The funeral of Vincent Craig, Part 3: Visitation at Fort Apache - mourners weep, but they also laugh

I begin my coverage of the day of Vincent's visitation in the backyard of the home where he and Mariddie raised their three sons and where their grandchildren still come to play. People had gathered here to lend comfort to each other and to the family as they waited for the hearse to bring the body of Vincent down from the mortuary in Lakeside for the viewing at Fort Apache.

Among those present was baby Naaneeya, held in the arms of her Aunt Torri Benaly DuQuesnay. In the English language, Naaneeya would be a second niece to Vincent. By Navajo reckoning, she is a granddaughter.

As they waited, women cooked break and other items over the coals of an open fire. The coals would not be discarded, but in the Apache way would be gathered and put to use the following day just before the funeral would come to its end.

After the hearse arrived, those present lined up along the driveway as the driver backed in, military representatives to the one side, pall-bearers and other civilians to the other. Other veterans, including a special honor guard of former Marines, many who had fought in Vietnam, had already gathered at the Fort Apache LDS chapel to prepare to greet Vincent there.

I rode to the chapel in the vehicle of Vincent's brother, Emerson Craig and two other pall bearers, Norman Pete and Ryan Pete, who sat in the back seat. As he drove slowly along the procession route, Emerson told us of a series of dreams that he had after his father, Bob Craig, Navajo Code Talker who fought at Iwo Jima, died.

In the earlier dreams, his father could not talk, but only gesture. In the later dreams, he let his son know that everything was good with him, he was in a good place and had bears to watch over. Among them was a special bear that he would pat on the head. He believed this to be the same bear whose life he had saved during the days of his youth.

The tear that came down his cheek was for at least two people, his father and his brother.

As the hearse drew near to the driveway to the Fort Apache chapel, an honor guard marched in front, Apache cowboys behind and to the side. A long procession of pickup trucks and cars followed.

As the hearse backed toward the chapel doors, the cowboys formed a line and removed their hats.

Vincent's second oldest son, Nephi, stood with his hand on the chest of his six-year old son, Ari, as Vincent was carried into the chapel.

We carried Vincent past his cartoons.

There were military honors, a prayer and then silence followed. Then, softly came the sound of Navajo flute, followed by harmonica and fingers plucking an acoustic guitar in a minor key. Then came the voice of Vincent Craig, singing these words, "My grandfather used to take me to the mountains in my youth and there he would tell me the stories of long ago. Between the four sacred mountains we lived in harmony but now you tell me that we've got to go, because someone drew a line..."

It was his song, Someone Drew A Line, about the forced removal of the Navajo people from their homeland to the Basque Redondo, where so many died before they were allowed to return.

As all others stepped backed to wait, Vincent's family, including wife Mariddie in the dark-patterned camp dress, his sons and a grandson, gathered beside the casket to look upon this man who had given them life and had then filled their lives with something extraordinary and special.

From that point until the closing prayer, the room would be filled with the sound of Vincent's voice, singing to his own accompaniment on guitar, flute, harmonica, mandolin, keyboard - whatever this artist of multiple talent had felt necessary to convey his message.

Comfort was brought to his wife, Mariddie, who he always called by her middle name, Ann.

Comfort was also gladly accepted by Dustinn, the eldest son of Vincent and Mariddie, and by Mariddie's sister, Charlotte.

An old friend of the family shares some good memories of Vincent with Mariddie.

In her pain, Mariddie also extended comfort - here to her son, Nephi.

Mariddie's cousin, Gretchen Ethelbah sheds some tears as she turns away from the casket. Grief was not limited to family members. As I hope I have made clear in earlier posts, those who loved Vincent for the great gifts that he had brought to them through his music, songwriting, poetry and cartoons number in the legions.

Vincent Craig was one of the most beloved individuals in all of Indian Country.

Despite the solemnity of the event, those who had shed tears for Vincent when they stood beside his open casket smiled as they filed past his cartoons.

And sometimes, they laughed out loud. Of all the pictures I have taken since I left Alaska, if I could somehow show but one to Vincent Craig, this would be it. And I know what he would do. He would laugh - loud and hard.

I grew up hearing that a comic should never laugh at his own jokes. This did not apply to Vincent. He laughed. He always laughed.

Mariddie and her sons Nephi, Shiloh and Dustinn. They continue to share the love they had with husband and father with each other.

During the lunch, Phoebe Nez, a good friend of the family, served acorn stew.

As I was eating my acorn stew, a little head suddenly popped up between me and the table. It was this girl, whose name I do not know, but she stayed close to me throughout lunch, sometimes darting laughingly off, but only to quickly return in surprise fashion. 

Members of the Bylas Marine Veterans Honor Guard from the San Carlos Apache Reservation took their turns standing guard at the head of the casket.

Emerson wraps his arms around his weeping niece, Haily Mae Perry.

One Marine Veteran who could not be present in the flesh to pay his honor and respect was the late Bob Craig, Vincent's father. Yet, if you look closely at the Pendleton blanket draped over the edge of Vincent's coffin, or, better yet, click on this image to see a large version, you will see the words, Codetalker. 

This was a special issue Pendleton blanket, done just for the Navajo Codetalkers. Before his coffin would be closed for burial, this blanket, created for his father, would be wrapped around Vincent, so that it encased him and all that he wore.

In this way, Vincent Craig would go to the grave wrapped in the love of his father.

A Boy Scout who came to pay his respects. As I earlier noted, back in our days together, Vincent organized a boy scout troop and I accompanied them camping and hiking.

I took this image about five-and-a-half hours into the viewing. The room had been packed at the beginning and would be packed at the end. The only time the crowd gathered inside thinned out much at all was during the late afternoon meal.

Nephi and Ari.

In the late evening, just before we returned the body of Vincent to the hearse.

Just about, but not quite done, facing confusion, I take a break to walk five dogs 200 yards

I am very close to having parts three and four* of the funeral ready to post, but nothing is actually ready until it's ready and so far today I have spent the past five hours dealing with a completely unrelated and unexpected matter, the kind of thing that can happen when nine people travel, all to the same destination but at different times, so I am going to save it for tomorrow. 

Instead, so that I do not miss a day of blogging as I did Saturday, I will post these five images of me, walking LeeAnn's dogs. I was a bit nervous about it because five is a lot of dogs to walk at once and I had no confidence that I could keep the two little ones, Chewy and Alfie, both of whom seem very good intentioned but quite scatter-brained, under control. Nor did I have confidence that, if they escaped me and ran off somewhere, they would know how to get back.

So I called LeeAnn and she said as long as I had Chewy on a leash, it would be okay. Chewy was the only one that I need worry about running off.

I found a leash. Sparey, the weiner dog, headed out the door as I was preparing. Soon he returned to the door and impatiently peered back inside, wondering what was taking me so long.

So here we are, the six of us, out walking. It's true, you only see three, Chewy, Sparey and Famous, but there are six, counting me.

Famous, doing his famous walk.  

We had not gone more than 200 yards with Alfie disappeared. This worried me a bit, so I backtracked and found him at the house. I tried again, with two leashes, but then we encountered a gaggle of roaming dogs (and for the English pedantics, I know that gaggle is geese and pack is dogs, but, trust me, this was a gaggle of dogs) and it got pretty chaotic and I had to take everybody home.

I tried a couple of more times, but one thing or another always happened and we never got more than 200 yards from the house.

Later, I was going out the door with Sparey when Chewy, the one who LeeAnn said I did need to worry about, scurried out the door ahead of us. Soon, Chewy was bounding through the woods. I had to bound, too. Chewy did not want to be caught and I could not catch him.

So I called on Shadow. It is easier for him, because he only has to work in two dimensions, whereas I must deal in three. A dog can find more places to escape in three dimensions than it can in two.

It worked. Shadow caught Chewy Shadow and that somehow put flesh Chewy in my arms. I carried him home.

All was well after that.

*I plan to post parts 3 and 4 simultaneously, so if you come back on a link that takes you to one or the other, please be aware that they will both be up.

The funeral of Vincent Craig, Part 2: A few of the physical things he left behind

This has become a bit more difficult for me than I anticipated. After the funeral, burial and lunch Friday, I returned to Hon-Dah intending to get everything posted before I went to bed. I reached LeeAnn's house at about 6:00 PM. She had gone to Phoenix to pick Margie up at the airport and they planned to overnight and spend most of Saturday there, so LeeAnn left me a note on when and how much to feed the dogs and noted that she usually does so at 7:00.

I felt extremely tired, temporarily incapable of doing anything. So I lay down and dozed in and out of a nap for an hour during which time the songs of Vincent Craig, interwoven with the Mormon hymns from my past that had been performed at his funeral, played in my head.

I then got up, fed the dogs, rummaged through LeeAnn's fridge and found the leftovers from a turkey-potato casserole that she had fed me two nights before, along with a salad and some zucchini stuffed with cream cheese. I warmed these in the microwave and fed myself.

Afterwards, I took the dogs on a walk and it was a bit chaotic. Maybe I will tell you about walking those dogs in another post.

I had completely run out of space both in my computer and the external harddrive that I had brought with me and had no place to download the days photos, nor did I have any money, not in cash, not in available credit, to go to Wal-Mart to pick up another harddrive.

So I spent some time in the external hardrive seeking out photo folders that I knew I had copies of back in Wasilla and then, when they added up to enough space to allow me to move the day's take in, I deleted them.

My plan then was to download my photos onto the external drive and work off it, but it is a USB drive, my card reader is USB and I had only one USB cable with me, so I could not. So I selected a number of photo files from within my laptop and then set them to copying into the drive. This took about half-an-hour, during which I did some channel surfing on LeeAnn's TV, but never stayed on any one show for more than a minute or two.

Then I erased the folders that I had copied from my computer, unplugged the external hard drive, plugged in the card reader and started the downloading process.

In time, everything was in my computer, so I drove over to the Hon-Dah Casino, where they have a good, strong, wireless connection. I sat down about 10:15 PM but before I began to edit my pictures, I checked and responded to email and paid a couple of quick visits to a few places on the web.

Finally, at about 11:00 PM, I turned my attention to the editing, thinking that maybe I could get everything done in 4 hours, 3:00 AM, which, as regular readers know, is not an uncommon schedule for me.

But I could not do it. I could not pull up a single photograph on my editor and look at it. I had "hit the wall."

I called Margie in Tempe, where she and LeeAnn had checked into a motel. "Go to bed," she said.

So I did. I slept reasonably well for about four hours, but could not sleep a wink after that.

Why am I telling you this? I don't know. Sometimes, I just put my fingers on the keyboard, not knowing where they are going to go and they just take off and do things like this to me.

I will stop now. Suffice it to say that Saturday was a busy and broken-up day, but I did do an initial photo edit of both days, the visitation and the funeral, and at 2:00 AM this morning, I was organizing the photos that I intended to put in this post - those from the visitation. I was trying to decide what sample image of a Vincent Craig cartoon I should use, what sample image of the photos that were on display and what sample of a Vincent Craig artifact - should it be his saddle? His guitar? His climbing gear? The display of his cowboy hats?

And then it struck me: this is a blog. Why do I need to have just one of each up? I could put a bunch in, and that would give readers familiar with Vincent Craig a reminder of the man they loved and those unfamiliar with him a glimpse that they would not otherwise have.

So I decided that I would go to bed, get up and do just that.. So here is Vincent Craig, as seen through the physical items that he left behind, starting above, on the stage in the LDS church house in Fort Apache, where part of the display of his life had been placed.

A number of his cartoons had been placed on the back wall. This is one that he did when he was working with me at the Fort Apache Scout.

Vincent's rock climbing gear, with a portrait of Vincent and his wife Mariddie, who he always called Ann.

A few of the cartoons hung on the wall.

One of his guitars, and keyboard.

Self-explanatory.

His friend Rich, who played guitar with him just about every week, says this black guitar was his favorite. Vincent's Mandolin.

Vincent Craig's Navajo Superhero, Mutton Man. The sheep herder gained his super powers after he and his herd waded into water contaminated by a uranium mine on the Navajo reservation; a sheep drank the water and the herder ate the sheep. Thus he became, Mutton Man.

Scenes from Vincent's life.

This is another cartoon that he did when he was working with me, well over 30 years ago. Keep in mind that not only legal residents of Hispanic origin could find themselves grilled and harassed under Arizona's controversial new immigration law, but so could Navajos, Apaches and any Native American.

More scenes from the life of Vincent Craig.

Again - self explanatory.

Vincent's saddle and rope.

More scenes from Vincent's life.

His take on the argument about who "discovered" America, Christopher Columbus or the Vikings.

Vincent's cowboy hats.

Several times, during the course of the visitation and then the funeral the next day, I would catch of glimpse of someone off to the side, someone with broad shoulders with the brim of his cowboy hat curled a certain way and, for just a moment I would think...

I need to eat some breakfast now and then I want to take a long walk.

Then I will come back and try to finish parts 3 and 4, to stand as a record for those who loved Vincent but did not get to attend his funeral, for those who did and might want to remember and for those who never knew of him, so that they might wonder and learn.

The Veterans and Apache cowboys who escorted Vincent Craig to his viewing

Early Thursday morning, Vincent Craig was driven by hearse to his home in Whiteriver, where many family and friends had gathered to follow the funeral procession to Fort Apache. I had driven down from Hon-Dah in my rental car, but the protocol was to keep the pallbearers together so when it came time to move out toward Fort Apache, I joined my brother-in-law, Emerson Craig and two others and rode with them. A police escort separated us from the hearse and there were many vehicles in that escort.

As we drew within what I estimate to be about one mile from the Fort Apache Mormon church house, I saw a group of cowboys sitting on horseback ahead in the distance. When the procession reached them, the cowboys fell in behind the hearse. Shortly afterward, an honor guard took their place in front of the hearse and we proceeded on at walking speed.

As we drew near to the chapel, I got out of Emerson's truck and hurried ahead, so that I could capture this moment of honor as Vincent's fellow veterans and these Apache cowboys escorted him to the chapel.

Afterward, we carried him inside for the visitation and viewing. Then, like a river that just kept flowing for seven hours straight, people came by the score, by the hundreds, by the thousands to file past his flag draped coffin to look in and pay honor and tribute to this Navajo-Marine-cowboy-policeman-artist-musician-humorist who now lay dressed in his white Mormon temple clothing, a green apron at the waist.

They then moved on to embrace and sometimes cry with his wife Mariddie, his sons Dustinn, Nephi and Shiloh and other family members. As they passed by a wall hung with many of his cartoons, they laughed, too.

I took many more pictures of course, most of which I have yet to download, let alone to look at. But it has been a long day, I am very tired and weary and must get an early start in the morning, to prepare for his funeral and burial.

So this is it for now.

My own little tribute, in black and white

Painful as it is to me, I have realized that I must wait to put the tribute together until after the funeral. I have gathered some good material and I will gather more, but my hands are just too full and will remain so until it is over. So, while I will continue to post something daily, the tribute itself will come after the burial.

Yet, the picture above represents a bit of personal tribute from me to Vincent all in itself. Anyone who knows me knows that I do not wear white shirts, black slacks, and black ties. In fact, I pretty much don't wear ties at all, unless they are bolo and carved by Iñupiat artisans from walrus ivory, ugruk teeth and bowhead baleen.

Before he died, Vincent requested that the males in his family and among his close friends wear black slacks, white shirts, black ties, black socks, black shoes - this to reflect and pay respect to the Mormon part of his heritage.

So today I bought these clothes at J.C. Penney's in the off-reservation border town of Lakeside. I love the man. I respect the man. In his honor, I will wear my new white shirt, my new black tie, my new black slacks, my new black socks and my new black shoes.

And if you could see me, you would notice that my hair is cut short, my beard cut to the trimmest that it has been in years. This, too, I have done out of respect for Vincent Craig.