Cloquet's Community Memorial Hospital on Fridays. She's also known to staff there as "the teddy bear lady." She's donated hundreds of stuffed toys for children who find themselves in the emergency room.

They are comfort bears, she says. "Kids come in and they're scared."

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It's a concept she picked up from living in Maine for 45 years. Many hospitals there offer bears. When she started donating the stuffed animals a few years ago, the staff welcomed them eagerly. She said even the hospital CEO, Rick Breuer, said, "I wish I had one."

Last Friday, the day before her birthday party, CMH staff handed her a birthday cake. It was a thank-you for the music and the hundreds of bears that have come in.

Playing without sheet music, she can recall hundreds of songs, a sign of her musical chops. Jackie graduated at the top of her high school class in New York's Hudson Valley. She then went down to New York City to study music, including a stint at Julliard. She once sang at Carnegie Hall.

She studied to be a music teacher, learning to play a panoply of instruments. Educators run in her family, and she was happy to continue the tradition.

She married and was soon in Maine - teaching, playing and singing.

Nearly a decade ago, she was the music director at a Presbyterian church in Maine. She became friends with pastors Sue and Bob Goodin. When the couple was called to serve a string of churches in Carlton County and the region in 2012, they asked Jackie to play flute at their installation.

"Then they thought, maybe you should come out here," she said. So she did. There are jokes about her coming on as the housekeeper and piano player, and she laughs and goes with it.

That three people became such close friends in the latter stages of their lives - Bob and Sue are now retired - is a marvel, Jackie says. "All three of us are rather unique people," she says. "We're team players."

All remain active in church work, thus the presence of so many pastors at the party Saturday.

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Bob helps with the transportation of the bears. It was his medical emergency that placed Jackie at CMH. "I noticed a piano and thought, what the heck, I'll play."

She's still at it. More than one person coming for a Covid-19 vaccination this spring commented on the joy they felt hearing her play as they headed in for a shot.

"I have, in my heart, mind and soul, become part of the CMH community," Jackie said.

That alphorn player? It's Dan Palmquist, her primary care doctor from CMH.

More kismet comes on the bear side of things. Her birthday, July 10, is also recognized as Teddy Bear Picnic Day, an homage to the classic song and the import of teddy bears in the life of children.

"I was kind of getting this theme together," Jackie says of her affinity for bears and eventual donations to the hospital. She goes into great detail telling the backstory on the creation of one of the most famous of stuffed bears, Winnie the Pooh.

And she will tell you that her story is shared. All it takes is having interest in people, she said. "People are so fascinating."

It starts with nurturing children, she says. "I'm really a kid person. I can't help it." There is that laugh again, proving her point ever more.

She'll keep donating and playing. It's her part, she said.

"I can't afford to give a hospital wing, but I can afford teddy bears."