MISSION IN UTAH

“I feel very fulfilled by what we accomplished last week,” Andy tells me, a sentiment I’m sure all of us share. “Having a team that instinctively understands how to work together, looks out for each other, and leaves ego at the proverbial door is a very rare and treasured experience.” Eager to repeat it, he’s already planning the next trip.

Andy Smith with Shelton Horsley ‘81, Brewster Rawls ‘08 and Dean King ’81

St. Christopher’s Mission in Utah

SAINTS, LED BY ANDY SMITH, LEND HELPING HANDS

By Dean King ’81

On the second full day at St. Christopher’s Mission in Bluff, Utah, I was reminded of one of Andy Smith’s great gifts. Shelt Horsley and I (both Class of 1981) had joined him and four others, including Brewster Rawls Jr. ’08, for a week in Navajoland, among the windswept sandstone buttes of Four Corners, where Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona meet.

The day before had been mostly chaos. We’d had only a vague idea of what needed to be done, what tools and supplies were available, and who would do what. But Andy, a veteran organizer of service projects both in Richmond and far-flung places (this one under the auspices of St. James’s Episcopal Church), calmly grappled with the variables and personalities, applied his signature wry wit and tamed the forces of anarchy.

Brewster, a professional arborist, now removed dead cottonwood trees around the 80-year-old Mission House, a sprawling vernacular building of sandstone and log cabin sections, and the adjacent chapel. Shelt and the father-son professional builders in our group, Kyle and Johnny Martin, installed windows. Brewster Rawls Sr. and I followed behind, staining window frames.

Meanwhile Andy was everywhere at once, picking up supplies, discussing logistics with the Mission’s vicar, and making sure his team was happy and productive. All of this came as little surprise to Shelt and me, who as players on Coach Smith’s varsity lacrosse teams back in the day, had experienced his remarkable juggling act and game-time decision-making.

Andy, who first came to the Mission with a group of students in 2018, had no problems motivating our team. Once we were on this austere and timeless property, where Anglo and Native American traditions mix and mingle, we could feel the spirituality and positive energy. That’s in part because the new vicar, Joe Hubbard, has big plans to revive the place, following in the footsteps of Father Liebler, who founded the Mission in 1943.

When Liebler bought the trading post, now part of the building we were working on, he thought he bought the land around it, too, but by tribal law, that wasn’t the case. To buy the land, he had to negotiate with Navajo leader Tom Mustache. As Hubbard tells it, “Mustache said, ‘You can use the land, but only if you serve the people.’” If the Mission stopped serving the people, the land would revert to the Navajo.

Hubbard recognizes the Mission has flagged in recent decades. In fact, the place was used as a dumping ground when Andy first visited five years ago. So one of the first things Hubbard did was to assure Tom Mustache’s grandson that he meant to keep Liebler’s promise. “That is what you are helping me do,” he told us.

Top photo: Frank Amthor and Andy Smith; Middle: Shelton Horsley ‘81; Bottom: Brewster Rawls ‘08

A DAILY BLOG

DAY 1 | SATURDAY 4 a.m. wake-up. Drive to Reagan Airport and appreciate Andy’s planning, as we have ample time in the midst of spring break pandemonium. Fly to Phoenix and then Durango, where we disembark and head to Walmart and Home Depot for food and building supplies. Drive two hours to Bluff, where we check into the historic Adams House, just down the road from the Mormon town founders’ original fort, now a museum. DAY 2 | SUNDAY Attend church at the Mission. A visiting Navajo priest asks if we have a singer because she’s not good at carrying a tune. Andy’s nearly a cappella version of “Forty Days and Forty Nights” raises the roof. He even confidently leads us in a hymn in Navajo. We meet the Mission team and Frank, a 79-year-old volunteer from Cortez, New Mexico, and begin work. Young Brewster climbs cottonwoods, trims branches and makes plans for bringing them down. We load boxes of food and household supplies for Margaret, the Mission’s senior warden, into a pickup for delivery. Retiring to a bonfire behind Adams House, which we will do every night during our stay, we rest our feet and spin yarns. DAY 3 | MONDAY Shelt and I remove boarded-up windows and, with Kyle and Johnny, install new ones. Shelt takes to the skill saw like a beaver gnawing a tree and joins the carpentry team. Brewster and I apply a lovely red-mahogany stain. Brewster Jr. steals the show, felling trees and deftly piling up the debris using a rented skid steer. Andy makes supply runs, and since nothing is close, the trips take hours. He tops it off by driving Frank, who has just been hired to oversee the summer work, all the way to Cortez to get tools and tell his wife the good news. DAY 4 | TUESDAY Shelt and I muck out a plywood shed, removing old paint cans, toilet bowls, and other odds and ends covered in sandstone dust, and then start dismantling defunct refrigeration motors. Afterwards, in the main building, we reorganize food — storing carrots and 50-pound boxes of potatoes in the big fridge and moving supplies to storage from the common room that will be a gathering spot for overnight guests, part of the vicar’s plan to make the Mission self-sustaining. After work, we climb to the top of the bluff behind the Mission and get a bird’s-eye view of the reservation and valley. DAY 5 | WEDNESDAY Andy applies second coats to windows while I stain, help Frank plaster a wall, and mix and spread floor leveler. After a birthday dinner for Kyle at Cottonwood Steakhouse, Andy leads the entire restaurant in belting out “Happy Birthday.” It’s so stirring that a bushy-bearded gent sitting at another table rushes up to tearfully tell Andy it’s his wife’s birthday, too. DAY 6 | THURSDAY

Andy shows us the native cemetery on the property, which features many bare cottonwood crosses and graves covered in bright plastic flowers. Much discussion ensues on how to best erect tiny kit houses to be used as rentals. Since the houses have not yet arrived, thanks to supply chain delays, the carpenters build a sample platform. In the afternoon we drive to Monument Valley to see the stunning landscape of red buttes, spires and mittens. DAY 7 | FRIDAY On our way back to Durango to catch our flight, we tour ancient Puebloan cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park.

Dean King ’81 is author of “Skeletons on the Zahara,” “Patrick O’Brian: A Life Revealed,” and “The Feud.” To be published in April 2023 by Scribner is “Guardians of the Valley: John Muir and the Friendship That Saved Yosemite.”