Majestic Living Fall 2014

5 | MAJESTIC LIVING | FALL 2014

contributors DebrA MAyeux, of Farmington, is an awardwinning journalist with recognitions from the Associated Press of New Mexico and Colorado and the New Mexico Press Association and the Colorado broadcast Association. she has covered stories throughout the southwest and in Mexico and Jordan, where she interviewed diplomats and the royal family. After nearly 20 years in the business, she recently opened her own freelance writing and media business. Mayeux enjoys the outdoors, reading and spending time with her family. she is the coordinator of Farmington Walk and roll, a safe routes to school organization. she is married to David Mayeux and they have three children: Nick, Alexander and Peter.

Dorothy Nobis has been a writer and editor for more than 25 years. she authored a travel guide, the insiders Guide to the Four Corners, published by Globe Pequot Press, and has been a frequent contributor to New Mexico Magazine.

MArGAret CheAsebro has been a freelance writer for over 30 years. her articles have appeared in many magazines across the country. she was a correspondent for the Albuquerque Journal and worked for several local newspapers. she has four published books of children’s puppet scripts. A former elementary school counselor, she is a reiki Master and practices several alternative healing techniques. she enjoys playing table tennis.

Josh bishoP is a graduate of san Juan College with an associate degree in Digital Media Arts and Design. he currently works at Majestic Media as a video producer and photographer.

toNy beNNett grew up in Farmington. he received his bachelor’s degree in photography from brooks institute. he owned and operated a commercial photography studio in Dallas for more than 20 years. he was also team photographer for the Dallas Cowboys for 10 years.

Now back in Farmington, tony wants to bring his many years of photo experience to photographing families, weddings, events, portraits, and more, to his hometown………and sKi ! he teaches at san Juan College.

WhitNey hoWle was born and raised in Farmington and is proud to call san Juan County home. the richness of the landscape and the diverse people, culture and traditions are a photographers dream. Whitney has his bA in Visual Communication from Collins College in tempe, Ariz. he is a co-owner of howle Design and Photography—a family owned studio offering graphic design, photography, market research and consulting.

publisher Don Vaughan

photographers Tony Bennett,

Josh Bishop, Whitney Howle

editor Cindy Cowan Thiele

sales staff

designer Suzanne Thurman writers Debra Mayeux, Dorothy Nobis,

MAGAZINE Celebrating the lifestyle, Community and Culture of the Four Corners Vol. 6, No. 4 ©2014 by Majestic Media.

Majestic Living is a quarterly publication.

Material herein may not be reprinted without expressed written consent of the publisher. If you receive a copy that is torn or damaged call 505.516.1230.

6 | MAJESTIC LIVING | FALL 2014

Margaret Cheasebro

Shelly Acosta, Clint Alexander Aimee Velasquez For advertising information

Call 505.516.1230

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Majestic living welcomes story ideas and comments from readers. e-mail story ideas and comments to editor@majesticmediausa.com.

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fallfeatures: 10

Carpenters credit parents for their success

Growing up in a home where love knew no bounds, where God and family always came first, and where hard work was a means to success — that was growing up Carpenter.

By Debra Mayeux

16

Real life stories on film

A serious, yet confident, Justin Hunt assessed the scene in T.J.’s Downtown Diner. He was about to shoot a scene for his new movie Far Too Far.

By Debra Mayeux

22

Hard Work and Dedication

“I have an affinity for the postal service because my dad spent almost the entirety of his career working as a postal service employee,” said Farmington Mayor Tommy Roberts.

By Margaret Cheasebro

34 28

A step back in time

The phone rang at the Hubbell Trading Post. All eyes turned to the old fashioned telephone on a nearby wall, but this chime was coming from behind the desk in the jewelry and pottery.

By Debra Mayeux 8 | MAJESTIC LIVING | FALL 2014

A darling place

When Lou Vayne (Arrington) McKay has her 100th birthday on Oct. 3, people who grew up knowing the pioneer family, and who have scattered across the country, will return to San Juan County to help her celebrate.

By Margaret Cheasebro

40

Empowering Youth

Farmington has its own version of the Energizer Bunny. She is small, cute and packed full of non-stop energy.

By Debra Mayeux

Get Your On 46

San Juan County comes together to raise funds to fight cancer

There will be dancing for a world record, pink gloves everywhere and a Cowboy Soiree.

By Dorothy Nobis

50

Staying strong

When Laura Huish went to a birthday party for a friend of her sister-in-law, she had no idea how that party would change her life.

By Dorothy Nobis

52

A life filled with learning

Traci HalesVass’ journey to San Juan College, where she is the assistant professor of English, was not an easy one.

By Dorothy Nobis

56

Best job you could ever have

From the time she was a pre-teen, Carol Hatfield knew she wanted to be a teacher.

By Margaret Cheasbro

56

30 years of science & leadership

When Ann Gattis made biology her major and chemistry her minor in college, her father hoped his daughter would become a doctor.

By Dorothy Nobis FALL 2014 | MAJESTIC LIVING | 9

P e rFeCt a r e n t s From left, Danny, Maureen, and threir boys Kelly age 8, Kim and Kirk, age 10.

Kim, Kirk and Kelly Carpenter credit Danny and Maureen for their success Story Debra Mayeux Photos Josh Bishop

Growing up in a home where love knew no bounds, where God and family always came first , and where hard work was a means to success – that was growing up Carpenter.

Mom was “Moose,” and Dad was a businessman and public servant. Their three boys were self-proclaimed “Alpha males,” always competing with a loving purpose to goad the others into working harder and being better.

“I have the perfect parents,” said Kim Carpenter of Danny and Maureen

Carpenter. His twin brother Kirk, who was the family baby by only minutes, had just finished explaining that merely thanking his parents would never be enough.

Working hard to thank them “For my parents we’ve been very successful, and I feel like we owe that to them. … You can never thank your parents enough; you work hard to thank them,” Kirk said.

Kirk did just that. He studied hard,

graduated from college and worked his way up the ladder in the Aztec School District. He serves as the district’s superintendent.

Kim also has been successful, earning a doctorate degree and being named the chief executive officer for San Juan County.

The twin’s older brother, Kelly also has found success as the assistant special-agent-in-charge of Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigations in Dallas, Texas.

From left Kirk, Danny, Kelly and Kim at the Connie Mack World Series in August.

“He’s honestly more successful than us,” Kim said.

Kelly, however, agreed that his younger brothers have been “very successful.” He too credits Maureen and Danny for their achievements.

“Our mom and dad were both great role models. That’s where we learned our work ethic,” Kelly said. “Mom was just as hard-working as Dad.” Maureen was a stay-at-home mom who spent her spare time volunteering. Danny was a businessman and served in various positions as an elected official for 30 years.

He was a San Juan County Commissioner when his sons were younger, and now Kim advises that same Commission and oversees all of the county’s business.

Aztec Municipal School District Superintendent Kirk Carpenter at work in Aztec.

Alpha males “You live in a household of Alphas – it’s competitive,” Kim said.

“Our parents had a discipline structure. Dad always said, ‘Work before play.’ We always knew when the weekend cam. There would be a note with chores. We needed to do our yard work. We had a pool, and we had to make

sure the pool was cleaned. We didn’t go until it was done.”

These were just some of the lessons taught to the Carpenter boys through action. They knew they had to work hard and they learned their work ethic by example. “Dad was gone before the sun came up and came home after it went down.”

Their mom, whom they lovingly call “Moose,” took care of them.

“Mom took care of us absolutely 100 percent. She was there, but you get what you deserve. How you are raised – it all fits. We all think we have the perfect parents – and we do,” Kirk said. “They were always there. They didn’t give us stuff, we earned it.”

The Carpenter boys worked through high school. They didn’t get an allowance and had to raise money to buy their own cars. The twins had a 1974 Chevrolet Nova.

They paid it off together, and Kim bought a Chevrolet Vega. Kelly had a Chevy Camaro. One fond teenage memory was the three of them taking a road trip to Earl’s Shop in Albuquerque, where they got $99 paint jobs for each car.

They studied hard and played FALL 2014 | MAJESTIC LIVING | 11

hard. “If we needed something, our parents were there,” Kim said. “Most of our wants centered on sports.”

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All about baseball They were a baseball family playing as children all the way through college. Today Kim and Kirk both serve on the Connie Mack World Series Committee in Farmington. Kim has coached the Farmington Fuel and trained his son, Danny to be a primo pitcher.

He had a glove, a ball and bat before he was 3 years old, and Kim said Uncle Kirk and Don Lorett would visit the house to teach little Danny bad baseball habits. This was a family tradition handed down from Carpenter fathers to their sons.

“When us three boys were playing on three different ball teams the commitment from our parents getting us where we needed to be was amazing,” Kim said.

Kim played football and baseball until his freshmen year in high school. Then, he branched out and played tennis and was on the swimming and diving team. Kirk played football and baseball. Kelly went on to play four years of college baseball, and all three Carpenter sons went to New Mexico Highlands University.

Importance of a college education “College was something that was extremely important. Our parents instilled that in us – get an education,” Kim said. His father, however, wanted Kim to go into the military. He got a nomination to the Air Force Academy, but transferred to West Point, because he wore glasses.

Kim decided it wasn’t for him, but he joined the ROTC and went to Highlands to play baseball. After getting hit in the face with a baseball, causing a tear to his retina, Kim left the baseball program and ended up receiving a golf scholarship. He completed his bachelor’s degree in three years.

“I missed baseball, but I had a blast at golf,” said Kim, whose scoring average was 73.4.

After completing his degree, Kim went to work for Highlands as the college’s first full-time recruiter. “They had a 25 percent enrollment increase that year,” Kim said, adding he wanted to work in collegiate sports, so he applied to be the

college’s intramural director. He wanted a certain wage, but was turned down, until the president found out and made it happen. “I ran intramural sports and recruited.”

Kim moved up the ranks and went on to work as the director of the Highlands Student Life Center and also became the assistant athletic director. And he inherited the baseball team, leading it to a conference win in 1991.

Kim was named NCAA and NAI Coach of the Year that same year.

Long distance calls to Krickett It was through coaching that he met his wife Krickett. “I called to order coaching jackets and she was the sales rep,” he said. “I spent a lot of money on long distance. We spent hundreds of hours talking before we met.”

Shortly after they were married, Kim and Krickett were in a horrific car accident outside of Gallup. She suffered a traumatic brain injury and forgot her life and marriage to Kim. The couple divorced, but Kim made a “marriage vow” and was determined to win back her love.

He did, and the couple remarried. The story of their love and devotion was the subject of the New York Times bestselling book The Vow, which led to the making of the Hollywood movie The Vow, starring Channing Tatum and Rachel McAdams.

Kim and Krickett have been asked to speak all over the world sharing their story. In the midst of stardom and speaking engagements, Kim managed to land the job of assistant San Juan County manager. At that time his dad, Danny, sat him down and gave him some advice.

“He said, ‘There are a lot of people who won’t like you. You will make people mad, but stick to what you believe,’” Kim said.

He did just that and has managed to stay grounded through his faith in God, even after being promoted to CEO of the county. “I’m responsible for 130,004 people in this county. I keep myself in check, because I know I’m responsible. I am accountable to God, my Commission, and the people of San Juan County,” Kim said. “Even through the toughest of times, we’ve got the greatest employees.”

Kirk piped up and responded to that com-

Krickett and Kim Carpenter at the Hollywood premier of The Vow with their children LeeAnn and Danny.

ment, saying, “You’ve got the second greatest.

I’ve got the greatest in the Aztec Schools.”

A passion for work Both men are passionate about their work

and their employees, and Kirk certainly has not lived in Kim’s shadow, despite the celebrity status of his brother.

“People ask me if I’ve read the book, and I

FALL 2014 | MAJESTIC LIVING | 13

say, ‘No. I lived it,’” Kirk said. He and Teresa, his wife of 25 years, had to go to the junkyard and go through the car to retrieve Kim’s wallet among other items.

He admires his brother’s gift for public speaking and said he would rather have a tooth pulled than to speak in front of thousands of people.

Kirk loves coaching and teaching Kirk, however, does speak to thousands of people on the radio doing baseball play-byplay on Vertical Radio. He has been a sports broadcaster for 25 years.

“I’m lucky to be where I’m at, and I don’t take it for granted,” said Kirk, who started his college career at San Juan College and later transferred to Highlands. After his graduation, he began his teaching career in the Aztec School District, where he also spent 14 years coaching sports. He continued studying while teaching and earned a master’s degree from New Mexico State University.

After completing his studies, Kirk was offered

14 | MAJESTIC LIVING | FALL 2014

the vice principal position at Aztec High School, and he accepted it. He continued coaching and “built a respectable sports program,” he said. “I never – during the time of getting my education, I never thought I would be superintendent. I loved the classroom and coaching.”

His talents however were noticed, and Kirk went from vice principal to principal, to assistant superintendent and then was promoted to superintendent. Throughout his career he has had his wife Theresa at his side.

“The district had been so good to me, when they asked me to become principal I felt I owed it to them,” he said. He stayed at the high school for 2 ½ more years and applied for the assistant superintendent’s position. It was something, he admitted, was “never on my radar.”

When a superintendent was needed, Kirk was approached and asked to take over the reins. “I was honored to be in that position. It’s a great district. Obviously we have great people,” he said, adding he often turned to his coaching experience in his positions of leadership.

“I look at it as coaching adults. I do the best

I can and equip my people to deal with different strategies.”

Volunteering The Carpenter brothers, in addition to their careers, also volunteer on various boards and commissions. They both serve on the board of San Juan Safe Communities and the Connie Mack World Series Board. Kirk is the presidentelect of the New Mexico Superintendents Association and is a member of the Consolidated Educational Services Board. In his spare time, he enjoys watching movies with Teresa and playing golf.

Kim also plays golf and enjoys flying radiocontrolled airplanes. “We’ve got radio-controlled cars we drive around as a family,” he said. “Family time is important to us.”

It has been family that kept the Carpenter men grounded.

Their father always told them to remember where they came from and what they have been given. They fondly recall his lessons about life and they honor him by living them.

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Justin Hunt wants his work to have a cultural impact on society Story by Debra Mayeux | Photos by Josh Bishop A serious, yet confident, Justin Hunt assessed the scene in T.J.’s Downtown Diner. He was about to shoot a scene for his new movie Far Too Far. The restaurant in historic Downtown Farmington was empty except for a few local actors, two videographers and Hunt.

“Make sure your cell phones are off,” he 16 | MAJESTIC LIVING | FALL 2014

said. “It’s 1993, there are no iPhones, and try as hard as you can – don’t look at the camera.”

The location manager called the scene and shouted, “Action!”

Brandi Wethington ran into the restaurant grabbed a waitress and asked for “Trip.” The two women exchanged words. Hunt said,

“Cut,” and the scene was shot again. This went on for nearly two hours as footage was gathered for Hunt’s latest movie project – Far Too Far. “I worked on this script for seven years,” said Hunt of the first full-length narrative feature film on which he has been busy. Far Too Far is a meth-related drama that was born out

of Hunt’s work on his first documentary American Meth, produced in 2007.

“This is the purging of what was left of American Meth,” Hunt said.

Since the release of American Meth, narrated by Val Kilmer, Hunt has filmed two more documentaries and Far Too Far. He also began raising funds for a fourth documentary that explores the negative effects of the pornography industry on marriages, relationships and families.

Hunt, 37, was born in Grand Junction, Colo., and was raised on the horse racing circuit. His father Glen Hunt was a professional jockey and his mother, Linda, trained race horses.

When the family finally settled in Bloomfield, Justin found a hometown.

Hunt attended Bloomfield High School where he began a career in journalism. He interned at KOBF-TV and wrote for the school newspaper.

During his senior year, 1994, Hunt was awarded the United States Journalism Association’s award for the best high school newspaper story in the nation.

By the age of 18, he was working as the weekend news anchor at Farmington’s television station and was named one of the youngest news anchors in the history of the NBC television network.

After graduating from BHS, Hunt moved to Las Cruces where he studied at New Mexico State University, but he later returned to Farmington and went back to work at KOBF-TV as a reporter and news anchor. This job led him to KOB’s Roswell station, where Hunt was named one of the youngest news directors in the country.

Hunt remained with KOB-TV until 2004, and during his tenure with the company he won more than 40 Associated Press and New Mexico Broadcaster’s Association awards and three FALL 2014 | MAJESTIC LIVING | 17

times was named News Reporter of the Year.

It was in 2004 that Hunt entered the independent film business, opening Time and Tide Production Company. He was hired to produce commercial videos and then began working in the documentary field. By 2007, he had made the world-renowned documentary American Meth, a film recognized with national and international awards.

It was his work on American Meth that led Hunt to write Far Too Far, a film he described as being “dark,” but also a story that needs to be told.

“What will set this film apart is the level of authenticity,” Hunt said. “There are nuances we’ve learned from users that we put in the film. We shoot these scenes and it’s all make believe, but it is very intense.”

Most of Hunt’s films have been “intense.” His second documentary, Absent, focused on the effect absentee fathers have on their children.

It received international acclaim, because Hunt managed to secure onscreen interviews with boxer Johnny Tapia and with Metallica front man James Hetfield, who became a personal friend of Hunt’s. The men made appearances together on the talk show circuit and Hetfield had only good things to say about Hunt and his dedication to children and family.

“Justin is a really great father. What he’s doing for his family is very warrior like,” Hetfield said of Hunt.

Hetfield was abandoned by his father, and it left a scar on his heart. He questioned whether he would be a good parent. He was afraid he didn’t have what it took to be a father, but, he said, he put himself in the shoes of his three children and asked himself what he would want to hear from his dad.

Hetfield also had been through rehab where he attempted to make peace with his childhood, but Absent helped him move further forward. “When there is trauma in youth, it is good to revisit it – the hatred, the anger – and clear that out,” he said. “The impact of the movie has opened my eyes to how grateful I am not continuing the cycle of writing a note and saying goodbye. I want to be the best 18 | MAJESTIC LIVING | FALL 2014

James Hetfield and Justin at Absent premier.

male warrior figure I can be. This movie has done a lot more for me than I thought it would. Justin, the crew, the books opened my eyes to the male role in the family – the father.”

After Absent, Hunt began his own personal journey and explored his childhood, which was riddled with difficulty. His mother and father were divorced. His siblings all went their separate ways, and the family had not been together in decades, until their mother Linda was diagnosed with cancer and was dying.

Hunt chronicled the family’s ups and downs and included the tragic loss of his mother in the documentary The Speed of Orange. “The story of her health became a big part of the movie,” Hunt said. “She never did get to see it.”

What Linda Hunt also didn’t get to see was her family reunited after 30 years, because of her youngest child’s movie. The Speed of Orange was something completely different. “It’s not just a kid from the race track that took his video camera and made it into a home movie,” Hunt said. “I would have told this story whether it was my family or not.”

The film has the three main elements of a good story – a rise, a fall and redemption.

“It’s more of a human story wrapped in the pretty paper of horse racing. I’m really pleased with this film. It turned out so much

“The impact of the movie (Absent) has opened my eyes to how grateful I am not continuing the cycle of writing a note and saying goodbye.”

— James Hetfield lead singer of Metallica better than I anticipated,” Hunt said.

The Speed of Orange brought Hunt home for filming and premieres, but most of his time is spent in Colorado Springs, Colo., where he lives with his wife, Danielle, and his children, Lantz and Abbey. In between filming, Hunt also has been asked to take films such as Absent on the road to locations across the world. He did film tours in Australia and Europe and has toured much of the U.S. He often is asked to speak not only about his films, but about what he learned from making them.

The work for a filmmaker, however, is never done, so Hunt returned home again this summer to film Far Too Far. Hunt began the process with a local casting call. One-hundred local actors auditioned and he cast 35.

Brandi Wethington, who never acted before, was cast as the lead, Linda. She said FALL 2014 | MAJESTIC LIVING | 19

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Hunt helped her get into character, and she began to develop a new appreciation for acting.

“This is something that I’m doing on my own,” she said.

Rick Martinez, another new actor, was cast as Trip. He auditioned because he wanted to try something new.

“Getting the part was beyond my dreams. It’s a strange feeling – filming. This is my life, I’m going to be in a movie,” Martinez said. “It’s been a great experience. … It stays pretty light on the set. Any stress that comes in doesn’t come from the director, it comes from ourselves.”

Hunt also has enjoyed having a cast and crew with which to work. “It’s a joy for me. I’ve been working on these heavy topics for a decade and doing it by myself – it’s been a downer,” he said. “This is a tipping point in my life careerwise.”

Hunt hopes to have the movie completed and ready for release by fall. He would like to enter it in some of the big domestic and international film festivals and put San Juan County on the map for an award-winning independent narrative film directed by a homegrown talent.

In the meantime, Bloomfield wanted to make sure Hunt doesn’t forget where he came from.

Mayor Scott Eckstein awarded Hunt with a key to the city of Bloomfield during the July 14 Council meeting. He also proclaimed Sept. 16 – Hunt’s birthday – as Justin Hunt Day in Bloomfield.

“I’m not going to lie, getting the 'Justin Hunt Day' proclamation was amazingly special, but getting the key to the city blew me away,” Hunt said.

Hunt is focused on promoting Far Too Far, while working to produce his next documentary Dot XXX, which will look at the devastating effects the porn industry has had on marriages and families. He has been raising money to make the movie that will be made without focusing on the provocative images found in pornography.

This career path for Hunt has never been about having a “film job.” It is about telling reallife stories on film and making a cultural impact on society – creating a message on film to make lives better.

FALL 2014 | MAJESTIC LIVING | 21

22 | MAJESTIC LIVING | FALL 2014

Photo by Tony Bennett

Hard work and dedication Lester Roberts devoted more than 40 years to Farmington Post Office Story by Margaret Cheasebro “I have an affinity for the postal service because my dad spent almost the entirety of his career working as a postal service employee,” said Farmington Mayor Tommy Roberts. “I worked four summers in the post office beginning my senior year in high school.”

Today, as mayor, Tommy oversees the entire city, and the post office has a warm place in his heart. Though property around the post office has had some landscape issues, those concerns are being addressed by the postal service, he said.

Tommy, who was born in Farmington on May 31, 1951, was about 5 years old when he remembers his dad, Lester Roberts, working for the post office. At that time, it was located where KB Dillon’s now is, on the corner of Orchard Avenue and Broadway.

Lester was Farmington postmaster Lester, who is 94 and still lives in Farmington, began working at the Farmington Post Office as a temporary sub clerk on Feb. 10, 1940, at 65 cents an hour. He worked up through the ranks, becoming postmaster on Aug. 17, 1974. He held that job for 12 years, longer than any other postmaster in Farmington, and retired on April 30, 1986.

“It provided him and his family a nice living,” Tommy recalled. “We were not wealthy people, but as a child growing up I never thought we couldn’t do what we wanted to do and have what we wanted to have.”

But the job had its challenges. Lester recalls an incident when Jimmy Tinnin was postmaster from 1965-1974.

“One of the prominent citizens around here complained about the postal service losing his mail,” Lester said. “He made a big to-do about it, and wrote congressmen. It went on awhile.

We couldn’t find his mail because we didn’t have it. Later on, information came that he admitted finding it under the seat of his car.”

Focuses on sons Lester didn’t come home and talk about his day at the post office. Instead, after a 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. shift, he put on his “dad hat” to focus on his four sons, who were, in age order, Gary, Franklin, Tommy and Steve. But first he drove to the apple orchard that he had bought in the 1950s, three miles west of Aztec on the Old Aztec Highway.

“I spent time irrigating, spraying, disking and one thing or another,” Lester said. “It was very relaxing. After I finished there, I coached Little League baseball and Little League basketball.”

Tommy played on some of the teams his dad coached, and he went to the University of New Mexico on a full basketball scholarship.

But every summer for four years Tommy came home to work at the post office, where Postmaster Tinnin hired him to be a substitute mail carrier. His other brothers worked at the post office some summers as well.

Good work ethic Steve remembers working with Tommy at the post office when they were teenagers.

“He always had a good work ethic,” Steve said. “He and I would learn more than we really needed for the job in order to get more work.”

For example, if they were hired to do a specific job, they would also learn the city scheme, which involved what happened when letters came into the post office and how they were sorted by number and letter, then separated by a clerk to go to a specific letter carrier.

“We would learn everything,” Steve said.

“The more you know, the more work you get.”

Though Steve made a career of the postal service, Tommy didn’t.

Tommy becomes attorney “It was pretty clear that was not Tommy’s path,” Steve said. “He knew where he was going to go.” Tommy went on to become an attorney and returned after graduation to work in a law office here. The postal service helped both brothers exercise self-discipline.

Tommy remembers the dedication it took to get up early and go to the post office.

“I’d go in at 4 in the morning and help unload the mail truck coming from Albuquerque,” he said. “Then during the course of the day I would sort mail by hand and box it in a sorting system.”

FALL 2014 | MAJESTIC LIVING | 23

Once he finished sorting the mail for the carrier for whom he was substituting, he’d walk from house to house delivering the mail door to door.

“Over a period of four summers, I think I carried the mail in every route in Farmington,” he said. “I can remember people coming out with a cup of lemonade and offering me something to drink or just wanting to stop and talk for a second.”

Hops on one leg to deliver mail One summer after hurting his ankle in a baseball game, he hopped on one leg, going from house to house to deliver the mail. He has fond memories of those days, and he enjoyed the $3.25 an hour salary he earned the summer he graduated from Farmington High School.

“It was about as high an hourly wage as you could find,” he said. “By the time I finished up four summers later, I was working for over $4 an hour.”

Though Tommy, Gary and Franklin didn’t pursue postal careers, Steve retired after working 25 years for the Albuquerque Post Office.

Pat Maurer, who grew up next door to Tommy, also made a career of working for the post office. He was a letter carrier in Farmington for 37 years, retiring in 2007, and was a postal clerk when Tommy spent summers working at the post office.

“Tommy put 100 percent into everything he ever did,” Pat recalled. “He had such high integrity that everyone respected him a lot.”

The Roberts brothers contributed to the growth of the postal service just as their dad, Lester, did.

First post office in a house When Lester began his postal service career, he joined a long list of people who worked at the Farmington Post Office, beginning April 17, 1879, when the local post office was established.

Allison Fourier Miller became the first postmaster.

He had built a house for his family in 1877, which included a general store at Main Street and Court Avenue. He added space in it for the post office. A series of postmasters followed, and they usually moved the post office to their own store.

The post office is believed to have been moved to the old Hyde Bank building in the 100 24 | MAJESTIC LIVING | FALL 2014

block of East Main Street in 1901 when William Estes was postmaster. Former Farmington Postmaster James W. White tells about that and many other details of the Farmington Post Office in his book, The History of San Juan County Post Offices.

Luther Thomas was appointed postmaster on April 14, 1902, and he moved his harness shop and stock into the Hyde Bank building so he could work out of the post office.

Dentist is postmaster When dentist James Duff became postmaster in 1903, he moved the post office to the San Juan Store on the north side of the 100 block of East Main Street, where he practiced dentistry.

As the population increased, in 1906 Farmington advanced from a fourth class to a third class office. Harriet Butler became the first female postmaster on March 2, 1915. That year the post office grew enough to become a second class office, but it didn’t receive that designation until 1921.

As the city grew, Main Street stretched two blocks long and the population climbed to 1,700 people. A larger post office building was needed. So in August 1927, the post office moved to the old San Juan County National Bank building at 106 W. Main St. The post office gained second class status in 1934 and showed a gain of almost 10 percent in receipts over the previous year.

City mail delivery begins As a 21-year-old, Lester began his postal career in 1940 under Postmaster James Odle. He saw Farmington begin city mail delivery on April 16, 1948.

“Before that, everybody had to come to the post office to get their mail if they didn’t live on a contract route,” he explained.

On May 19, 1951, the post office moved from the old San Juan Bank building to 101 W. Broadway. Tommy was born at the end of that month, and as a youngster that’s where he remembered the post office being located.

On July 1, 1951, as the population continued to increase, the Farmington Post Office achieved first class designation. “The sale of stamps had a

FALL 2014 | MAJESTIC LIVING | 25

lot to do with how you got reclassified,” Lester said.

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Population skyrockets in oil boom Growth increased in the 1950s due to an oil boom, and the population climbed from 3,737 in 1950 to 23,786 in 1960. The post office needed bigger facilities, so on June 9, 1960, it moved into a 12,410-square-foot building at 300 N. Auburn St. During those years, the job of the Farmington postmaster expanded to include supervision of post offices in McKinley, San Juan, and Apache counties under a new designation as Management Sectional Center, Post Manager 3.

Lester held the sectional center manager position beginning in August 1974.

That designation ended in 1987 when the Farmington postmaster was placed under the administration of the Albuquerque MSC. Post office moves to 20th Street As the population continued to climb, the post office outgrew the Auburn facilities and had to farm out different aspects of the operation to other locations in town. It wasn’t until June 24, 1988, when the new 40,000-square-foot post office opened at 2301 E. 20th St., that all the operations came back under one roof. The post office is still located there today. Lester retired in 1986 before that move was made.

“I’m so glad I retired,” he said. “The people who work for the postal service have lots of pressure put on them to do things in a shorter time. They try to operate within their budget, and their budget is not enough.”

From house to cluster box delivery Tommy and his dad sometimes exchange memories of their postal years and of the changes they saw.

“Now you have cluster boxes in a single location in a neighborhood, or you have individual mail boxes at the curb so delivery is more efficient and less time consuming,” Tommy said. “But when I worked at the post office it was pretty rare to have a mailbox out on the curb.”

As he and Lester looked through White’s book about the history of San Juan County post offices, Tommy noted, “I had a personal connection to the post office in Farmington, and I always enjoyed that part of my life.”

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Hubbell Trading Post, Canyon de Chelly filled with beauty and history Story and photos by Debra Mayeux The phone rang at the Hubbell Trading Post.

All eyes turned to the old fashioned telephone on a nearby wall, but this chime was coming from behind the desk in the jewelry and pottery. Marilyn Yazzie answered the call and was asked the price of pink velveteen. The caller needed 10 yards.

“It is $17.95 a yard,” Yazzie said, adding that the store had enough to accommodate the need. Soon the customer would walk in and be transported back in time to a place that still sells pink velveteen, Blue Bird Flour, burlap sacks, yarns, candies, food and soda pop out of an old refrigerated display case.

The Hubbell Trading Post hasn’t changed much since John Lorenzo Hubbell purchased it in 1878 on a tract of land in Ganado, Ariz.

FALL 2014 | MAJESTIC LIVING | 29

This was 10 years after the Long Walk, and Navajos were returning to their homeland to build a future for themselves and their children. Traders such as Hubbell provided supplies to the Navajos once they returned home.

These traders promoted Indian arts and crafts and had an influence on rug weaving and silversmithing by demanding excellent craftsmanship in the items he received for trade.

The National Park Service, which now operates the trading post, stated that Hubbell built a trading empire that included stage and freight lines and 24 trading posts. His homestead, however, was in Ganado, where it has been preserved as a national historic site since the National Park Service purchased the property in 1967.

“When the Park Service took over an agreement was made that they would always have this part (the trading) of the business run the way Hubbell did,” Yazzie said. This made the Hubbell Trading Post one of the only posts still operating in the West.

30 | MAJESTIC LIVING | FALL 2014

Yazzie has been working at the trading post for many years. After her husband died, she moved home to the reservation to raise her son. “I wanted to raise my son here so he

could be around his grandparents, so he could learn about the culture,” she said.

Part of Yazzie’s job is to work with the Indian artisans and oversee the world-class

collection of Navajo jewelry, rugs, pottery and crafts that not only add to the ambiance of the trading post, but also are offered for sale to tourists, who come from all over the world to the site.

Yazzie has enjoyed getting to the crafters, weavers and silversmiths. “They become like family to us,” she said, adding that in recent years many have passed away leaving a void in her heart. Some of the deceased, however, have never left.

“There are ghosts here,” Yazzie said. “One day I was sitting in the rug room, and I felt the log go down slightly. I looked and I saw Mr. Hubbell and little Navajo girl dressed in traditional clothing.”

Another employee came to work in the morning to find the radio playing. When she went to turn it off, she noticed that it was not plugged into the electrical outlet and batteries were not used to operate it.

On another occasion, Yazzie walked into her office to find a group of people in one of the back rooms. “There were two Mexican guys and a red-headed guy,” she said, adding they looked like old-time freight drivers. She later looked through a book titled Indian Trader, by Martha Blue, only to find a photograph of the same men sitting in the same room. “I said, ‘Oh my God, there they are.’”

Yazzie follows the traditional Navajo ways. “I am not supposed to see those things,” she said.

She went through a ceremony with a Medicine Man afterwards, but admitted the experiences were not scary.

“They just don’t want to leave,” Yazzie said.

“They are here and they love this place so much, they come back.”

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Even the living don’t want to leave the Hubbell Trading Post. The employees love working at the site, which includes a ranch with Churro sheep and goats; a garden of fresh produce and an opportunity to continue serving the Navajo people in Ganado and nearby communities.

Courtney Attson has only worked at the trading post for one month but already feels like a member of the Hubbell family.

“I love working here,” she said. “You meet people from all different countries, and you meet the elders from the community.”

FALL 2014 | MAJESTIC LIVING | 31

Attson works in the general store that stocks foods and goods historically used by settlers in the West. “When I first started working here, I wanted to buy everything.”

There are old-fashioned candies, sodas, jams and syrups. The store is stocked with tin cups, plates and cooking pots; burlap sacks, yarn, fabric, medicines and herbs. There are bags of Blue Bird Flour, which any Navajo would swear by as the main ingredient for the perfect batch of Fry Bread, a staple food of the Navajo people.

Many of the items in the general store also attract tourists, who are seeking a taste of Americana. Upon entering the store the tourist is transported back in time. There are no computers, cell phones or hints of modern times anywhere in the facility. The floors are made of old logs, which also line the ceiling providing support beams.

“People always comment about how they like the squeaky floors,” Attson said.

An exit to the right takes visitors into the jewelry room, where hundreds of Indian baskets, representing Pueblo, Apache, Pima and Navajo artisans, hang from the ceiling. Jewelry of all shapes and sizes can be viewed in a wooden and glass case, while Kachinas, Navajo Dolls and pottery adorn wooden shelves.

A rug room could be found to the left, where there are all types of Navajo rugs made 32 | MAJESTIC LIVING | FALL 2014

by weavers who still use traditional methods to spin, dye and weave their wool.

“Nearly everything the Hubbell family owned is preserved for your enjoyment. The buildings are furnished with their belongings and the artifacts are available for researchers. The collection contains over 350,000 individual items, including the family archive of 264,000 business records,” the National Park Service stated about the site.

The grounds also provided a glimpse into the past with an old barn filled with antique farming equipment, an old homestead and even a town bell in the community center.

Next to the trading post the old caged wagon could be found. Yazzie said there are all types of legends surrounding the wagon. Many people believed it to be a prisoner transport, but that was not the case. “It was an ambulance from the Civil War,” she explained. “When Mr. Hubbell purchased it, he used it for freight.”

Mr. Hubbell traveled throughout the Navajo Nation trading; he would have even traveled to nearby Chinle, Ariz., where travelers can experience another national treasure – Canyon de Chelly.

The canyon, on the outskirts of Chinle, has been home to Navajo families for centuries. It was the site of Ancestral Puebloan ruins that include Mesa Verde-type cliff dwellings and a window rock as part of the rock formations. The

canyon has been called a “labyrinth” by the National Park Service, because it is made up of several canyons with red rock walls standing 1,000 feet above the canyon floor.

There are two rims to the canyon – the South Rim that includes seven overlooks and access to a day-hike area; and the North Rim which has three overlooks.

The day-hike area begins at the White House Overlook. There visitors are allowed to hike 2.5 miles roundtrip into the canyon to visit the Whitehouse Ruin. Other hiking throughout the canyon must be led by a guide.

At each overlook guests also have an opportunity to meet with Indian artisans, who sell their jewelry and rock art paintings at the site.

One such artisan is Anthony Mahkewa, who when he is not selling at Santa Fe’s Indian Market visits the canyon and paints onsite. He said the canyon and the sky above it gives him the inspiration for his works, which are captured on pieces of rock and sold to tourists.

Canyon de Chelly can be visited by day and there is no entry fee. The Navajo Parks and Recreation Department manages the Cottonwood Campground in the park and lodging can be found in Chinle and at the Sacred Canyon Lodge in the park.

The visitor’s centers at both The Hubbell Trading Post and Canyon de Chelly are open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.

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Pictured above: Standing: Laura Miller, PiĂąon Family Practice clinic manager, and Tina Bruce, San Juan College HIT instructor. Seated: SJC Health Information Technology graduate Allen Stanley.

Lou Vayne recalls life in Farmington over the last 100 years Story by Margaret Cheasebro Photos by Josh Bishop When Lou Vayne (Arrington) McKay has her 100th birthday on Oct. 3, people who grew up knowing the pioneer family, and who have scattered across the country, will return to San Juan County to help her celebrate.

Born in 1914 to John B. and Winifred Arrington, Lou Vayne spent most of her life in Farmington, from the war years, through oil and gas booms, to the present.

Plans are in the works for nieces and nephews and other relatives to come from California, Washington state, and Albuquerque to help Lou Vayne celebrate her 100 years of life. There will be an open

Home on Arrington Street in Farmington.

The family on the porch in 1897.

house from 2 to 4 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 4, at the First United Methodist Church, 808 N. Monterey Ave. in Farmington, to make it more convenient for people traveling from out of town.

Born on Locke Street Lou Vayne was born in a house on Locke Street, though she can’t remember its exact location. She lived in her own home until she was 97, and today she is a resident of Beehive Home on Locke, a couple of blocks from where she was born.

Kathy Stewart of Farmington was her care-

giver for almost 10 years when she still lived at home. “She has a good sense of humor,” Kathy said. “She takes the time to listen, and she remembers. I just love her. We’ve kind of adopted each other. She calls herself my old pal.”

The fourth child in the family, she was christened Ruth Lou Vayne, though she always went by Lou Vayne.

“My dad named me after a university in Belgium,” she said. “I don’t know why.”

When her brothers and sisters were little, they called her Bane because they couldn’t pronounce her name. Now, said her daughter,

The Arrington house is now a law office.

FALL 2014 | MAJESTIC LIVING | 35

Patty Baysinger, everyone in the family calls her Bane.

She described her mom as a loving, caring person. “She was always there for me,” Patty said. “She sewed and made my clothes. One Christmas when my parents didn’t have much money, she sewed me doll clothes.”

Owned farm on Apache Street Her parents owned a small farm on Apache Street. Over the years they sold or traded pieces of the land. Today, only a small part of it remains in the family. Patty and her daughter, Debbie, live there today on eleven acres west of Navajo Preparatory School.

Lou Vayne remembers her family telling about a time when she was 8 months old, and they traveled by wagon from Farmington to Kinebato, 12 miles north of Pueblo Bonito.

Her father once owned a trading post there, and the extended family gathered at Kinebato to celebrate Christmas.

When they brought popcorn balls with them

36 | MAJESTIC LIVING | FALL 2014

on the way back to Farmington, the wagon lurched as they crossed the river. Popcorn balls flew everywhere.

“All us kids laughed,” Lou Vayne said.

As a young child, she remembers walking and biking along irrigation ditches that ran by houses in the old part of Farmington. Those ditches provided water for gardens and lawns.

She also played school with her siblings.

first sight.

Burt had come from Texas to work on the railroad. He was five years older than Lou Vayne. When she graduated from high school in 1932, she moved back to Farmington, and Burton followed her.

“We weren’t married yet,” she said. “He came on the bus. We didn’t know he was coming.”

Moved to Gallup When she was 5 years old, the family moved to Gallup, where her father was an assistant manager for a JC Penney store. She graduated from high school there.

As a high school junior, she met her future husband, Burton McKay, when she and several other youth spent Halloween in a graveyard.

“We were rattling around trying to scare each other to death,” she said. “Burt was with the rest of the kids. I got alongside of him to talk. Then he began to eye me up, and I began to eye him up.” It was pretty close to love at

Married and fixed up farm They were married on Sept. 6, 1932, and worked hard to fix up the family farm on Apache Street. It had been neglected while the family lived in Gallup.

Among the challenges they faced were bedbugs. They dealt with it by putting gasoline all around the mattress and setting the bedposts in pans of gasoline. They finally got rid of the bugs.

“We farmed for a long time and darn nearly starved to death,” said Lou Vayne. “We got it all fixed up. It was a wonderful time to live. We

were poor, but we were happier than we’d ever been in our lives.”

They had a big apple orchard and sold apples for 50 cents a gallon. They charged 10 cents a gallon for peaches if the buyer picked them. Their cow and chickens helped to keep food on their table.

Baby doctor above post office When Lou Vayne was pregnant with her oldest child, Patty, she remembers visiting Dr. Reece, the baby doctor, at the corner of Main Street and Orchard Avenue.

“The post office was downstairs, and his office was upstairs,” she said. Patty was born on March 12, 1936, at a clinic on 20th Street.

In 1942, Burton had to find work to feed his family, so he took a job at Hubbards, a grocery store on Main Street in Farmington.

Like many people during those times, the McKays charged their groceries at the store, then paid their bill at the end of the month. It was the only way they could put food on the table. At Hubbards, Burton learned to be a

old at the time. Burton found work at a trucking business that made flaps for the backs of trucks. They lived with Lou Vayne’s parents in California.

In 1944 the McKays returned to Farmington.

While Lou Vayne was mailing letters at the Farmington Post Office, she met a friend who suggested that she and Burt buy the Palace Market, a grocery store on Main Street. It was in the corner building next to Wallace Furniture.

“I said, ‘We don’t have any money,’” Lou Vayne recollected. “He said, ‘How much you got?’ I said, ‘We probably don’t have more than $500 in the bank.’ He said, ‘That’s enough.’”

butcher.

Move to California The following year, the family moved to California, where Lou Vayne’s dad was already working in a shipyard. Their son was 8 months

Take train to Durango After the McKays discussed the matter, they took the Durango and Rio Grande narrow gauge train from Farmington to Durango, where they borrowed money. With that financing, they became partners with Zang Wood in Palace Market.

FALL 2014 | MAJESTIC LIVING | 37

bit of everything, including fishing supplies.

“They didn’t have it very long,” Lou Vayne said. Then Burt went into business at a bowling alley located where DeWees Tool and Supply is now at 705 W. Main St. It was the first bowling alley in Farmington. Later he worked at English Lanes, a bowling alley where Urgent Care now sits. His last job was at Ponca Wholesale on Arrington Street.

After her kids were grown, Lou Vayne took a job at Citizens Bank as a PBX operator, answering the phone on a switchboard. She worked there for 12 years and was employed there when Burt died of heart trouble in 1971. He was only 61.

“Burt did everything,” Lou Vayne said.

“He butchered if he had to, he kept books, he did a little bit of everything.”

A few years later, they sold their interest in the business and bought Fulton Market, which soon became Payless. Marion Goff was their business partner.

“We charged groceries for people, and we didn’t know them,” Lou Vayne said. “People were so hard up. They were all wonderful people. Every month they paid their bill.”

Works at Kysar’s Though Lou Vayne was a housewife when her kids were young, as they got older she worked part time at a five and dime store.

When Patty was 12, Lou Vayne took a temporary job during the Christmas season at Kysar’s Department Store.

Mr. Kysar couldn’t work because he was having surgery, so Lou Vayne helped Mrs. Kysar in the store.

In the 1950s, oil and gas created a boom in San Juan County, and big stores such as Safeway

moved into Farmington. That made it hard for smaller grocery stores to survive, including Payless.

During the boom, many houses were constructed, and farm land began to disappear. Eventually, Burt and Lou Vayne sold off most of the family farm land.

Opened Arrington-McKay Hardware For awhile, Burt and John Arrington went into business together by opening Arrington-McKay Hardware on Main Street. The store sold a little

Farmington a ‘darling place’ Through her early years, Lou Vayne remembers Farmington as a “darling place.

Everybody knew everybody else.”

She belonged to the Rebekahs and organizations related to it.

She also belonged to the Daughters of the American Revolution.

She loved to play bridge, bowl, square dance, and fish. She played bridge and bowled until she was in her mid-80s.

“My bowling average went down to 119 when I lost my eyesight,” she said. “I got macular degeneration in 1971.”

She doesn’t have any special birthday plans except to stay alive for the big event.

She has fond memories of raising a family in Farmington.

“We didn’t get rich,” she said, “but we had enough money to pay our bills. We had an interesting life.”

FALL 2014 | MAJESTIC LIVING | 38

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EmpowEring YOUTH Inspired by her high school librarian, Flo Trujillo pays it forward Story by Debra Mayeux Farmington has its own version of the Energizer Bunny. She is small, cute and packed full of non-stop energy.

Flo Trujillo has given her time and herself since moving to Farmington in 1980. When she arrived in the community, Trujillo brought with her a Santa Rosa-attitude of hard work and dedication to family, faith and community.

40 | MAJESTIC LIVING | FALL 2014

In Santa Rosa everyone is related through either blood or the bonds of deep friendships.

Trujillo was the oldest of five siblings and she set the example. She worked hard and was no stranger to performing odd jobs cleaning neighbors’ yards or simply offering a helping hand.

“The smells of my youth were apples and

peaches and stuff you had to pull – chiles,” she said lifting her shoulders and closing her eyes as she smelled the air of the Farmington Public Library in search of the memory.

Trujillo has worked for 25 years at the Farmington Public Library, where she is the coordinator of youth services. It is a job to which she has dedicated a lifetime of service, and her

Photo by Tony Bennett

focus has been about educating and empowering children.

Trujillo was no stranger to the field of education when she accepted the position at the Farmington Public Library. Her first foray in teaching was in her eighth-grade school year.

“People talk about service learning,” Trujillo said. “When I was in eighth grade, if one of the (Catholic) nuns was sick, we would pair up, go in the classroom and teach the class, following the nun’s notes.”

As soon as Trujillo rooted herself in Farmington, she focused on two things – joining the Catholic Church and volunteering at her children’s school – Ladera Elementary School. She wanted to make a difference, and her philosophy was that to meet good people and make new friends, she would have to volunteer. Trujillo began putting herself out there to work for others.

Her first stop was St. Mary’s Catholic

Church. “I went over to the church and made sure we were part of the congregation,” said Trujillo, who began volunteering and became involved with the youth group. She also taught Catholic education classes to the children. For many years, she served as the president of the Legion of Mary, a Catholic lay organization, founded in Ireland in 1921. Its members, all volunteers, give service to the Catholic Church throughout the world.

Trujillo also volunteered as a homeroom mother at Ladera and helped schedule class parties and provide assistance to the teachers in whatever ways they needed. She also started a McGruff Neighborhood Watch, and went door-to-door collecting background check applications, which she hand delivered to the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office.

“I’ve always had a lot of self-confidence,” Trujillo said. “I’ve never been shy.”

How could she be shy? Growing up in Santa

Rosa, there were no strangers. “I come from a hometown, where you walk around and say, ‘Hi,’ and wave,” Trujillo said. She brought this same friendly attitude to Farmington, where she was met with a similar congeniality.

Trujillo made fast friends in the community, and her volunteering led to several opportunities. The first came at Apache Elementary School. Trujillo was playing softball and heard at the ballpark that Apache needed a librarian.

She walked into the school and was hired to work out the school year there.

Trujillo inventoried the books and helped the principal come up with a design for a new library.

“I was inspired by a librarian in high school,” Trujillo said, adding that librarian taught her various library skills such as typing shelving cards and categorizing books.

Trujillo in turn inspired children at Apache.

One young man who visited her in the Apache FALL 2014 | MAJESTIC LIVING | 41

library later came to work for her in the youth services department at the Farmington Public Library. She didn’t remember him until he shared with her about how much she meant to him. The library had been a safe haven for him at the school, and she allowed him to come in and help shelve books. This young man continued working with Trujillo until he graduated from college with an engineering degree.

For Trujillo, stories such as this one demonstrate how life comes full circle. She applied for the job at the Farmington Public Library in 1989, right after being named the Most Valuable Player of the Carol May Softball Team in the city league.

Trujillo was the pitcher, and the team won the city championship. Ironically it was Carol May who interviewed Trujillo for the job and awarded it to her.

Since that time, Trujillo has made a habit of hiring teenagers who used to benefit from children’s story time at the library.

“It’s so important to empower our youth and give them an opportunity to run programs,” she said.

Trujillo truly believes in working as a team and said she could not get the job done without the library staff’s assistance and support. “We congregate. We get ideas and come together with best practices. We all contribute to make it successful.”

This is much like her upbringing, where everyone worked together to better the community. “I had a lot of good role models along the way. My parents were the most important. We were poor and we didn’t know it,” Trujillo said.

Another role model was author Rudolfo Anaya, who caringly calls Trujillo: “Mi hermanita,” or “my little sister.” Trujillo has read all of Anaya’s books, which built upon her passion for historical fiction. “The nuns instilled in us a love of historical fiction,” she said.

One of her all-time favorite books is The Jumping Mouse by John Steptoe. In this book, a little mouse gives up everything he has, including his eyes, to help others. This outlines Trujillo’s attitude toward service to all including the children, who visit the library. She wants to use her role at the library to instill a love for good books in the 42 | MAJESTIC LIVING | FALL 2014

children of the area. She does this through literacy and storytelling programs. She also oversees the library’s summer reading program.

The summer reading program has a long history in Farmington. It goes back more than 20 years and used to run out of the now-closed branch library in a small flat-roofed building off of Hutton Street in Farmington.

The little library was packed full of books and even was home to Ed the Cat, a stray that someone dropped off at the library. When the branch library closed, after the construction of a new library on 20th Street, Trujillo retired Ed, and the story made national headlines.

Trujillo, however, still made books available for youth outside of the 20th Street facility. She helped develop the Bayless Power Library at the Farmington Boys and Girls Club. This grew out of her volunteering at the club. The children asked for a library, so she volunteered for one year to set it up. The power library even received the Annie E. Casey Award for family literacy. It was one of only four awards in the nation.

Trujillo also supervises a branch library in Shiprock.

Her purpose is to promote literacy along with her co-workers and Library Director Karen McPheeters, who said Trujillo works hard along with the rest of the staff to allow for successes at the library.

“Our staff is amazing. We all work together as a great team,” Trujillo agreed.

She, however, has received statewide and national appointments to organizations that have brought further recognition to the library. She was the first librarian to be named an AfterSchool Ambassador through the After-School Alliance in 2009. She was one of 18 local leaders from 15 states selected for the honor. She was to run the after-school program, organize public events, communicate with policy makers and continue to build support for after-school programs, according to Jodi Grant, Afterschool Alliance executive director.

Trujillo received the nomination after expressing her concerns about providing quality afterschool programming to children. “It’s not just about playing, it’s about enrichment,” she said.

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“Kids who cannot afford after-school programs can go to the library and hang out there. We work with them when schools are closed, when daycares are closed,” she said.

“In her work as an Afterschool Ambassador, Flo brought energy and talent to the task of spreading the word about the need to make afterschool programs available to all families that need them. … We are proud to have Flo on our team,” Grant said of Trujillo’s nomination to serve with the program.

Through her work with the After-School Alliance, Trujillo was able to submit artwork from San Juan County youth into the Torani Syrup bottle design competitions. “We’ve won it three years out of the past five years,” she said.

This year, however, Trujillo submitted artwork to the Lights On Afterschool poster contest, which was won by Ashley Parker, of Farmington. “I’m over the moon about this,” Trujillo said.

Another one of Trujillo’s passions is art. She serves as president of the Northwest New Mexico Arts Council. Founded in 1988, the Northwest New Mexico Arts Council’s mission has been to establish a presence and strengthen

art in the community, by coordinating resources and expanding opportunities for a number of art organizations in the community.

Trujillo also supports youth artists and has had an opportunity to showcase their skills in the library’s Blended Zine, an art and literary magazine published by youth in the region. It was started by Jackson Koewler, Morgan McPheeters and Jake Mayfield several years ago and has received continued support from the Farmington Public Library.

Trujillo has continued to draw from all of her experiences, connections and friendships made throughout the years in volunteering to help promote the region’s youth by providing programming, artistic and cultural outlets and opportunities for enrichment.

“Volunteering is so important. That’s how I made friends no matter where I was,” Trujillo said. “Now I can draw from those organizations for which I volunteered and find people, who want to help out. How can someone say, ‘No,’ to our youth? Everyone wants to make a difference and help our youth.”

And that has been the force powering the battery in Farmington’s Energizer Bunny – Flo Trujillo.

Get Your On San Juan County comes together to raise funds to fight cancer Story by Dorothy Nobis There will be dancing for a world record, pink gloves everywhere and a Cowboy Soiree. And while it will all be fun and fun for all, the benefactor of all the fun scheduled by the San Juan Medical Foundation, San Juan County and Majestic Media will be women with cancer.

The fourth annual Get Pinked San Juan County campaign will be held in October, which is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The local Get Pinked campaign was the brainstorm of former foundation director, Jane Kolesnik, similar to an event held in Tulsa, Okla., said Brenda Shepherd, Assistant Manager for the San Juan Medical Foundation.

46 | MAJESTIC LIVING | FALL 2014

“They had a pink fire truck and a pink police car that went to community events,” Shepherd said of the Tulsa event. “After Kolesnik talked to San Juan County (officials), they agreed to be the presenying sponsor of our Get Pinked campaign.”

When Don Vaughan, owner of Majestic Media, heard of the foundation’s plan to raise money with the Get Pinked campaign, he contacted Kolesnik.

“Don wanted to celebrate the community’s support of Majestic Media and he wanted to do something really spectacular for breast cancer, so he decided to do a

Get Pinked Gala,” Shepherd said.

Vaughan had personal knowledge of the challenges breast cancer patients endure. “I realized when we went through it, that there wasn’t a lot of local support programs available,” he said. “There were no organizations or support systems in place. They were all regional or national programs.”

As he did his research, Vaughan also discovered that when people participate in most national campaigns, the money raised by the community doesn’t stay in the community.

“There is nothing to sustain or support local programs,” Vaughan said of national fundraising campaigns. “I wanted to be part

of a fundraiser that kept all of the money in our community to support our community.”

The first year, the Get Pinked committee got area schools and businesses involved and the pink “splats” that were sold to promote the event were found everywhere.

That successful first campaign raised $160,000, all of which went to the Cathy Lincoln Memorial Cancer Fund. Cathy Lincoln was a nurse at San Juan Regional Medical Center when she was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 39. Lincoln continued working with patients during her treatment and discovered many women with breast cancer did not have the funds for medical treatment.

After Lincoln passed, her family, friends and co-workers honored Lincoln by establishing a fund in her memory to help other women fighting the battle with cancer. In October 2001, the Cathy Lincoln Memorial Cancer Fund was established, ensuring women who are underinsured or not insured at all, can receive the treatment they need.

Jamie Lujan, Cathy Lincoln’s daughter, is the chairman of the Get Pinked committee.

“Jamie is at every event, every meeting and FALL 2014 | MAJESTIC LIVING | 47

is committed to helping women with breast cancer,” Shepherd said. “She’s a huge driving force for us to help those women.”

This year, the Get Pinked campaign will have a kickoff rally, said Latisha Joseph, the executive assistant for the foundation. The rally will be held from 2 to 5 p.m. October 4 at McGee Park.

Local 4-H Clubs will provide food for sale and people from throughout the county are encouraged to attend, to participate in a Gangnam style dance which the committee hopes will put Get Pinked San Juan County in the Guinness Book of World Records. At least 1,000 people are needed to dance in order to compete for the record. Vendor booths will also be available, Joseph said.

The support from the community for the event has been overwhelming, Joseph added.

“A diversity of business activities have come 48 | MAJESTIC LIVING | FALL 2014

out of it (the event),” she said. “People and businesses want to be involved and really want to help women battling breast cancer.”

A Pink Gloved Dance has been produced and submitted to the national organization, and Shepherd and Joseph hope San Juan County will win the contest, which awards the winner with money for the charity of its choice – in this case, the Cathy Lincoln Memorial Cancer Fund. The video will be available to view online and the committee encourages locals to vote for San Juan County. The highest vote getter receives the money.

“The first year we did the video, San Juan County came in eighth in the nation,” Shepherd said proudly.

In addition to the rally and the video contest, the Breast Cancer Awareness Luncheon and Style Show and the Cowboy Soiree will cap off the month of events. The soiree will

“People and businesses want to be involved and really want to help women battling breast cancer” — Latisha Joseph executive assistant San Juan Medical Foundation be October 25 and will feature a live auction and a band for dancing.

“In the past, Quality Appliance has donated a pink refrigerator filled with pink champagne,” Shepherd said. “We have art from local artists and our jewelry stores always donate beautiful jewelry.”

Tickets to the soiree are $250 a couple and are limited to 300 people. Proceeds from the gala also go to the Cathy Lincoln Memorial Cancer Fund.

A 2015 calendar featuring breast cancer survivors will also be for sale during the month of October. Shepherd said the calendar is a project of Bree Gonzales, Faith Photography. Gonzales took photos of breast cancer survivors in the Bisti Wilderness area, which made for beautiful photos.

Arrowhead Propane will use its pink propane truck throughout the month of October again this year. “When my partner, Kent Misemer, and I started our business people were really good to us and we did well,” said Jake Cluff of Arrowhead. “Our trucks are out all the time and we wanted to give back to the community for its support. We talked to the Medical Foundation about the Cathy Lincoln Memorial Cancer Fund.

We know that cancer affects everyone and every family.”

Cluff and Misemer had a truck that needed painting, so they decided to paint the truck pink and give a donation to the Cathy Lincoln fund. “We thought we might get 200 more customers because of the truck and the donations,” Cluff said, “but we got over 600.

People call us and ask for the pink truck to deliver.”

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Staying STRONG

Great support system helps Laura Huish win breast cancer battle Story Dorothy Nobis Photos Josh Bishop When Laura Huish went to a birthday party for a friend of her sister-in-law, she had no idea how that party would change her life.

The birthday girl was celebrating her 54th birthday, but was also going through treatment for breast cancer. “I looked at her and she was so strong,” Huish said. “Cancer wasn’t bringing her down.”

Huish asked her sister-in-law, Carla Wade, how her friend discovered she had breast cancer.

“Carla said her friend thought her breast look different,” Huish said. While Huish had always been in good health, she went into the bathroom to look at her own breasts. “My right breast looked different from my left,” she said.

When Huish had a breast reduction when she was 25, her doctor told her she’d never have to worry about breast cancer. Unfortunately, her doctor was wrong.

Huish, like most women, was busy with a job and a family. It was almost a month from when she first noticed the change in her breast before Huish made an appointment for a mammogram.

“The mammogram showed something on my breast and the doctor said I needed a biopsy.”

“I argued with the radiologist that there could50 | MAJESTIC LIVING | FALL 2014

n’tbe anything there -- I have a life, two kids, a job.” Five minutes after walking out of radiology, Huish’s regular doctor called to say he had scheduled an appointment to meet with a surgeon the next morning.

Still resisting the idea she might have cancer and not wanting to worry anyone, Huish told her husband, Bobby, “no” when he asked to go with her to meet with the surgeon. After meeting with the surgeon on October 24, a biopsy was scheduled for the next day.

On October 25, Huish went forward with her regular family routine, just as if she were going to work, so her two young sons wouldn’t be concerned.

When the biopsy was completed, Huish learned the medical team had removed a tumor the size of a golf ball from her breast. She had an appointment the following afternoon and, realizing it would be a long night for her and her husband, Huish let the boys spend the night with their grandparents, explaining the week night treat was because she wasn’t feeling well. “When Bobby and I went to the doctor, she walked in and said I had breast cancer and it’s aggressive,” Huish said. “I can still hear Bobby’s head hit the

wall when he heard the news.” Because Huish’s breast cancer was aggressive, a decision had to be made right away about what to do. “I asked the doctor if I would survive, and she said that with surgery and treatment, I had a good chance of survival.” “When the doctor left the room, I thought ‘I have to be like Carla’s friend. I have to be strong and I have to live,’” Huish said.

Huish had a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery two weeks later. The CT scan prior to the surgery proved to be another challenge. “The scan showed two spots and they thought I might have bone cancer,” she said. A bone scan was scheduled and on her way to the hospital, Huish said “I put on my Christian music and I screamed and I cried, begging God for everything to be OK.” Fortunately, the tests showed no additional cancer. “The tech who walked me out after the scan asked what I was there for. When I explained I had been diagnosed with breast cancer and I was there to find out if it had already spread to my bones. She pointed her finger to the sky and said, ‘You have to trust in Him. If you trust in Him, everything will be OK.’ I have never

* Huish 55

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A life filled with leArning Each semester Traci HalesVass meets a classroom full of new friends Story by Dorothy Nobis | Photos by Whitney Howle Traci HalesVass’ journey to San Juan College, where she is the assistant professor of English, was not an easy one.

At 17 years of age, HalesVass’ mother died, leaving the teen with a huge void in her heart and in her life. Dealing with her mother’s death wasn’t easy, HalesVass said.

“I dropped out of high school and ran away with a rock and roll musician,” she said with a rueful shake of her head. “It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”

The rock and roll musician’s career didn’t materialize and he eventually left HalesVass – and the two young children he fathered. “There I was, a single mother, and I was a house painter, did retail and a little office work. I did what I could to support my children.”

HalesVass’ daughter, Mandi, was 4 and her son, Paul, was 8 when their father left. There was little communication between HalesVass and her ex-husband in the years that followed. However, “The courts helped us stay in touch,” she said with a smile.

She was 35 years old when she met and fell in love with another man. “I was working part time at 52 | MAJESTIC LIVING | FALL 2014

an automotive place, and my car broke down,” she remembered. “A friend took me to her brother-in-law’s home and I had on a cute pair of cowboy boots. Patrick asked if I had any spurs,” and a relationship was begun.

The couple married, blending Patrick’s son with HalesVass’ son and daughter, and life was good.

“Patrick kept telling me to go back to school,” HalesVass said. “At the age of 37, I did. I started at a community college and I fell in love with academics and the whole learning experience.”

With her GED certification and her associate degree earned, HalesVass said she thought she might enter the medical field. “I really wanted to write and I had written all my life, but I didn’t look at writing as a ‘real’ job,” she said.

Instead, HalesVass majored in English and earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees. In 1998, the HalesVass family moved to Farmington and she went to work for San Juan College, where she remained until 2002.

It was then that HalesVass decided what she really wanted to do was to teach writing, so she and the family moved to Boulder, Colo., where she enrolled in Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of

One Book, One Community author visits in October One Book, One Community’s choice for this year is The Distance Between Us. Author Reyna Grande will discuss her book at 7 p.m. on Wednesday Oct. 29 at the Henderson Fine Arts Center at San Juan College and will be available to sign books immediately after.

Grande is an award-winning novelist and memoirist. She has received an American Book Award, the El Premio Aztlán Literary Award, and the Latino Book Award. In 2012, she was a finalist for the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Awards. Her works have been published internationally in countries such as Norway and South Korea.

Her novels, Across a Hundred Mountains, (Atria, 2006) and Dancing with Butterflies (Washington Square Press, 2009) were published to critical acclaim and have been read widely in schools across the country. Her latest book, The Distance Between Us, was published in August 2012, by Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. In this memoir, Grande writes about her life before and after illegally emigrating from Mexico to the United States. A National Book Circle Critics Award finalist, The Distance Between Us is an inspirational growing-up story about the pursuit of a better life.

The Los Angeles Times hailed it as ‘the Angela’s Ashes of the modern Mexican immigrant experience.”

Born in Mexico, Grande was 2 years old when her father left for the U.S. to find work. Her mother followed her father north two years later, leaving Grande and her siblings behind in Mexico.

In 1985, when Grande was going on 10, she entered the U.S. as an undocumented immigrant. She later went on to become the first person in her family to graduate from college.

After attending Pasadena (Calif.) City College for two years, Grande obtained a B.A. in creative writing and film and video from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She later received her M.F.A. in creative writing from Antioch University. Now, in addition to being a published author, she is also an active promoter of Latino literature and is a sought-after speaker at high schools, colleges, and universities across the nation.

Currently Grande teaches creative writing at UCLA Extension and is at work on her next novel.

Disembodied Politics. It was there that HalesVass earned her master’s of fine arts degree.

Once again looking for work, HalesVass found a job opening at San Juan College and, in 2007, the family returned to Farmington. “I missed this college and realized what a good school it was and how much I liked New Mexico,” she explained. “There’s a lot of camaraderie here and a lot of support for each other and a lot of opportunities here. It was at a community college where I caught the academic fever and the relationship between student and teacher.”

In 2008, HalesVass started the One Book One Community program, aided with a Distinguished Scholar Grant. In 2012, Dr. Toni Hopper Pendergrass was named president of San Juan College and HalesVass arranged for a meeting to discuss her project.

“Dr. Pendergrass institutionalized the program, making it part of the curriculum, and since then I’ve seen some amazing things happen to people,” HalesVass said. “No matter what book we choose, the book takes on a life of its own.”

For Pendergrass, supporting the One Book

54 | MAJESTIC LIVING | FALL 2014

One Community program was a no-brainer.

“San Juan College is proud of the One Book One Community initiative,” Pendergrass said.

“Sharing One Book One Community fosters relationships among students and college employees, improves retention rates and enhances overall student success.”

The One Book One Community committee selects one book each year for students, faculty and the community to purchase and enjoy. The selection process invites everyone to make suggestions for books, although the committee makes the final choice. The book should be thought provoking, appeal to a diverse population, and encourage discussion and independent thinking.

While many of her students are young, HalesVass also teaches Encore classes at San Juan College. Encore offers classes designed for students 50 years and older but is open to students 18 and older. “Encore has writing workshops where people write and critique each other’s work,” she said. “I love that class. It is so much fun. I can’t believe I’m getting paid to do this – a group of us seniors get together as a

core group. It’s great Saturday morning fun.”

While enjoying teaching and helping students explore new horizons and discover new interests, HalesVass remains a student herself.

“Five years ago, I took piano lessons,” she

Huish

said, adding it was something she’d wanted to do for a long time. In addition, HalesVass is taking a math class this fall. “I want to make sure I’ve got all parts of my brain working,” she said with a laugh. Whether it’s reading or writing,

HalesVass loves the work. “Everybody has a story,” she said. “I love teaching because I learn so much from these people. Every semester, I go into class and meet a whole new group of friends. We can never, ever stop learning.”

at the memory. “Josh (the then five-year-old) said ‘Mom, are you going to lose your hair?’ Laura said yes. Bradley (the older son) said ‘Mom, are you going to die?” And Laura said no.”

Bobby knew the treatment was hard for his wife, but she never shared that with her family.

“She’s tough,” he said of Laura. “She worked Monday and Tuesday, had the chemo on Wednesday, and went back to work Thursday and Friday. Then she’d sleep all day Saturday and Sunday.”

The hardest part of the treatment for Bobby was not being able to do anything to ease the pain of treatment. “I hated not being as tough as she was,” he said. “If I had the ambition, the drive and the desire as Laura does, I’d be doing good. She raised two kids and a husband, worked full time and went to college full time.

And she said the biggest reason she decided to go to college was to keep her mind off dying.”

Bobby said he never thought his wife would die. “Not Laura,” he said. “She had such a desire to live for those kids.”

Bobby reminds everyone that breast cancer doesn’t affect just women. “My neighbor asked about Laura and when I told him she had breast cancer, he said his brother died from breast cancer. Breast cancer doesn’t discriminate.”

On October 26, 2014, Huish will have seven years of being cancer free. “You never forget the day you’re diagnosed with cancer. It’s called ‘Survivor’s Day,’ because the day you’re diagnosed is the day you start surviving. I had to survive because I needed to be here to watch my kids grow up.”

The fear of the cancer returning is always there Huish said.

But, as is typical of Huish, she takes strength from her family and has always kept her sense of humor. “I remember I had no eyelashes and no eyebrows,” she said with a laugh remembering.

“But I put mascara on the one eyelash I had left!”

Going through cancer is never easy, but Huish has some advice – to patients and their family

and friends. “My advice to patients is to stay strong,” she said. “My advice to friends is to stay in touch and offer support in helping with whatever the patient might need. Chemotherapy is very draining and the energy it takes to cook a meal just isn’t there. I had a wonderful support system of friends and family who brought my family dinner three times a week for four months.

Just remember to give the patient some girlfriend time, too. It can be a lonely time for patients when everyone gets back to their own daily routines.”

Staying positive, knowing the treatment will eventually end, and taking good care of yourself is advice Huish offers. And a support system also helps.

“Not wanting to scare my family and friends, I tried to remain calm on the outside, but on the inside, I was freaking out that I had cancer,” Huish said. “The only person I’d ever known who had cancer was Cathy Lincoln, and she had passed away from it. My mother and Cathy were sorority sisters and they were good friends. I babysat Jamie and Justin (Lincoln’s children) when they were little.”

It is because of Cathy Lincoln, the countless women who have had breast cancer and for the countless others who will fight that battle in the future – and because she has fought that battle and won -- that Huish supports those who are struggling to get through the treatment and the cure.

“When Laura was diagnosed with breast cancer, friends would ask what they could do,” said Bobby Huish. “I always said ‘get a mammogram.’

Mammograms don’t detect everything, but they’re the best place to start.”

“It is for Cathy, it is for me, and it is for every woman who is diagnosed with breast cancer that I support and participate in the Get Pinked campaign,” Laura Huish said. “Keeping that money in our community, to help our own, is an important part of the battle. We can survive and we will survive, but we need help – financially, emotionally and physically.”

continued from 50

forgotten her words. I believe God puts people in your life at just the right time for different reasons, and that day she was my angel sent straight from Heaven.”

With the mastectomy and reconstruction behind her, Huish knew her battle with cancer was not yet won. There would be chemotherapy, the loss of her hair and the after effects of the treatment. Huish was determined to keep life as normal as possible for the sake of her sons, Bradley and Joshua.

“We had a family picture taken before I lost my hair,” Huish said. “The day after my second treatment, my hair started to fall out. I cried and called my hairdresser. He shaved my head for me that night. My sisters came for the head shaving and afterwards announced that I looked like my dad, my cousin, and my uncle – all in one. I really didn’t want to look like a man!”

Two wigs helped with the hair loss and Huish continued to work throughout her treatment.

“It was important for me to be at work,” she said of her job as a secretary at Bluffview Elementary School. “If I was at work the boys saw me there and knew I was OK.” Her hair grew back, her treatments were successful and Huish decided to go back to school.

“I had a legal assistant’s degree, but I wanted more. I started with Western Governors University in January of 2009 and worked full time while taking classes online. My last chemo treatment was the same day as my first WGU test.” She graduated and now a teaches at Northeast Elementary School.

For Bobby Huish, watching his wife go through the treatment for breast cancer was difficult.

“When the doctor told us Laura had breast cancer, I was dumbfounded,” Bobby said.

“I didn’t know what to say and that’s the first time I’ve been left without words in my life.”

When Bobby and Laura drove to his parents’ house to pick up the boys, it was an emotional ride, with few words. “The hardest thing is telling an eight-year-old and a five-year-old their mother has cancer,” Bobby said, his eyes tearing

FALL 2014 | MAJESTIC LIVING | 55

Carol Hatfield Ann Gattis

Sisters in life & learning

‘Best job you could ever have’ After 35 years Carol Hatfield urges people to become teachers Story Margaret Cheasbro | Photos Josh Bishop From the time she was a pre-teen, Carol Hatfield knew she wanted to be a teacher.

She lived a block away from McCoy Elementary School in Aztec and, when she was 11 or 12 noticed a teacher conducting a summer school program at the school.

“I was looking for something to do, so I talked her into letting me be her helper,” Carol recalls. “From that point on I knew I wanted to be in a classroom teaching children.”

An Aztec resident since she was 5 months old, Carol graduated from Aztec High School and San Juan College before completing her degree in elementary education and early childhood in 1980 from New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. She immediately applied for work in the Aztec schools.

“I always knew that’s where I wanted to

be,” she said. “Aztec always had a great reputation, and continues to, as one of the best districts.”

That summer she was hired as a kindergarten teacher at McCoy, and she’s taught kindergarten there for the last 34 years. Several years ago, she also welcomed pre-first graders into her classroom. She retired this May. “Carol is great,” said Bryan Sanders, her principal for the last five years. “She loved the kids. She was dedicated to them. You could tell that it never got old for her. She was as good at the end as she was throughout the years. She was a great teacher. She’ll be missed.”

Though Carol was always interested in having kids learn, she was more interested in making them feel valued, safe and important

at school.

“Every child in my class was important to me,” she said. “It’s so wonderful to be able to love them, because when they feel that sense of love and security, they can learn anything.

That was my job, to make sure that they loved school.”

As the middle child of parents who owned a successful restaurant in Aztec, Carol always felt loved, so it came naturally to love her students as well.

Her parents, Louis and Helen Fayad (pronounced Faye’ ed), moved to Aztec from Alamosa, Colorado, in October 1957 five months after Carol was born. They opened Hills Café in Aztec, where Wendy’s now sits.

The construction of the new highway going by the café made it difficult for customers to reach the restaurant, so they closed the business

30 years of science & leadership Ann Gattis’ dedication to education has changed many lives Story Dorothy Nobis | When Ann Gattis made biology her major and chemistry her minor in college, her father hoped his daughter would become a doctor.

While Gattis loved science as a child, her days were spent in a makebelieve classroom, teaching make-believe students. So when she picked up some education classes in college and did her student teaching, she knew she had found the perfect career path.

“Once I did my student teaching, I knew that teaching was what I was meant to do,” Gattis said. In 1978, Gattis was a teacher at Bloomfield High School, but when she became pregnant, she took time off to raise a family.

“In 1986, a friend called from Tibbetts (Middle School) and said there was a job open – and it was just 10 days before school started,” Gattis remembered. With her children now in school, Gattis jumped at the chance to return to school herself.

It was that year, too, that Gattis started the science fair at Tibbetts, and it was also that year that she understood the importance – and the complexities – of hosting such a fair.

“That first year, the regional fair was held in Grants,” Gattis said. “I

Photos Josh Bishop took seven students and we didn’t win a thing. I was devastated and knew I had to fix it.”

She went to training and realized what a difficult process it was.

“Kids need a lot of assistance and time,” Gattis said of preparing for a science fair. “They need help and I spent a lot of time with them after school. I had my own kids with me after school and the junior high school kids took turns babysitting while I helped the others,” she added with a laugh.

From October until the fair was held in January, Gattis worked with her students and helped them prepare. Her commitment and dedication to the students and the science fair increased student participation in the fair. “We went from seven students participating to almost 200, in seven years,” she said proudly.

After spending several years as the assistant principal at Tibbetts, Gattis took a teaching position at Farmington High School. “It was fun for me because I had the kids who had been (involved) with the science fair at Tibbetts,” she said. “We did some fine tuning and made sophisticated projects that got the students exhibit spots at the International

and looked for different work. Her father found various jobs in Farmington before buyinga restaurant on Aztec Boulevard in the 1960s. He called it the Flamingo. It was only a block from their home on Maddox Street. They continued to operate the restaurant until they retired in 1985.

“Dad did the buying, cooking and food preparation,” Carol said. “Mom cooked as well, and helped him in the kitchen. We had some waitresses, my sister, Ann (Gattis), and I being two of the most faithful ones.”

Louis and Helen spoke fluent Arabic. Though Helen was born in Colorado and Louis in Canada, their parents originally came from Lebanon. Carol, Ann and their brother only picked up a few words of Arabic.

“When we were young, we knew something was going on when the Arabic came out,” Carol said with a grin.

The Fayads were known for their kindness.

Homeless people or travelers down on their luck found help at the Flamingo.

“There were times when my dad fed people who had no money,” Carol recalls. “He didn’t know we were watching, but many times we 58 | MAJESTIC LIVING | FALL 2014

watched him feed people and feed their animals. If he had to cook it and package it and send it on with them, he made sure they and their dog had a meal. He was a great man.”

Helen stayed at home with her children when they were young, but when they got old enough, they sometimes accompanied her to the restaurant.

“Our house was just a block away, so you could look over and see the restaurant,” Carol said. “Within a couple of minutes you could be back at the house. When we got a little older, we had the freedom to come and go. Things were a lot safer then.”

Though Carol was good at waitressing, she never lost her desire to become a teacher. She loved her years at McCoy Elementary School.

For many years, students knew her as Carol Fayad. It wasn’t until 1995 when she was 38 that she married Warren Hatfield.

“It was always kind of a joke, a Hatfield working at McCoy,” said Carol.

She’s seen many education initiatives come and go, the most recent one called Common Core in which kindergarteners receive a report card every nine weeks.

“On that report card were three solid pages of skills the children had to master,” Carol said.

“It was such fine print that you’d better get your glasses on because there were 111 standards these kids need to learn in one school year, which is 180 days.”

Though kindergarten was once a place where children learned how to socialize and follow basic rules, now they are expected to read, write a simple story and do simple math by the end of the school year, she said. “A lot of children just aren’t ready for the prescribed curriculum that we have set for them when they come to school. We’re really pushing, pushing, pushing them.”

In spite of the pressure, teachers at McCoy always made sure that kids had good learning experiences, she said. “In our school there were a bunch of happy kids learning, feeling successful and safe. We never forgot what was right and good for them.”

Leia (Schnarch) Meryt of Loveland, Colorado, who taught with Carol at McCoy for eight years, remarked, “Carol is absolutely dedicated to her profession, to the children and their families.

She cared what their lives were about and how

Science Fair. We took 24 students to the International Science Fair in 10 years.”

Gattis’s work with the students did not go unnoticed. In 1999, she was named the Outstanding Biology Teacher in New Mexico. That same year, she was one of five science fair sponsors recognized by the International Science Fair at its 50-year celebration.

“Collecting that award in front of 10,000 people was wonderful,” she said.

In 2000, Gattis was honored once again as one of five teachers from the United States invited to take students to Singapore for a science symposium.

Anthony Smagacz was hired by the Farmington Municipal School District in 2001 as the principal of Tibbetts Middle School. “I often heard Ann’s name circulating around the district in connection to the FMS District Science Curriculum Standards and Science Fair, Smagacz said. “At that time, Ann was the chair of the science department at Farmington High and coordinator of the district and county science fair, as well as a judge of the National Science Fair.”

“As I got to know Ann, like most people who know her, I realized that she was an incredibly bright and talented science instructor,” Smagacz added.

“Her passion for teaching year after year did not wane. In her years at Tibbetts, Ann quickly developed a love for school leadership as well as the trust and respect of her colleagues. Ann moved to Piedra Vista High School, where she established herself and her school as one of the top seven schools in the state of New Mexico, as reported by U.S. News & World Report.”

Gattis served as principal at Piedra Vista for eight years. “I wanted the challenge to lead a school and I love high school age kids. I love their energy and their enthusiasm, and Piedra Vista was fairly new and I knew it would be a great opportunity to make a difference in a new school.”

And make a difference, Gattis did. “We won a lot of awards,” she said. “In 2011, we were recognized nationally as an outstanding high school for student achievement. In 2012, we were one of the top public high schools in New Mexico.”

Gail Silva has known Gattis for 17 years. “When I started teaching science at Hermosa Middle School 17 years ago, Ann was still teaching at Farmington High and was the District Science Fair Coordinator,” Silva recalled. “I remember going to her science fair workshop for the first time and thinking, ‘Wow, that lady is a science teaching goddess. If I want to be good at

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it affected their learning. She really listened to each child. She had unique and varied ways of teaching to accommodate each child’s needs no matter what their learning style or ability.”

Riley Roland, who was once her principal at McCoy, remembers Carol was willing to try new things, and kept up with changes in teaching methods and the curriculum.

“She always was well liked by the parents and the students,” he said. “She was a very good employee.

I’m sad she’s retiring because she did such a great job. She had so much expertise and compassion. She made students enjoy learning.”

Carol never had children of her own, but she’s been a doting aunt to her sister’s two children and her brother’s three. “I feel like my life has always been filled with children,” she said.

Now that both she and Warren are retired, they plan to travel and spend time enjoying their acreage along the Animas River near Aztec.

She’s never far from the children she taught over the years. She sees them in stores and restaurants.

When one of her students graduated from high school, she found Carol on the Internet and emailed her a note of thanks. She was only in Carol’s kindergarten class from Feb. 14 to the end of the year, but she remembered those months with fondness.

“She came to meet me the day before her parents were going to start her in school,” Carol recalled. “I brought her in, we got her Valentine’s cards. There was something about when we met that very first day of school that remained one of her favorite memories. You never know how much it means to them, just the little things.”

Another student who was graduating with honors invited her to a banquet for honor graduates.

“They could invite one teacher who made an impression on them or who they wanted to share the experience with,” she recalled. “He picked me. It meant everything to me.”

She’s invited to former students’ weddings, and they send her birth announcements.

“All Carol ever wanted to do was teach,” said Mickey Covel, who was her college roommate and taught kindergarten in Farmington until she retired.

“She didn’t like leaving her kids with anybody else.

For several years she got perfect attendance awards because she would never leave her kids. They always came first.” In spite of increasing challenges in education, Carol encourages people who want to become teachers.

“I tell them to follow their heart, because teaching will be the best job they’ll ever have,” she said. “The reward in it is unbelievable.

my job, I should find out what she does best and follow it.’”

While admitting she was somewhat intimidated by Gattis, Silva said, “Ann truly was the best of the best in the classroom and at mentoring students and teachers through the science fair process. She has a wall of awards and students that went on to successful science fairs to prove it.”

Silva’s relationship with Gattis continued when she was transferred from Hermosa Middle School to Piedra Vista High School seven years ago. “Ann was the principal. Before that, I hadn’t worked one-on-one with her,” Silva said.

“She had the reputation to be a very supportive principal who had high expectations of her staff.

From the very first day, this proved to be true.”

“In her years of being an administrator, she never lost sight of what it is like to be a classroom teacher,” Silva said of Gattis. “I always felt supported and encouraged by her to try new ideas and to go above and beyond for my students. That was the example that she had set for us when she was a teacher and continued to foster it as an administrator.”

Dave Golden, the new principal at Piedra

Vista High School, knew Gattis when she was a teacher in the Bloomfield School District. “Little did she know her dedication to educating students would have such an impact on the science community,” Golden said. “She has truly impacted students, parents, teachers and community members, not only as a leader in science education, but as a school administrator as well.”

“During her eight years as principal (of Piedra Vista), I felt very fortunate to receive guidance and mentorship from an educational leader who followed her calling as a scientist, teacher and leader. She had a profound impact on students, teachers, parents and administrators throughout her career,” Golden added.

Gattis retired from the Farmington Municipal School District and as principal of Piedra Vista High School this year. “It was a wonderful run,” Gattis said of her career as a teacher and administrator. “My goal was to excel in every area and I had a wonderful staff that followed wherever I led.”

After 30 years in the classroom and school administrative offices, Gattis is enjoying her retirement. “Many of those days (in education) I’d

consider myself late to work if I wasn’t there by 7 a.m.,” she said with a shake of her head. “I’d go to the end of the school day, and then have meetings and I’d go to all the activities on campus until 9 or 10 at night, four days a week. It was a tough schedule.”

While her administrative team at Piedra Vista wanted her to stay and the decision to retire was not an easy one, Gattis said she felt it was time.

“I was tired and it was taking its toll on me physically,” Gattis said of the job. “And change is good. It’s time for new ideas and a way of doing things. It was time for someone else to take over.”

Still young in age, spirit and enthusiasm, Gattis is looking at other ways to be involved in education, the career she chose and the one she loves. “I emailed the science teacher and asked if I could help with the science fair,” she admitted. “I will miss the students and interacting with them on a regular basis.”

While she has enjoyed being an educator and an administrator, Gattis said school teachers are under more stress today that when she entered the field 30 years ago. Teachers today must not

FALL 2014 | MAJESTIC LIVING | 61

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only teach, but are asked to become more involved with the families of the students. “There have been major changes in education in 30 years,� Gattis said, “and they’re not all good.

We try to control too many things outside of the classroom that are beyond our control. We can only do what we can do in the nine months we have the students.� “Teachers spend a huge amount of time after school and on weekends, and they’re being consumed by the work and have a lot of extra work on their plate,� she added. The ever-increasing demands on teachers to ensure each student succeeds likely will cause a shortage of good teachers, Gattis believes. “I see the standardization of curriculum becoming the norm,� Gattis said. “It’s not going away.

More expectations will be placed on teachers and they’ll be asked to do home visits and become more involved in the families.�

Gattis hopes the future of education includes offering students who don’t want to go to college the opportunity to take classes that will prepare them for the workforce. “Now, we treat kids like they’re all going to college and that’s not going to happen.

We have to keep kids interested in school, and to motivate those kids. We need to give them the skills they need to get the jobs they want.�

Gattis’ personal goals, at least for now, include spending more time with her own family, to enjoy gardening, reading and traveling. “In the years I worked with Ann at Piedra Vista, the mentor/mentee relationship we had before grew into a very valued friendship,� Gail Silva said. “She is a kind a gracious lady who loves a good laugh. We will miss working with her each day, but we know she is always there.�

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around

town

Navajo Preparatory School Athletic Director Mike Tillman works on plans for the school’s 4-Person Scramble Golf Tournament. The tournament will be Saturday, Sept. 27, and proceeds will go to the school’s academic and athletic programs. For more information call Tillman at 505.215.3102 or Piñon Hills Golf Course at 505.326.6066.

Advantage Dodge, Chrysler Jeep hosted a Community Sale and Charity Event in August. As a result of the sale, Steve Melloy, Advantage dealer principal, presented a $5,000 check to the Farmington Boys and Girls Club on Aug. 13.

Pictured from left are Shannon Lewis, Benedikte Whitman, Steve Melloy, Linda Lawson, Jesus Esparza, and Johnnie Harris.

Animas Valley Insurance, Majestic Media, Wendy’s, Qdoba, High Country Auto Group, Sandia Hearing Aids, Farmington Civic Center, ImageNet Consulting, KOFB Channel 12 in Farmington, KWYK 94.9 – Quick Radio, and the Special Olympics hosted the August Chamber of Commerce Business After Hours on Aug. 21 at Lions Wilderness Park Amphitheater. The theme was Wild Wild West. At right, Emily Oakes finds the perfect Wild West buddy to hang out with at the event.

Ken Griffey Jr. returned to Farmington for the 50th anniversary Connie Mack World Serices. Opening ceremonies included Griffey, Barry Larkin, Tony Muser and Larry Harlow being inducted into the Hall of Fame. Griffey gave a message to the players encouraging them to value their time at the tournament and to use it as a stepping stone to get them to the next phase of their playing careers.

FALL 2014 | MAJESTIC LIVING | 63

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It’s that time of year when we wonder not only how the year could have gone by so fast, but also what the heck are we going to get friends and family this holiday season. Here are some pre-holiday shopping ideas to mull over before the big shopping wave hits.

Coolest Things

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Pre-shopping ideas

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EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN

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ULTIMATE REPURPOSING

The Indian returns www.indianmotorcycle.com

Drum furniture www.drumworksfurniture.com

Even though it ceased production in 1949, the Indian Scout continues to be one of the most coveted bikes among motorcycle enthusiasts. Simply put, it’s a true classic, which is why it’s no surprise that Polaris’ recent revival of the Indian Motorcycles brand will include the 2015 Indian Scout, reintroducing the model to an entirely new generation of riders.

Billed as a “contemporary yet classic interpretation” of the famous cruiser bike, it is, easily, the coolest addition to the brand’s new five-model lineup.

Starting MSRP of $10,999

It is tough imagining industrial steel barrel drums being re-purposed into snazzy-looking home furniture. Yet, that’s exactly what DrumWorks Furniture manages to accomplish with their existing collection.

Each piece is sourced from an independent supplier that recycles steel drums for various industrial uses.

64 | MAJESTIC LIVING | FALL 2014

DrumWorks Furniture’s chairs retail at an average of $560.

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HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT

Satchel and tactical wall shelves www.hiddenstorage.com and www.tacticalwalls.com At first glance, they just look like regular mounted shelves with some extra reinforcement at the bottom. But they aren’t. Instead, the bottom unit actually folds out to reveal a concealed compartment that can hold items, including many without anyone knowing.

Each shelf comes with customizable foam pad for organizing your accessories, so you can arrange them to suit your specific collection. They come in three finishes.

Tactical Wall Shelves range from $295 to $395 for the RLS.

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DRIVE AND BREW

Hey Joe Coffee Mug www.heyjoecoffee.com/shop Most travel mugs do a great job of keeping your coffee at ideal temperatures. But that drink is still going to have to be brewed before you leave home.

The Hey Joe Coffee Mug cuts off that requirement, letting you brew coffee right in the same mug you drink from while you drive through traffic on the way to the office.

A rechargeable battery at the bottom of the mug provides the necessary power for the heating element. $49.

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OUTSIDE, INSIDE AND ALL AROUND TH LINES

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CHILLAXIN’

Adventurous coloring book www.amazon.com

Wine Chill Drop www.Williams-/sonoma.com

Between the Lines, subtitled an Expert Level Coloring Book, is impossible to color properly with crayons. At least, that is, if you’re intent on staying inside the lines. Filled with intricately detailed lined drawings, you’re going to need steady hands and some fine-sharpened colored pencils to properly do the trick.

Need to chill wine in a hurry? These wine chilling wands cool a single glass of wine to its ideal serving temperature up to 20 times faster than your refrigerator can chill a full bottle. Simply place the prechilled stainless-steel drop in your glass – in just minutes, your wine is ready to enjoy.

$13.50

$39.95 for two chillers

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NO MORE LOST LUGGAGE

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LEFTOVER SECURITY

CalypsoTag www.calypsocrystal.com

Cover Blubber www.thinkgeek.com

Unless you carry wild colored luggage, odds are it’s not so easy for you to spot your bags on a conveyor after a long layover and five-hour connecting flight.

Make things easier with the CalypsoTag. This smart gadget is made of premium Italian leather and attaches to your luggage to make it easier to spot, all while connecting to your phone via Bluetooth 4 to let you know where it’s located. It’s not quite GPS for your bags, but it’s close — and a lot more effective than just showing up at the baggage claim with nothing but a paper stub and a prayer. $119

After finishing dinner, we all play “Which Container Does This Bit of Leftovers Fit Into?” Which is not a lot of fun for those of us who are spatially-challenged.

The appropriately-named Cover Blubber can fix this, and a whole other mess of food-storage ills. This reusable food-saver wrap is intended to protect food in the fridge or freezer.

They come in a reusable set of four, ranging from 3” to 12” diameter. They’re perfect for fruit, keeping nasty oxidation out. They are not microwave or dishwasher-safe. $19.99

FALL 2014 | MAJESTIC LIVING | 65

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Aztec, N.M. 505-334-1772 www.reliancemedicalgroup.com ReMax of Farmington.....................................3 108 N. Orchard Farmington, N.M. 505-327-4777 www.remax.com San Juan College .........................................33 505-326-3311 www.sanjuancollege.edu San Juan Nurseries.......................................25 800 E. 20th St. Farmington, N.M. 505-326-0358 www.sanjuannurseries.com

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Majestic Living Magazine is online!

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