Trail Blazing at Old Flagstaff: some tangible and meaningful social justice stuff

NOTE BY HUNTER BEAR [April 13  2012]

Every so often, I get a welcome note from Charles "Buzz" Saunders -- an Anglo who came to Flagstaff in the latter '40s from somewhere, founded the very wide-ranging KCLS radio station, and later served as mayor of Flag in the late 1950s.  He's getting older now but recently wrote a good piece for the Navajo Times and then sent me a kind note a couple of days ago.  I responded quickly, including this at the conclusion:

"We have always so greatly appreciated your many fine contributions to inter-racial and inter-cultural understanding.  You broke very important and very good new trail at Flagstaff in all of your various works.  We have always remembered that."

I learned one hell of a long time ago, that the basic social justice trail-blazers in the wilderness of almost infinite versions of injustice, are frequently unknown save by the grateful persons with whom they've worked.  And they're quickly forgotten by those who, sometimes altruistically and sometimes in self-serving fashion, come along later.

Many of the people I knew as I grew up in a tough Northern Arizona town and its environs were social justice trailblazers -- from a several races/ethnicities.  They didn't sit in drawing rooms and fret about this fine point or that one. In the traditions of our Southwestern region, they spoke softly -- and then acted in meaningful and tangible ways.  I spoke of that as recently as a few days ago to ISU students at Pocatello and Idaho Falls.

One of those was Buzz Saunders and his KCLS radio station.  I've written a good deal about him and KCLS radio.  Here are a few short excerpts of mine:

Once, when I was in high school, another radio station interviewed a group
of us about our views on current issues.  I was the only Indian in our
little entourage -- and I attacked Christian missionaries on and around
Indian country.  On the Saturday evening that program was due to air,
my folks and I waited by it to hear my first air waves appearance.  Instead,
we got a half hour of "Tennessee Ernie."  Dad angrily called the station and
was told a "gremlin" had gotten into the works.

KCLS  radio  certainly broke much positive ground for Indians and other
minorities at and around Flagstaff.  In time, things changed [ e.g., the "No
Indians or Dogs Allowed" signs that some of the Flagstaff restaurants  had
posted on their front doors came down -- a long, long time ago -- and
there've been many more breakthroughs [much remains, as always, to be
done.]  Media at Flag and the other bordertowns generally have gotten
infinitely better on Native issues -- and on other minority matters.


FLAGSTAFF ARIZONA AND KCLS RADIO AND NAVAJOLAND  [AND SOME RELATED COMMENT]

NOTE BY HUNTER BEAR:  [November 16 2007]

About the time I was sending out my Lost Adams Diggings post a couple of days ago, in came several interesting and friendly messages relating some way to my home town of Flagstaff.  Coincidence?  Synchronicity?  No coincidences in the Universe as we see it.

An especially welcome one involved an old friend of my parents, Charles ["Buzz"] Saunders, still hale and hearty deep into his 80s.  Now living in Scottsdale, he spent many decades in Flag -- founding the ground-breaking and very wide-ranging KCLS radio station when I was 14 and 15 and Flagstaff was a blend of  the Western frontier with Southern border attitudes.  Radio has always been important in that high and far-flung country.  Radio is low-cost, pretty reliable, doesn't require anything even remotely near the television connections and expenses [TV didn't get to Flagstaff until the mid-50s] and can function from and within just about any geographical setting.  Broadly popular to this day in our piece of Northern Arizona, it certainly has, in addition to townsfolk, a direct appeal to Navajo [Dine'] people [the vast reservation is close by] and ranchers and cowpunchers and other out-landers. [Nowadays, most Navajo people have motor vehicles, usually pickups -- sometimes called "Navajo Cadillacs" -- but in those days of my youth, most traveled by horse and by horse-and-wagon.  And a great many still do.]

KCLS, in addition to its long and broad reach, cut new trail -- very new -- in those parts.  Not long at all after its launching, it began to regularly host a rising young Navajo leader, Raymond Nakai, who did a regular early morning program in Navajo.  In time, when Raymond Nakai returned to the reservation for a long and fascinating career in tribal politics, KCLS for years hosted another Dine' commentator, Danny Deschinny  --  who did his reporting and commenting on a bi-lingual basis [Navajo and English and a bit of Spanish] and developed a vast inter-cultural throng of listeners.

And Buzz Saunders lent his efforts over many years indeed to make Flagstaff a reasonably egalitarian place in all respects.  He worked closely with such people as my parents, Raymond Nakai, Ned Hatathli, Wilson Riles, Platt Cline, Ysabel Maddox, Ralph Juarez -- and other courageous souls, across the ethnic/cultural spread.  And good change came.  In fact, Buzz became Flagstaff mayor in the latter '50s.  And he certainly continued with KCLS for a long, long time.

Wasn't all of this "controversial?"  Sure it was.  But , Keep Fighting.  And No Fears / No Doubts / No Retreats.

And how I remember as a Teen in high school, wishing I could be the Sun as I heard the time-honored opening song on KCLS faithfully every very early morning:

That Lucky Old Sun (Just Rolls Around Heaven All Day [sung by Roy Rogers] 
Up in the mornin'
Out on the job
Work like the devil for my pay
But that lucky old sun got nothin' to do
But roll around heaven all day.


Anyway, Charles [Buzz] Saunders, who spends a fair amount of time browsing in our large website, wrote:

"Haven't heard from you in awhile.  Hope all is well.  Be of good cheer. Stay healthy, Stay warm, Stay with us a long time.  Bless you.  If I find something on the program of KCLS I will send it to you but it will be on a cassette or reel to reel or what do you have to play it on? " 
Charles [Buzz] Saunders 

I wrote, telling him we can do it.  Dug up and dusted off my old tape/cassette combo.  I hope, among other treasures, he sends Raymond Nakai and Danny Deschinny.

-----------------------------------------------

Later to KCLS and Navajo Hour came the indefatigable Rusty Wire.  Like his great predecessors, he brought his own unique style:

NAVAJO HOUR
by rustywire

In the early morning hours, somewhere near Grand Falls mils North Winslow,
Arizona, in Kaibeto, Gray Mountain, and Lechee on the Navajo Rez, an old
Sanii (grandmother) would turn on the Phlco radio and find KCLS in the wind.

Borden Milk he would say, turn the can around and cut out the coupon on the
back, they were worth a penny a piece. Be sure and save them, Borden Milk,
the best canned milk in Navajoland; they used to pay for the hour slot. Some
people sound good on the radio, their voice carries far, and when they speak you can listen to them all day, they have a voice that lifts you up. He spoke
English well and Navajo even better, he could switch back and forth with ease, it was the voice from a Navajo college student at Arizona State College by the name of Daniel Deschinney. He would come on the air and say, Yahtehee Binaa (Good Morning) Time for Mary Salt to get up, someone needs to go to the Shonto Trading Post and wake her up, go ahead and bang on the door, she might yell around, but tell her her boy friend, Chee Wilson from Leupp said, Get Up Lazy Bones and he would laugh. His voice had a special quality. He would talk about the immunizations for children, the news from the Navajo Tribal Council at Window Rock, the news on the Navajo Hopi land dispute and he would mention the Hualapais from near the Grand Canyon, the folks down in Parker from the Colorado River Tribe, the news from Second Mesa and translate the state and local news into Navajo to let those old Saniis what was going on beyond the horizon. There would be a few Navajo jokes. He was young, with a new wife back then.

There were two tall Navajo boys by the name of Jackson, attending the Flag
Bordertown dorm, they played first string, one of them Leonard was high
scorer in the state basketball tournament playing the monster sized school Phoenix Union, he said they were from Cow Springs, some called it Red Lake, though there was never any water there all year long, just when it rained, it is on the northside of the road halfway between Tuba City and Kayenta, he would say. He would talk about the scores from Tuba City and how the games turned out. He would mention the song requests for different people, saying this is for
Pearl going to school at the Flagstaff Beauty College from Sharlene at Cameron
store, near Gray Mountain on Highway 89, playing a little Waylon Jennings. He spun tales and talked about little things, like the road conditions on the back
road between Tuba and Kaibeto, that the sand had covered the road so the road had moved west a little bit.

Navajo Hour was the voice of Navajoland back in those days. He would speak
about the upcoming ceremonies and squaw dance notices way out there by
Dilcon, you follow the gravel road to Selba Delkai to the second dip then turn East two miles then turn right at the house with the red roof, Kee Mikes bighan, his place that is where it is at. Then he would talk about the Navajo School Clothing program, about who in each community a person had to see. Then he would talk about the tourists, that over by Skeleton Mesa there was wagon seen with four white horses with New Mexico plates, the wagon had rubber wheels and one of the girls was seen at the armory at the Flag Pow Wow grounds, dancing to Buck Owens, when you see the horse drawn wagon be sure to say hello to Shirleta. Yeeeeeee!!!, he would say.

In 1968 when the snow came and it was four to six feet high and people and
live stock were trapped way out in the middle of nowhere he was their lifeline,
telling them the National Gaurd was flying in food and hay by helicopters,
telling them to lay blankets outside their hogans on the snow and food would
be dropped to them. During the heavy rains when the roads would be washed out he told families to check on each other, and that people in the area would be there to help them. He was the calm voice who like to laugh speaking through the small Philco.

Yes, way out in the boon docks, out by Sand Springs, Shonto, and Cedar
Ridge, the coffee brewed, the potatoes were peeled, biscuits made, corn meal mush boiled and people chopped wood and hauled water to the sound of Daniel Deschinney and his Navajo Hour. It is morning, the sky is still dark but on the East there is a band of light, and I can hear his voice calling
out....Yahtehee Bina...Good Morning...

rustywire 


HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis 
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk 
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ 
and Ohkwari' 
www.hunterbear.org 
(much social justice material)

See the Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm

For the new, just out (11/2011) and expanded/updated
edition of my "Organizer's Book," JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- 
with a new and substantial Introduction by me.  We are close upon
the 50th anniversary of the massive Jackson Movement of1962-63.:
http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm

Personal Background Narrative (with many links):
http://hunterbear.org/narrative.htm