I drive north to White Mountain Apache country, where I pass by the spaceship that brought Vincent Craig to earth and am greeted by Wild Woman

I knew that it was going to be a challenge to get a post up yesterday, but I had a plan and I thought it would work. I would take a few pictures with my iPhone from the car as I drove between Phoenix and Globe. I would get lunch in Globe and afterward would take a little time to make a post from my iPhone that would include some of those images. 

So here I am, following that plan, taking a picture of a Saguaro cactus as I cross the desert a bit beyond Phoenix.

And here I am, about to exit the tunnel that goes through a low mountain just north of Superior.

Now I am in Miami, a mining town just a few miles from Globe.

Miami, Arizona, as seen from my iPhone while I waited at a stoplight.

It had been years since I had eaten at a Jack-in-the-Box, possibly even a decade, although I doubt it. When we lived down here and had to travel often between Whiteriver and Phoenix, Margie and I would often stop here with the kids, so I decided that Jack-in-the Box would be where I would buy my lunch. Then I would put my blog together in my iPhone.

Now I am in Globe, passing by churches.

This is the last picture that I took in Globe. I then bought my Jack-in-the-Box hamburger. After, I opened up the Squarespace ap in my iPhone and set about to post my entry. I had used the iPhone to make a post once before, just a few days ago, but that post had no pictures in it.

But Squarespace has a horrible ap, and, after great struggle that resulted in not single picture being visible in my post, despite having been loaded, I gave up and drove north. From here on, I shoot with my pocket camera.

Here I am, going down the highway that winds its way through Salt River Canyon. Everything that you see to the left of the river is the San Carlos Apache Reservation, to the right - the north, is the Fort Apache Indian Reservation, home to Margie's White Mountain Apace Tribe.

In an earlier post that I made about Vincent, I recounted, among other things, the story of how I accompanied him on a rescue of a woman who had fallen on a cliff in this canyon and had broken her leg. That event took place up around a couple of the bends that you see before you.

Now I am on the White Mountain side, drawing near to Margie's home village of Carrizo. I will stop in Carrizo to see her mom, but she will not be home.

Now I am entering Whiteriver, passing by the old airport. When Dustinn was small, his dad would sometimes drive him past the airport and would show him the windsock extended in the wind. That was the spaceship that had brought him to earth, he would tell Dustinn.

One day, it would take him back again.*

This is the Whiteriver house where Margie and I lived. Jacob was a baby when we first moved in. Caleb soon followed and then Rex. Melanie came a bit later. Lisa was born in Alaska.

As I leave Whiteriver, this horse crosses the road in front of me. I drive on up the hill toward Hon-Dah.

Here I am in Hon-Dah, pulling into the driveway of Margie's sister, LeeAnn, where I am first greeted by her dog, originally named, "Wild Woman." When LeeAnn would step outside to call her in, she would shout, "Wild Woman! Wild Woman!"

She began to fear that someone might misinterpret the meaning of her shout, so she gave Wild Woman the nickname Wylie and that is the name she now shouts to call her in.

Next, Famous comes to greet me.

Wylie Wild Woman and Famous.

LeeAnn and Chewy. LeeAnn has rescued many, many, dogs over the years, several on the edge of death. She now has six dogs living with her.

Regular readers are familiar with the cradleboard that Jobe sleeps in and before that, the one that Kalib used. LeeAnn is the artist who made them, a talent passed on to her from her mother, Rose.

As you can see, I am way behind on my blogging. It has not been easy conditions to blog under and I have had unexpected tasks to deal with long-distance back in Alaska that have eaten up the time that I could have blogged.

And I have spent a lot of time just visiting.

I still fully intend to make a good tribute to Vincent. This will begin with my next post.

*I should note that this is stand-in windsock. Back then, there was a large, triangular, one that did, indeed, bear a strong resemblance to a spaceship.

In the interlude, I take a walk to Riverview Park

Yesterday, the Craig family gathered at the home of Dustinn, Vincent and Mariddie's eldest son, to decide where and when the various events and services would be held. The final decision was that a visitation will take place Thursday from 1:00 to 8:00 PM at the local Fort Apache Branch of the Mormon Church. That chapel is too small to accommodate all the guests expected to attend the funeral, so the services will be held the following morning at 10:00 AM at the large Pinetop-Lakeside Mormon Stake Center in Lakeside, a town just beyond the border of the Fort Apache Indian Reservation, home to the White Mountain Apache Tribe.

After the service, a funeral procession will work its way 25 miles down the winding highway that descends the White Mountains into Whiteriver, where Vincent will be buried with full military honors. Vincent is Navajo, but, like my wife Margie, Mariddie is Apache and it is in Whiteriver that the couple and their family has spent most of their life. One can be certain, however, that many Navajos will be present, along with members of other tribes and plenty of non-Indians, too.

Afterward, there will be a feast at the Fort Apache chapel.

Just before the family meeting began, there was a feast at Dustinn's house. As the older people visited, Taikayah, a granddaughter to Vincent and Mariddie through Mariddie's cousin Alicia, hula-hooped in the backyard.

As evening approached, I took a walk toward Riverview Park, just a few blocks from Dustinn's house. A jet, on final approach to Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, passed overhead.

I found four softball diamonds, with a game going on each one.

A jet flew over the game as well. 

Not far away, a saguaro cactus stood tall as still another in an endless procession of jets slipped down toward the runway.

It was the kind of evening I have not seen in years. Not blistering hot as Phoenix can be at this time of year, but very warm, with twilight rapidly chasing the setting sun and then darkness coming in behind that.

It does not happen this way in Alaska. 

The feeling was pleasant yet, given the events of the past 24 hours and my state of mind, ethereal and strange.

A boy ran around the edge of the man-made pond at Riverview Park.

After the walk, I returned. I had a press release to write, but Dustinn and I stayed up into the morning hours, talking. He showed me many of his photos and video clips, including footage from his father's final performance February 6 at the Tahon O'Odhama Tribal Fair in Sells, Arizona. 

In the footage, Vincent looked very weak and peaked, but extremely determined to get out there, be Vincent Craig and please his audience - which he did. The emotion between he and his audience was strong. Dustinn also showed me several images from the project that he has been doing for years on young Apache skateboard enthusiasts. He employed many of these same young men to fill the roles of Apache men in the feature length film on the Chiricahua Apache Geronimo that he created for the PBS series, American Experience.

These tend to be young men who find it hard to find their place in modern society, but they do find it with their skateboards and with each other. They wear baggy pants and dress the same as do skateboarders in the big cities. Dustinn showed many pictures of them with their skateboards - and then also dressed in the type of clothing worn by the Apache Scouts of the later 19th century.

It was an amazing transformation. They looked the part. In my opinion, in his skateboard series, Dustinn is in the process of creating an exceptionally powerful story. When he is ready to show it to the world, I will provide links. In his efforts to work with these young men, who, I can see from his photos, respect and admire him, he reminds me of his father.

Now, it is late the next day and I have been diverted by many things, from the need to write a simple press release that proved very difficult for me to complete, to a strange, bizarre and time-consuming process to pick up a rental car and, after I did, to making a couple of wrong turns and then wandering around for far too long, always close to but seemingly never to reach my destination - but I did.

Soon, I must drive north, to the White Mountains, in my rental car. I do not have the time to begin the series of remembrances of Vincent Craig that I had planned to begin today. I hope to start tomorrow.

Vincent Craig - his was a challenging, beautiful, rich, life, well-lived: 1950 - 2010

I woke up this morning to the tragic-comic tune of a song being performed only in my head, sung in an intentionally exaggerated Navajo accent to the accompaniment of acoustic guitar chords rapidly struck. These were the first words that I heard: “I told her that I wanted to marry her but she said ‘you’ve got to steal the candy bar…’”

My friend, Vincent Craig, is gone. The words that I heard in his voice come from his famous ballad about a young man who loved Rita so passionately that he did steal the candy bar and so wound up in the Window Rock jail.

It was my heartbreak and privilege to be in the room with Vincent and his family just minutes after he exhaled his final, peaceful, breath. All present were related to him either by blood or marriage and that includes me, as his brother, Emerson, is my brother-in-law. It is Emerson who holds his brother’s hand earlier in the day in the photo above. For the past 35 years, this family has shared the great, wonderful, talented, funny-yet-deeply probing man that was Vincent Crair with his legions of fans all across Indian Country, USA, but now they wanted him for themselves.

So I took no pictures and I will not now describe what I saw except to say that, yes, it was mournful, bitterly sad and I was struck by that feeling one gets at such moments, that feeling about how there is no fairness in this life. It hurt deeply, even more to see the pain felt by his wife Mariddie, his children, grandchildren, brothers, sister and other relatives. 

Yet...

I also saw great beauty in that room, and felt a strong sense of awe and power.

The beauty was that of love, for Vincent Craig was a man of love and all present were bound by love - love for him, love for each other, love that will carry them through the sorrow that his departure leaves behind. There was awe and power, because although the silent beauty of his presence still lingered over his still and quiet body, he had passed through this stage of his journey; he had moved from a challenging life lived well and full into that which waits beyond.

Those left behind expressed faith that they would one day again resume that journey with him.

As for me, in death Vincent left me with the feeling that I wanted to live a better life than that I have been living, that I wanted to be a better man than I have yet been, that I wanted to spend more time with my wife and to hold her in my arms and to let her know that despite my perpetually erring and wayward ways I love and cherish her ever so dearly.

I wanted to do better with my children than I ever have done, and to bring the same kind of love, joy and devotion to my grandchildren that I could see Vincent brought to his.

Perhaps on this final count, I can yet succeed - although Vincent Craig left a very high standard to match.

The bed upon which I awoke was a cot inside the house of Vincent’s oldest son, Dustinn, the filmmaker whose works you may have seen on PBS. The cot was placed in his office, surrounded by computer, video and still photography equipment, and a library filled with books on Apache and Navajo history and culture, gathered as research both for his past and future projects.

Along with Vincent’s song, I could also hear the muted sounds of jets, approaching and departing Sky Harbor Airport, of air being driven by the fan that hangs suspended from the ceiling above me and of traffic, barely heard, passing by on nearby University Avenue.

Otherwise, it was quiet in the house. I immediately opened up my laptop and began to write this, because I knew it would not be long until people began to appear and gather and my attention would then be taken elsewhere.

As I neared the end of this write up, I heard the small sound of chords being rapidly struck on an unplugged electric guitar. Although very different, the sound strongly reminded of that of Vincent playing “Rita.”

I stepped away from this computer and passed through the door of this office into the dining room and this is what I found, Vincent’s grandson, Kraig, playing his guitar.

“What are you playing?” 

“Nothing, really,” he answered. “Just a random progression of chords.”

Since I arrived here about 24 hours ago, I have heard many great stories about Vincent from his family members. It may take me a few days or I may do it in pieces over days, but I will post a tribute to Vincent based on such memories.

On a snowy day in Wasilla, I write a bit about my friend, Vincent Craig, who battles cancer down in Arizona

It was a good snowy day here in Wasilla. As I have stated, due to the fact that I have a great deal to do and have worn myself down a bit, it has been my intention to blog light probably all week. So today, I took a few pictures of the snow from the car as I went to pick up Royce's new batch of medicine and it was my plan to post two or three, say something insignificant and then get today's blog out of the way.

But then a request came to me on Facebook from Maridee Craig, the wife of my good friend Vincent Craig, through their son, the filmmaker Dustinn Craig.

With the support of his family and friends, Vincent is fighting a tough cancer. Vincent is well-known in Arizona and elsewhere in US Indian Country for his talent as a cartoonist and a song-writer performer and so Maridee - who is also my cherished friend - asked that I write a little story about him for The Fort Apache Scout, the newspaper of the White Mountain Apache Tribe.

So I did. Although I sat down to do it at about 10:00 PM, I did not actual start to write until a bit after midnight, because I put some of his music on my office stereo and I could not write while it was playing. All I could do was sit there and think, remembering the days when those songs were young and so were we.

I finished writing it just after 3:30 AM. It is now 4:32 AM.

So, although it will make this a fairly long entry word wise, I am going to put what I wrote in here. Few, if any, readers of the Fort Apache Scout will see it here.

I have many old photographs of Vincent in negative form, but it would take some real doing to find and scan them. I did a search in my computer and the only images that I came up with were four of him with his cat, the late Gato, that I took on a visit that I made to Whiteriver in February, 2002, and another of him with his guitar and harmonica at Jacob and Lavina's wedding in Flagstaff on March 18, 2006.

I have better pictures of him, but these will have to do for now:

As so many years have passed, I write mostly in the past tense, but I must stress that the man I am about to write about is very much alive.

I first met him in February of 1976, shortly after I began my three-and-half year stint as the editor, photographer, reporter and designer of the Fort Apache Scout. He was an ex-marine and a police officer working for the White Mountain Apache Tribe. He was a poet and a musician who, in one song, could sing his own words, play the guitar, the harmonica and the Navajo flute that he made himself.

His shoulders were broad and his chest firm and stout. He had a wife and son, soon to be three sons, and he was active in his church. He was quick to laugh, even at his own jokes – because he knew they were funny, yet there were tears in his heart as well, and they would come out right alongside his humor, in his many songs.

One day, he walked into my office with a big cowboy hat on his head, boots on his feet and laid a stack of his drawings and paintings down upon my desk.

As he led me through them, my first thought was, “Wow! Here is the Navajo Norman Rockwell!” I came to realize that I was wrong. This was Vincent Craig, inimitable, a multi-faceted artist of unique talent, creating in the style of no one but himself, with a talent to dive deep into humor, sorrow, and politics all at once.

He showed me two cartoon characters that he had created – Frybread and Beans. So I hired him to do illustrations, cartoons, and stories too. Soon, his Frybread and Beans became famous all across the reservation.

I have no doubt that even if I had not hired him, Vincent Craig would still have gone on to fame as a cartoonist; he would still have created Mutton Man and made him a regular in the Navajo Times, but I am still proud that I was able to give him his start as a professional cartoonist –  even though he sometimes got me in trouble with tribal politicians.

Yet, what I am most proud of is the fact that he became my friend – not just any friend – but a best friend, one whom none other would ever replace, even though we have since become separated by thousands of miles and decades of years.

We both had Apache wives and children of the same age, so we would get together as families, too. Sometimes, my wife and I would babysit Vincent and Maridee’s boys, Dustinn (who is now making his mark in film and TV production), Nephi and Shilo and sometimes they would babysit ours.

We did many things together and it seemed to me that we shared the same kind of bond as did Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – two popular movie characters of that time period – and I got to see the kind of man that he was.

Vincent has always honored the Elders and in his songs often recalled what they had taught him. He is the son of the late Bob Craig, who, as a Navajo Code Talker, had waded through human flesh and blood on Iwo Jima and had played a vital role in the defeat of Japan.

Vincent wrote a song about his father and this is the poetry that he used to describe him:

“He’s the son of the Four Directions and the child of the Blessing Ways, raised in the loving arms of his mother’s humanity. Wisdom comes to him through the legends of long ago, told by the man who loved the wandering eyes of a little child. My daddy was a code-talking man. With Uncle Sam’s Marines, he spoke on the whistling wind, during the time of man’s inhumanity…”

His desire to be of service to children and youth was strong. He organized the first skate-boarding event ever held in the White Mountain Apache nation.

I once accompanied him and his Apache boy scouts on a camping and hiking trip inside the Navajo Nation. We hiked across miles upon miles of red rock and desert and it grew blazing hot. Some of the scouts thrived in the environment, but others grew tired and wanted to quit. Vincent kept his sense of humor and gentle but determined disposition. He did not scold, he did not chide, but he kept those boys going and when evening came and the air cooled to more pleasant levels, they were proud of what they had accomplished.

Some experiences with youth were hard. There was the boy who had gotten drunk at a new tribal complex that included a small mall, grocery store, movie theatre and swimming pool and had run off into night and disappeared.

In time, a search was launched and Vincent led it. I followed along.

Vincent spotted the body on the rocks alongside the White River at the bottom of the sheer cliffs that dropped nearly 200 feet into the deep canyon cut out by the river just across the highway from complex.

Vincent climbed and rappelled out of sight down the cliff. After he reached the bottom, I felt the vibrations travel up the rope as Vincent removed it from himself and it went slack. Soon, there were more vibrations as he tied the rope to what I assumed was the boy. Then he gave a good firm tug as the signal that it was time to pull the load up. A small number of us began to pull that rope up but the load was so light that I thought perhaps it was not the boy, but only whatever belongings he had taken off the cliff with him.

But it was the boy.

Soon, Vincent was back atop the cliff, lending his calm and knowing shoulder to weeping, shrieking, relatives. Another time, he descended into in an empty shed-sized water or fuel tank to the body of another boy who had died huffing gasoline fumes. A second boy was pulled out alive but brain-damaged, shrieking gibberish, the great potential that he had been born with destroyed. A third boy came out basically okay – but with such a burden to carry.

Once I and enough men to carry a litter followed Vincent on a long hike through darkness along the Salt River and then up the steep grade of one of the many streams that cascade down the cliffs and slopes of the canyon walls. It was a hard hike, because there were many rocks of all sizes to stumble over and we walked through rattlesnake habitat, but a woman had fallen off one of those cliffs, had broken her leg and needed to be rescued before shock overcame her.

Finally, we reached the ledge upon which she lay. She was blond, alert, in great pain but happy to see us.

What followed was a true physical ordeal, but after we got her down the cliff and then carried her in the litter for many hours through the darkness and then into the daylight, Vincent told stories, made jokes – and kept everyone, even the injured lady in good spirits. She even laughed, frequently.

He would often make us laugh: me, my wife, his wife, others gathered together with us at church or other socials as he played his guitar and made his music, but in that music the deep seriousness in his soul did also come through.

Leading in first with his flute in a minor key, followed by his harmonica as he finger-picked his acoustic guitar, this is how Vincent would describe the infamous and tragic removal under Kit Carson of the Navajo from their abundant homeland to the bleakness of the Basque Redondo.

“My grandfather used to take me to the mountains in my youth and there he would tell me the legends of long ago. Between the four sacred mountains we lived in harmony and now you tell me that we’ve got to go, because someone drew a line...

“Hey Mr. President, can’t you see what is going on, they’ve taken the heart and soul from the land, because someone drew a line…”

About the time we would all be fighting tears, he would switch to his tragic-comic ballad, Rita, which begins, “I met poor Rita down by the graveyard yesterday and she told me that she would love me all of the day. And then I told her that I wanted to marry her but she said you’ve got to steal the candy bar…”

Then, nearly 30 years ago, I took my Apache wife and children to Alaska. The visits that I have made with Vincent in the time since can be counted on my fingers – probably of one hand.

In that same time, Mutton Man became popular across the Navajo Nation and Vincent became in-demand as a performer and humorist not only in the Southwest but across Indian Country.

This point was brought home to me one morning when I sat in Pepe’s North of the Border Mexican Restaurant in the Iñupiat Eskimo community of Barrow, Alaska – the farthest north city on the continent. The radio was on, tuned to KBRW. As I ate, I suddenly heard the familiar sound of a flute, followed by harmonica and guitar, and then on to these lyrics, sung in the voice of my friend:

“…because someone drew a line…”

Recently, I learned that Vincent is fighting a cancer strain known as GIST. I have written this article for my old paper, The Fort Apache Scout, at the request of his wife, Maridee, who wants people to know something of the man that her husband is. She wants them to know that he is alive, and that he and his entire family are fighting together as one loving unit to keep him that way. It is the toughest struggle of their lives so far, but it is a struggle of hope.

He has made some performances since he became ill in December, but sometimes he is unable to do so, but not because he doesn't want to. He just needs to work first on his health.

Some misinformation has gotten out there, but there is a fund set up on Vincent’s behalf. Those who wish can donate here:

Wells Fargo Bank

Vincent Craig Donation Fund

Account # 6734185546

To help keep everyone better informed, Vincent and his family recently established a fan page on Facebook.

On February 26, they posted these words, “This morning we had less than 50 fans, and tonight we are up to 662! Thanks everyone for your support, prayers and positivity.”

When I saw the page for the first time this evening, that fan count was up to 2,457. Now it’s 2,458. Well wishes are pouring in.

God be with you, my friend, ‘til we meet again.