Roger Nelson-reply-3

Roger- Thank you for sharing the article about the Fort Apache student graduating from Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato, Minnesota. I'm sure that he will have a great deal of influence on his people as he returns to the reservation. Sometimes, however, they find it hard to return as some of the people regard them as outsiders. I'm sure that this young man will surmount those barriers.

If you will look to replys one and two to Roger Nelson you will see the influence that I once perhaps had on a young Navajo student. It is a tragic tale.

At end of each semester I had each student write an asessment of my class with the promise that I would not look them over until their grades were safely in their hands and believe me some students really unloaded on me..

Louise Benally wrote this report and several days later she was driving on icy reservation roads and she and her Mother and her two year old daughter were killed instantly. She was also pregant at the time. As you can see, the yearbook was dedicated to her memory.

The Navajo people do not talk about their dead but I felt compelled to send a copy of her report to her surviving relatives.

Roger, I remember a long time ago in talking with your father about a Valley Springs student who had put in his yearbook that only the good die young so he wasn't worried about death but his was then killed in a pheasant hunting accident.

Maybe he was right.