Ruth Ann

My friend Ruth Ann and her family.  Her father is one of the original Code Talkers.

Ruth Ann

I’ve been thinking a lot about the friends I have.  When I think of childhood friends, it seems like my best friends were always my cousins.  As I grew and entered Jr. High, I developed friendships that lasted through high school and many of them have continued on. I think so fondly of the many parties and sleepovers.  I remember sneaking out to be with my friends, why I snuck out, I’ll never know.  My folks didn’t care if I went.  I remember the school dances and all the fun times ice skating on the lake in winter and swimming in the summer.  I have so many wonderful memories.

I can’t but help think about my friend Ruth Ann.  Ruth Ann was a Navajo Indian who came to live in Payson on the placement program.   We became best friends, while we were in eighth grade.   Our friendship continued to ninth grade, and then she moved and lived with a different family in Provo.  I always knew where she was.  She won some national essay award, she was Miss Indian BYU, she was runner up to the Homecoming Queen.  She was in Lamanite Generation.  She had such a fun, bubbly personality.  We eventually lost touch,

After graduating from BYU-H, Eti and I had the opportunity to move to the reservation to teach school.  We moved to a place called Tsaile.  It was up in the mountains on the north rim of Canyon de Chelly.  There was a trading post and a public school there.  We were very isolated.  Anyway, I met this woman who for some reason, we just hit it off.  We visited off and on for several months then one day she came in the office and said, “I told Ed I knew you.”  I looked at her puzzled, and then she told me she woke up in the middle of the night and hit Ed and said that’s Susan Peery!  Then I instantly recognized her as Ruth Ann Brown.  She was now McCombs and it never dawned on me that she was the same person.  Then we laughed and she said, “Isn’t it funny, you married a brown man and I married a white man.” 

We stayed in touch and laughed about the many memories we had as children.  Sadly, one year her oldest son, Joseph, who was on a mission was killed.  I’ll never forget going to his funeral.  The minute I walked in she came over to me and took me to him to see her “stripling warrior.”  My heart was broken for her.  After that she was never quite the same.  A couple of years ago, she died.  I’ll never forget taking the time off work and driving all the way to Chinle to her funeral.  I was so touched by the tributes that were paid to this wonderful woman.   I’m grateful to my daughter Susi, who went with me.  I’ll never think of Ruth Ann without smiling and being so grateful to have had her as a friend.