To Miss Helen Johnson on her 90th Birthday

By Brother John Hotstream, director (retired) at St. Anne’s Mission, Klagetoh, Arizona.

Delivered by Sandi Douglas at Canterbury Woods Staff Party, August 9, 2013.

Dear Helen — We’ve all read Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. A sad story with a happy ending. Well, Helen, you should be the main character in a new version of the “Carol.” No Scrooge here, but a fairy godmother who can turn sadness into joy, and want into plenty.

You don’t need the ghosts of Christmas past, Christmas present, and Christmas to come, to see what’s needed in this world. You see quite well, see with the heart.

A Navajo boy named Braydon, whose parents you helped to transport him to Albuquerque many times for treatment of a brain tumor. Braydon now is on the waiting list for St. Jude Children’s Hospital. Another Tiny Tim on the way.

Several families who fought the cold, the snow-crusted nights in their hogans — you supplied some ten wood stoves, and this magic not only kept them warm but gave them a stove to cook on. Warmth in the cold!

All the children who got a chill from your Halloween displays and a few cavities from your treats, not tricks!

The many families who had holiday feasts and more, pressed down and overflowing, from your special food boxes.

Your visits to the rez, to St. Anne’s Mission, a “come and see” person you are, on site, ideas upon ideas about how to improve the lives of the people, not the least being your role in Heifer International.

Your involvement in all of creation from sanctuary for the monarch to sleeping beneath the swimming sea creatures at the aquarium. No nonsense about you — the business of respecting and maintaining the four-legged, the two-legged, the winged, as the Navajo would put it.

Well done, dear friend!

But one more story, please. On one of your visits, we were driving to Ganado, a town oabout fifteen miles from Klagetoh when we cam upon an accident, a car and two open range horses. Your words to me: “You do your good Samaritan thing; I’ll check on the horses.” All covered! The horses had to be put down and the tourists were shaken but uninjured. So there is is, a perfect picture — you helping those creatures who had no one to help them. Helen, I think you have the heart of a Navajo, a great love for creation and all its creatures.

Thanks, from Brother John and all the Navajo whom you’ve helped through all the years. And if I may speak for the animals — thanks for being part of the circle of life!