1966: Somehow my parents met Clifford and Marjory Martin who lived in a very remote area called Borrego Pass, NM. Clifford was the principle of a day school, which was a rare exception on the Navajo Reservation, as most Navajo children were shipped away from home to a Boarding School, sometimes on the reservation and sometimes off the reservation. 

The Martins invited my parents to hold a VBS (Vacation Bible School) at the Borrego Pass school the summer of 1966. Our entire family helped as well as 3 teenage girls who came from Montrose, CO. I remember one of them was Mary McMillan. The girls fell in love with the baby angora goats and even purchased one to take home with them. 

To get to Borrego Pass we would have driven 120 miles south of Cortez on Route 666 (later changed to Route 491) to Yah-ta-hey, New Mexico, and then 60 miles east on dirt roads to Borrego Pass. It was probably a 4-5 hour trip. 

We of course used more than one vehicle to get all of us there, but the old Cadillac ended up with a bad tire so we had to leave it at Borrego Pass temporarily. The rest of this story is in a separate blog post “The Cadillac And The Airplane”. 

By the way: Yah-ta-hey is an anglicized spelling of the Navajo greeting which literally means “It is good”. The more correct spelling would be ya’ at’ eeh.