SUN photo/Anna Lauer
Peggy and Bob Case are long-time residents and ranchers in Pagosa Country. Peggy’s grandfather, John Toner, was the first homesteader in the Upper Piedra area.

Bob and Peggy Case (née Toner) are a man and woman of few, but valuable words.

Perhaps it is their many years of ranching life that have honed their speech. They tell their remarkable stories precisely and with poise — a bit like the way you must brand a cow, if you are to succeed in such an endeavor. So much of the Case’s long lives in the West has revolved around paying attention, doing things well with the least amount of fuss, being of use. And that precision seems to have permeated their very bones, and the history of their lives, as they tell it.

Peggy Case’s grandfather, John Toner, was the first homesteader to settle in the Upper Piedra in 1896. The Toner ranch has been pasturing cattle ever since. Peggy Case’s father Archie (Red) Toner was born on the ranch in 1901. Peggy’s parents married in 1928 and lived on the ranch with Peggy and her brother, Ed, for the rest of their lives. Peggy was born in 1929.

From the first through the eighth grade, Peggy rode her horse, Trixie, there and back again every day, to Deb’s School (a building which is now listed on the National Historic Registry) in the Upper Piedra. If you wanted to go to school back then, you had better learn to ride a horse first, Peggy told THE SUN. “We only went to school up there from about April twentieth to November first,” Peggy said. “You simply couldn’t get there during the winter.

“There were nine gates we had to pass through to make it the schoolhouse,” Peggy said, “and we small kids, well, it would sometimes take three of us just to open the gate so we could go on through. Now, what we’d always do was bring our clean dress on Monday and leave it at the school until Friday to take it home and wash it again. You didn’t want to ride in your good dress. Each of us had a hook at the school and we’d change into our dress when we got there each morning, and hang it back on our hook in the evening when we put on our riding clothes for the trip home. The great thing was, that way you only needed about two dresses. Families didn’t keep their kids in lots of clothes, you just had what you needed.”

Peggy’s aunt, Lily May Carlin, was the teacher at Deb’s School until Peggy was in the fifth grade, when a new teacher was hired. After the eighth grade, Peggy said, you had to find some other place to finish your schooling. “I went off and boarded at the Durango high school, because it was accredited and at the time, the Pagosa high school was not.”

After graduating from Durango, Peggy moved north to Fort Collins, Colo., to get a degree in vocational home economics from the Colorado Agriculture and Mechanics School (Colorado A&M), which later became Colorado State University (CSU). “And even before that,” according to Peggy, “the school was called ‘Colorado Aggies.’ My father and aunt both got their degrees from Colorado Aggies. My brother, my cousin, my sister-in-law, my husband and I all got degrees from Colorado A&M, and my daughter and my grandson have both gotten their degrees from CSU.” Peggy and Bob’s long marriage has produced two children, many grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and counting.

Peggy and Bob met square dancing at a Colorado A&M dance. “We met square dancing and we kept on square dancing for 48 years, or thereabouts, until my hips gave out,” Peggy said. “We got married and moved back to my family’s ranch after we graduated in 1951.” The ranch where the Cases currently live on Taylor Lane is about two miles down the road from John Toner’s original homestead. John Taylor, Peggy’s cousin, lives on the original property that John Toner first settled.

The year of 1953 was a particularly bad winter, they said. “But when you have cattle, they have to be fed, period,” said Bob. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a blizzard outside or 40 below, you’ve got to get them fed.” Feeding cattle in the winter back then was done with a team of horses and a sled. “We’d ride out to the feeding grounds and shovel loose hay to the cows, and then go and break up the ice in the stream so they could drink,” Bob recalled.

In the spring, the main job was checking for newborn calves. “Every morning we’d go out and check,” said Peggy. And if they found a sick or weak baby, they’d bring it into the house and make a bed for it by the fire, where it could stay for a while and build its strength back up.

Another cattle chore for fairer weather was the branding. “Oh my, you sure could have an angry cow on your hands quick,” said Peggy. “I have a cracked bone in my finger from when one cow knocked headlong into it while we were doing branding. I ended up having to scoot right under the fence to get away from her.” Usually, though, the branding went smoothly for the Cases. There isn’t a lot of room for error when it comes to ranching, they made clear. And everyone would help one another out, the Case’s explained, that made the work manageable.

In 1955, the Cases left Pagosa so that Bob could pursue work with the Forest Service throughout the west. Bob had earned his degree from Colorado A&M in forest and range management. “You can’t make a living in Pagosa,” said Bob. “Sometimes you’ve just got to go and earn some money and then come back.” Until around 1970, when the Cases moved back to Pagosa to retire, they made their home in places from Arizona to South Dakota and everywhere in between, wherever they were sent by the Forest Service.

Upon moving back, they found quite a different Pagosa Springs from the one they’d left. The main difference, according to the Cases? “Well, there weren’t so damn many people,” exclaimed Peggy. Bob added, “You used to be able to walk down the street in Pagosa and you’d know just about everybody. Now you don’t know anybody. Back when the Pagosa Telephone Exchange was in operation on Main Street, all you had to do if you were looking for someone was go ask Gladis McCoy. Gladis ran the switchboard and you just asked her where someone was, and she would most likely know.”

Things are different in a lot of ways now, Bob went on. Back then it was an agricultural town, a cow town. And the Cases agreed that this collective purpose bred a certain cooperative quality into the community. “In our neighborhood you worked together,” said Peggy. “If someone was in trouble everyone would help. We did the branding together, we got through hard winters together.” Bob said, “People just aren’t interested in their neighbors anymore.” And, Peggy added, “In defense of people nowadays, I just don’t think people know how to be good neighbors. It’s not something people are taught anymore.”

Some of Bob’s concluding words about their family history are a fine beginner’s lesson in neighborliness (for that matter, they are a fine lesson in how to foster, say, world peace). “When you’re dealing with agriculture people, if you give your word, that’s it. You don’t need a contract. Your word is your bond.”

Photo courtesy Tinnie Lattin
Tinnie Lattin at about age 20, in Pagosa Springs. Mrs. Lattin has seen life in Pagosa Country go by in a lifetime spent here, much of it, 42 years, as a valued elected official — the Archuleta County Treasurer.

SUN photo/Anna Lauer
Tinnie Elizabeth Lattin outside her home on Hermosa Street. Lattin has lived in Pagosa all her life, witnessing the good times and the tough times over the course of nearly nine decades.

Photo courtesy Tinnie Lattin.
Tinnie Lattin’s parents, Leona and Brenzel Conner, on their wedding day. The Lattins ranched in the Upper Blanco Basin and moved to Pagosa Springs a few years before Tinnie’s birth in 1920.

Tinnie Lattin: A Lifetime in Pagosa

Tinnie E. Lattin has lived in Pagosa Springs since the day she was born — 88 years ago.

That means that, since 1920, Lattin has witnessed every development, every change, every gain and every loss in Archuleta County for nearly a century, but the best thing about a conversation with Mrs. Lattin (née Conner) goes beyond the historically interesting content, to the timeless satisfaction of finding oneself in good company.

Sitting in Lattin’s small, sunny kitchen in the house where she’s lived on Hermosa Street since 1954, the kind and sage Pagosa native pieced together for The SUN a sort of motion picture for the mind’s eye, of an ever-evolving Pagosa Springs, from the first part of the 20th century on through to today.

In 1920, Mary Leona Conner (née Teeson) and Brenzel Frank Conner became the proud new parents of Tinnie Elizabeth Lattin, in a small house on a ranch that used to sit just down the hill from the current KWUF radio station headquarters. Mary Leona and Brenzel Frank had moved to Pagosa a few years before from the Upper Blanco Basin, where both of their families owned ranches.

“I suppose they moved into town on account of the snow,” Lattin said.

“Out in the Blanco there were always such harsh winters, and it made living hard. So my parents moved into town and we’ve been here ever since.” Nowadays, though, Tinnie is the only member of the Conner family left in Pagosa. Her living relatives have left the Southwest for California and the Front Range of Colorado.

Lattin’s father was a teacher. For years, he traveled to Chromo and to other places in the area to teach children of all grades in one-room schoolhouses. Tinnie attended school in Pagosa, but she remembers that, back in those days, just getting to school was quite a task for her father’s students in Chromo. The school there was on one side of the Navajo River and most of the kids lived on the other side, she said. Her father used to try to race across the one bridge, which was situated a good distance from the schoolhouse, to the other side of the river in his Model-T Ford, before the children could carry out their earnest intent to wade through the chest deep water to get to the school. He didn’t want them to be wet and cold for the school day, but sometimes they’d just go ahead and walk across the river, anyway, Lattin said, laughing.

Her father’s days as a rural school teacher were numbered, however. For, in 1925, when Lattin was just five years old, Brenzel Frank died, and the Conner family was obliged to rearrange their lifestyle to make ends meet.

“My brother (Frank Edwin Conner) and I went to school during the day, and we worked odd jobs — whatever we could find — in the evenings and on weekends. My mother worked at any job she could get, as well, and so it was my sister (Leona Conner) that stayed home and did all the cooking and housework,” Lattin said. To hear her tell about it, though, this was by no means a case of woebegone children working themselves to the bone just to put food on the table. In fact, Tinnie has quite fond memories of the smorgasbord of odd jobs she took to earn pennies to help support her family.

“I think the first thing I ever did,” she said, “was pedal my grandfather’s garden vegetables down at the Hot Springs Resort.” Even back then, a resort was a popular destination for tourists and residents alike. “It was fun work selling vegetables there, but getting there was really a task. My grandfather’s farm was down by the river, at the bottom of a steep hill, we used to have to climb up over the hill to get to the road to town. My grandfather would be carrying the basket, and he would say ‘Now, don’t you look down in the river’– just keep your eyes on the trail.’ Oh we always made it in the end,” she was quick to say, “but it sure was chancy.”

Lattin’s string of gainful employment through the following years included babysitting for local families, wrapping butter at the long-since-closed Pagosa Creamery, operating the switchboard for the Pagosa Telephone Company (the very switchboard she once controlled can now be viewed at the Pagosa Historical Museum) and working as a salesgirl at the old Hersch Mercantile, which sold food and clothing.

For fun, Lattin said, there were town league baseball games on a baseball field where Seeds of Learning now sits. And, in fact, Lattin and her brother played their own share of pick-up baseball games when they weren’t watching the league competitions.

And then, too, there were always the dances up at Sunetha. Sunetha, Lattin explained was the area now known as Fairfield. “The ‘sun’ was for Sullenberger, the ‘ne’ for Newton and the ‘tha’ stood for ‘Thatcher.’ Those were the names of the three gentlemen that used to own that whole huge area up there,” Lattin stated. “It used to be all big, beautiful ranches and lots of sheep. And there would be dances up in the Pine Grove Dance Hall across from where the Pagosa Lodge is now. We would all go and have a couple of dances and then come back home,” Lattin reminisced. “But then everything changed. New people moved in and things just weren’t quite as good as they used to be. I guess everything changes sometime,” was Lattin’s inevitable conclusion. According to her, Sunetha was sold off and broken into much smaller parcels of land and it became known as “Eaton’s “for a time. “And now it’s really all cut up and what not, and it’s called Fairfield now,” she said.

In spite of all the part-time jobs she held down, and in spite of her baseball playing and dance-hall-going ways, Lattin managed to finish the 10th grade and then earn her GED. At the age of 16, she married her first husband Nathan Richard Caldon and gave birth to her only child, Frank Richard Caldon. After a time, she and Caldon divorced, and Tinnie then married Earl Lee Roy Lattin in 1940.

In 1948, Tinnie streamlined her streak of assorted jobs into a hard and fast career as Archuleta County Treasurer, a post she would hold until her retirement, 42 years later. To be precise, she was deputy treasurer from 1948-1950, and in 1950 she was officially elected to be the head treasurer. Although Lattin is much too modest about her life and work to sing her own praises, one cannot help but realize, through the course of a conversation with her, that she did her job well, and that Archuleta County was very much the better for the savvy and deep sense of service that she brought to the position.

“I used to really love getting out to see all the people while campaigning for the treasurer election,” Lattin remembered. Much of the time when she held the job, candidates were re-elected every two years. “But that was really the best part, I made so many friends and had such a nice time going around and getting to know the people, and asking them to vote for me.” Lattin was even the president of the Colorado Treasurer’s Association for the year of 1976. “Keeping track of the whole state’s doings was kind of a worry, but I sure did enjoy it,” Lattin said. “I was so lucky to have a job where I got to work with so many wonderful people. I’d like to say I appreciate all the people that voted for me and kept me in office, both living or deceased, I love them all and God bless them all.”

When pressed about the changes Pagosa has seen, and whether she misses the way it used to be, Lattin just smiled and said again, “Well sure, I miss some things. It’s not like the old times, but things just can’t stay the same all the time. Things change.”

In most every discernible way, Lattin has been a model citizen, a pillar of the Pagosa community.

In parting, however, she did let us in on her one bad little tendency: “I have an awful habit, I can’t shake hands with people, I just have to put my arms around them and give them a big hug,” she said smiling. It seems, upon examination, that even Lattin’s bad habit is a pretty wonderful thing.

Photos courtesy Ed Furtaw
Pagosa ultramarathoner, Ed Furtaw, 60, is shown running in the most ultra of all ultramarathons, Tennessee’s Barkley Marathons, and training in Pagosa Country. Furtaw, who regards running as a much-more-than-physical activity, is planning Pagosa’s first-ever ultramarathon, or “ultra fun run,” for October in the Devil Mountain area west of Pagosa Springs.

Frozen Head Ed

Running as a spiritual process

“Running isn’t just something to do,” says local ultramarathoner, Ed Furtaw, “it’s a metaphor for life itself: You set a goal, train yourself to meet the goal, then you do it. Long distance running is a sport for optimists, you have to believe in yourself, to believe that you can do something that sounds impossible at first, and then becomes possible because you make it so.”

Furtaw’s fellow Pagosans will soon have a couple of chances to share in this chasing (in the literal sense of actually running after something) of impossible dreams. First, there will be Pagosa’s annual Duathlon, held July 12 in the Turkey Springs/Brockover Mesa area. Furtaw is a co-organizer of this yearly running and mountain biking event, which raises funds for the local non-profit Archuleta County Victim Assistance Program. Later in the year, for those who really want to push their limits, Furtaw is planning an “ultra fun run,” slated for the month of October in the Devil, Middle and Chris Mountain area west of town.

According to Furtaw, the Pagosa Duathlon is, to date, the closest thing Pagosa has to an endurance event. It’s a chance for people to challenge themselves and have a great time doing it, says Furtaw.

But now, with the autumn Devil Mountain ultrarun he’s looking to up the ante. Communities can benefit hugely from big endurance events, Furtaw told The SUN. For example, the Leadville 100, an ultramarathon in, over and through some of Colorado’s tallest mountains, started off small and now draws an international field of competitors, as well as spectators each year. Furtaw said he can imagine the same sort of visitor boom resulting from a well-planned ultramarathon event in our area. We have all the ingredients needed to put on a world-class event, he said.

Furtaw speaks from experience, to be sure. Since his first race in 1978 at age 30 (a five-miler in Nashville, Tenn.) he has run in hundreds of races. And the vast majority weren’t your average five-mile community jog through Nashville, either. The same year that Furtaw started running, and completed his five-mile race, he also finished his first marathon. “It was quite an emotional experience, not just physical punishment,” he recalled. But, the 26.2 mile-brand of physical punishment and emotion-evoking experience wasn’t enough to satiate this runner. Hence, the ultramarathoning habit that now anchors Furtaw’s life in a series of challenge — accomplishment — new challenge sequences.

Twenty-six years ago, in 1983, he ran his first “ultramarathon,” which generally describes any race that exceeds the traditional marathon distance, but often means that participants run for distances of at least 50 to 100 miles. Since his completion of that first 50-miler, called the Mountain Masochist in Blue Ridge, Va., in 1983, Furtaw has entered 113 ultramarathon competitions; of those, he has completed 95. Yes, 95.

We’re talking some serious running. To get a sense of the literal lengths that Furtaw will go to in order to surpass his expectations of himself, we need look no further than the story of Furtaw and the Barkley Marathons.

In a sport like ultramarathoning that many people see as crazier than say, hunting for leprechauns in a swamp while wearing high heels, the so-called Barkley Marathons is in a class by itself. In fact, it even gained that official categorization by Ultrarunning Magazine — the experts in crazy-long distances. Tia Bodington, editor of the magazine explained why they listed this race, made up of multiple loops around the State Park and Natural Area of Frozen Head in the Cumberland Mountains in eastern Tennessee, is not to be rivaled by any other, “The Barkley exemplifies trying something that initially seems beyond capability,” she said. “And for many, many runners, it really is beyond their capability. That’s part of the wonderful challenge of it.”

Because the course is 100 miles long, and because it obliges runners to route-find for the entire unmarked course, and because they must bushwhack through some of the thickest vegetation in the country, ford multiple streams and run in the dark, and because to accompany the dark, there is usually thick fog to find one’s way through, and because those wishing to say they’ve “finished” the race must complete these 100 impossible miles in a time limit of 60 hours, and because very, very few participants have managed to finish in the allotted time, and because sometimes, when someone does manage to finish, the race director makes the course a bit harder the following year, he Barkley Marathons are the ultramarathon to top all ultramarathons.

“One of the reasons to do a race is to see how much endurance you have,” said Furtaw, “Since most runners finish most ultramarathons they start, they are using a measuring stick that is smaller than they are. But the Barkley is the biggest measuring stick known to running. To me that’s intriguing, knowing I can’t possibly finish those particularly hard 100 miles in 60 hours. But, I do know I can go there and run until I can’t run anymore. Run myself out before I run out of race. To know I can attempt a challenge I can’t conquer. Not everybody likes confronting their own limits and failing. Some people hate the Barkley because of that. But some people, like me, go back again and again.”

Furtaw was the first person ever to officially finish the Barkley Marathons, 20 years ago, back in the race’s third year. At that point it was a 55-mile race and the time limit was 36 hours. Not long after Furtaw achieved this seemingly impossible task, the fabled creator and director of the Barkley Marathons, Gary Cantrell announced that the race from then on would be a 100-miler with a time limit of 60 hours. “It’s been an evolution of both the runners and the course,” Cantrell told The SUN. “We always want to give them something that’s finishable, but just out there barely on the edge,” he said, in his unassuming and laughing Tennessee lilt.

Furtaw explained how he managed to reach that initial 55 mile “edge” that Cantrell laid out. “In the first two years of the race,” said Furtaw, “I learned I needed to study the course in advance, so I took up the sport of orienteering in order to train myself to find landmarks in the backcountry.” With the Barkley, the sheer act of running for miles and miles is not even half the battle. You must orienteer, you must nurse your own wounds, you must fight mental demons single-handedly, because no cheery race volunteers are there to keep them at bay. It is the quintessential “unsupported” race. You are your only hope.

When looked upon that way, it is easy to see why Furtaw considers running to be a spiritual process. “It is the notion of self-transcendence,” he said, “overcoming limits. For me, ‘spiritual’ means that something encompasses the whole person. The physical, the emotional, the mental. It is about willpower and it connects a person to everything else.”

According to Cantrell, Furtaw’s win and repeat appearances at the race each year have earned him the nickname, “Frozen Head Ed,” as the race is run in Frozen Head State Park. Some non-runners would say, perhaps, that his head has never unfrozen and that is why he continues on with this folly. But those who know the joy of running know that running is a way to get lost in the mysteries of the universe. And then to find your way back home. On foot.

The ancient Greeks, for example, Furtaw pointed out, would probably have loved the Barkley Marathons. The Greek god Sisyphus was condemned by the other gods, to eternally roll a big boulder to the top of a mountain, then the rock would roll back down, and he had to go and roll it right back up again. His fate was the futility of knowing he had to do something he couldn’t ultimately complete and having to do it anyway, forevermore. “That’s what I like about the Barkley,” said Furtaw, “It’s about how far you can you go until you just can’t go any further.”

It’s not about completion, it’s about endlessness.

A note to readers who had been feeling excited about Pagosa’s first organized ultrarun, and then gotten unexcited as they read about the slog that is the Barkley: The 50 kilometer (30 mile) Pagosa Devil Mountain Ultramarathon or “ultra fun run,” will be crazy on a much more earthly level, that is to say that it is projected to be an entirely finishable race. For more information about the October ultra fun run, you can email Ed Furtaw at”efurtaw@centurytel.net.

And you can get your training in for ultra events this summer by participating in the Pagosa Duathlon on July 12. For more information about that event, visit www.acvap.org.

Photo courtesy Wilma Sawatzky
Wilma Sawatzky sits surrounded by children — and a chicken — from the Kewanyama family, in the house that Hopi Connection volunteers have begun restoring. New windows to replace broken ones like the one in this photo are just some of the many construction materials Hopi Connection needs to repair the family’s home.

Photo courtesy Wilma Sawatzky
Elder Eldon Kewanyama and organization founder Wilma Sawatzky, center, gather for a photo with other Kewanyama family members. This family is one of the many families Hopi Connection has been able to help since the nonprofit was founded in 2001.

The Hopi Connection

Building connections, a ceiling, a floor, some walls … and more

Not every volunteer laborer gets the opportunity to contribute to the upkeep of a hundreds year-old Native American pueblo, but volunteers for Pagosa nonprofit, Hopi Connection get to do just that.

Since 2001 — the year that local retiree Wilma Sawatzky founded Hopi Connection — local volunteers have offered many forms of assistance to residents of the Hopi reservation in northeastern Arizona. And in exchange for donations of goods, time and services, Pagosans have received rich opportunities to bear witness to the Hopi culture that still celebrates some of the most ancient traditions alive in the United States.

The Hopi are exceptional in their commitment to their inherited practices, according to Hopi Connection volunteer, Carol Otis. “Compared with some other Native tribes, they work especially hard and believe very much in preserving their original structures, traditions, values and language,” said Otis. “They’re idealistic and peaceful.” Indeed, Sawatzky chimed in, “The word Hopi means peaceful.”

On April 30, volunteers will again make the six-hour car journey to the reservation, not only to bring donations of clothing, household goods and furniture, but also to complete a home restoration project they began last year.

It came to Sawatzky’s attention a few years ago that a Hopi family home in the Shungopovi village on the reservation was badly in need of repair. The Hopi pueblo is an amalgamation of ancient stone dwellings and newer concrete block buildings. Many of the structures both old and newer are in a state of disrepair. “The ceiling was rotting from the roof down,” recalled Sawatzky. “There were terrible leaks, and parts of the ceiling were falling down into the house. It was a terribly unhealthy situation for the family.” So, last year, with volunteer recruits Bill Newell and Ken Jones acting as construction foremen, Hopi Connection replaced the roof on the home where grandfather Eldon Kewanyama lives with his many relatives.

According to Otis, the house repair and improvement projects on the reservation are at once vital to the families and meaningful to the volunteers, because many Hopi dwellings house generation upon generation of family members.

On their next trip at the end of April, volunteers plan to finish improvements on the Kewanyama home by installing a new ceiling, drywall, flooring, kitchen fixtures and bathroom plumbing. An ambitious plan, perhaps, to be accomplished in just three to four days, but Sawatzky and Otis are unfazed. A couple of volunteers from St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church have offered to oversee construction, and Sawatzky and Otis are already busy tracking down the many building supplies needed for the project. Pagosa’s The Paint Connection has donated many gallons of paint for this and other reservation projects. In addition, for the Kewanyama house, Hopi Connection is seeking donations of, or bargains on, windows, sheetrock, a bathroom tub and sink, floor linoleum and other construction materials. They are also still in need of funds to purchase further supplies for the project.

Somehow, Hopi Connection has managed large-scale efforts before, and so there should be no doubt that they’ll do it again. In 2007, for example, the nonprofit managed to raise enough funding to purchase a mobile home for the displaced Nanacia family. Before obtaining their mobile home with help from Hopi Connection, this family of five was living with six relatives in a two-bedroom mobile home. According to the Hopi Connection summer newsletter, the parents Caldon and Yolanda Nanacia were happy and proud to finally have a home in which to raise their children. “Our home is your home. Please come anytime,” the Nanacias told volunteers as they parted.

Welcoming words like those are part of what keep Hopi Connection volunteers invested in the work they are doing. “What I love so much about Hopi Connection is that it’s all heart. The organization’s structure helps us never lose track of why we do this, and why we care about the people we do this for. It’s simple and direct work,” Otis told The SUN.

Plans for serving the Hopi people go way beyond the projected April house renovation. Sawatzky and Otis are eager and steadfast about all the things they have in store. Pagosa garage sales will be held this summer to raise funds; more trips will be made in the coming months to deliver clothing, furniture and other donations to the reservation; school supplies will be gathered and distributed before fall; farm tools will be delivered to assist the Hopi in keeping their ancient farming traditions flourishing; the “Holiday Express” delivery of hundreds of holiday gifts (wrapped in handmade fabric gift bags sewn by Judy Cramer) to the tribe will know many more festive seasons, and on and on. People like Dennis Spencer, of the local company Frontier Movers, step in from time to time with unexpected help for the transport of all of these many goods. Recently, Spencer donated not only his large moving truck to deliver a record supply of donations, but he also drove the truck to the reservation himself. As Otis said, “People do the most extraordinary things for this organization, it’s very touching.”

Hopi Connection also is keeping a dream alive to once again offer a health clinic for aging tribe members on the reservation. In the past, the organization has been able to drum up enough medical service providers, and bodywork experts (like longtime volunteer Rebecca Cortez, who offered massage therapy) to host a free clinic for elderly Hopis. Subsequent attempts to find enough volunteer health providers to make the journey have failed, so the Hopi Connection Health Clinic is currently on hiatus. Sawatzky said, though, that she would love to see it happen again. “The health clinics we offered were incredibly satisfying and fun.”

Otis told the story of one elderly woman who had been experiencing a lot of pain before the clinic. She received a massage from a volunteer and the woman was put at such ease that she felt asleep right there on the massage table. “We just covered her up with a blanket and let her sleep,” Otis said. The health clinics with all those wonderful older people are wonderful, she concluded. “We all just laugh together the whole time.”

Additionally, the nonprofit organization offers Pagosans a unique opportunity to purchase authentic Hopi basketry, pottery, weavings, kachina dolls and jewelry from Hopi artisans.

Hopi Connection volunteers are honored, they say, to play a small role in the preservation of a culture they so esteem. As the Hopi Tribe Cultural Preservation Office says, it is critical to protect “Hopi wisdom that over the centuries has helped it to survive as a wellspring of social and spiritual nourishment for our future generations and the world at large.”

For more information on how you can get involved in the April 30-May 3 repair project of the Kewanyama home, or how to donate construction materials, you can e-mail Carol Otis at cotis56281@aol.com.

Donations of clothing, school supplies, farm tools, furniture or household goods can be dropped off at Airport Storage during business hours — just mention to employees that the donations are for Hopi Connection. The phone number for Airport Storage is (970) 731-2230.

If you would like more general information about Hopi Connection and future projects, or if you would like a brochure of artisan wares for sale from Hopi artists, call Hopi Connection director Wilma Sawatzky at (970) 731-4846.