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On Tuesday, I wrote a column following the death of Tony Hillerman, a national and state treasure and a personal friend of 38 years. Many people responded to that column and I will reproduce some of those letters here, but not all. Quite a few were brief and of a personal nature. I want to thank all of you who wrote, but I would like to highlight those who spoke of Hillerman’s effect on their lives.
Here are their e-mails:
MG, Albuquerque
I read your column every day and always respect what you have to say, even when I don’t agree with you. But your column in this morning’s Journal touched me as nothing you’ve written before. How I envy your longtime friendship with Tony Hillerman!
Some years ago, after my husband’s heart attack and bypass surgery, both of us went regularly to Presbyterian’s Healthplex for exercise. It was there that we “met” Tony. He would walk around the track and finally, one day I had the nerve to stop and tell him how very much I loved his writing and that I had read everything he’d ever had published. I guess the reason I had the nerve to stop and talk with him was because he did not seem like a celebrity, but someone who saw others as real people. I was not mistaken. We chatted briefly and then both of us continued our walking.
In the time following that day, I never stopped him again but each time he saw me, he would smile and nod. My spirits would always lift because “Tony Hillerman smiled at me.” I saw countless people stop and talk with him and never did I see him impatient that his exercise time was being interrupted. Through this very superficial relationship with him, I learned he was a “real person” himself…humble and never up on a pedestal.
It is very odd that from that time, I always felt like I knew Tony and that somehow he was a friend even without the intimate contact you had with him. He was “mine” whenever we traveled and saw people reading him in airports, etc. Sometimes I even went up to those strangers and said “I know Tony Hillerman and isn’t he the greatest.”
I’ve only known one other celebrity who compares with Tony and that is Robert Rivera, the awesome gourd artist. My husband and I have a relationship with him more like you have with Tony and he, too, is a humble, caring real person.
How rich I am to have two such people in my life. I will miss Tony Hillerman, not in the same way you and his other poker buddies do, but in a deep, heart touching way of knowing a great man touched my life briefly.
Thanks, Jim, for sharing with all of us your love of this “Beloved Author” (will treasure that headline in the Journal). You’ve added another depth to my knowing Tony Hillerman.
KM, Houston, Texas
OLD MEN CAN HAVE HEROES TOO
I feel that Tony Hillerman was my friend although I never met him. It was July of this year, that I wrote him to express my enjoyment of his novels and his autobiography, “Seldom Disappointed”. We are contemporaries and share an interest in Indians, the 103rd, and Camp Howze, Texas. I sent some material on these subjects to him.
I received a letter in which he said, “I am 84, but feel 104, (the news stated he was 83), His handwriting seemed to indicate that he felt ill. He also said he enjoyed the material I sent and had another book in mind. I responded, sending two DVD’s, one on CampHowze and the other on the 103rd in WW ll in Europe. He sent me an inscribed copy of the book “Kilroy Was There”. We reminisced and I suggested we meet someday at the coffee shop in Window Rock. That was about a month ago.
In the last letter I sent to him I enclosed two Anasazi sherds I had drawn symbols on, and a Trilobite, a Pre- Cambrian fossil, as Iknew of his interest in history and nature. I had told him that I did not expect we would become correspondents as I knew how much was going on in his life, and I was one of millions of fans. I found it satisfying just to have the contact and pass on things I felt would be interesting to him.
My wife, Dianne, heard of his passing away on the radio, Monday, 27th. October. She came to me with moist eyes and told meshe was aware I had been very touched by Tony Hillerman’s response to me, a total stranger. In my contemplations Monday, I realized just how ill he was while responding to me. That speaks volumes of the man; his enthusiasm for life and communicative spirit. I picture Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, their hats in their hands, and tears in their eyes.
The world didn’t stop a moment, as it was supposed to, when someone you have affection for passes away. Sitting here on the deck, in Houston, Texas; watching the sun rise, remembering I had never met him, I felt I knew him and realized that Old Men Can Have Heroes Too.
SM, Omaha
I’m an Albuquerque ExPat currently living in Omaha, NE and check into the ABQ Journal website every few days and saw, sadly, the notice of Tony Hillerman’s death and your wonderful article about him. I worked for UNM in the fundraising office and had the pleasure of getting to know Tony as I worked with him on getting his archives housed at UNM. One memorable day I had with him included a Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride in the Jag and lunch at the Frontier. Of course Larry and Dorothy came to say hi, as did THE REST OF THE WORLD who knew and admired Tony as you so eloquently mentioned in your story.
I knew New Mexico before I moved there because of Tony Hillerman. While a great mystery fan – Chicago through Sara Paretsky’s eyes and the thoroughbred horse world through Dick Francis’s, little did I know that the place that unfolded in front of me in Tony’s books I would one day call home. As you mentioned, the words on the page and the words out of his mouth were so darned different. That’s the beauty of the written word – you don’t have to give up yourself up as an Okie if you don’t wanna.
I know that you were good friends so this letter is also a condolence to you. I always enjoyed (and still do via the web) your commentary. But that article must have been hard to write in that it was the one that you knew would come some day. What a treasure he was to the world, and those whom he called friend I can’t image anything nicer. For me, to have spent some time with him, hilarious phone conversations (actually – he was usually wrestling with the computer when I would call) and the witty emails, I feel blessed to have been around such a regular-guy genius.
But here I am in Nebraska; haven’t met Warren Buffett yet but have been in small and large rooms with him. I even brought him some Buffett’s chocolates once when I made a pilgrimage back to ABQ – with a note saying I’d like to take him to lunch. He declined the lunch invite but sent me a cute email about his cousin George, and thanked me for the candy. Winters are a little harder here but life’s pretty good here too.
Thanks again for your fond remembrances of such a remarkable human being.
RP, Akron, OH
A friend and former professor at the University of Akron where I worked sent me the front page article and your UPFRONT tribute to Tony Hillerman. I had mentioned I saw his obit on the web and did he have any more info from his local paper so I could send my thoughts to his family. After seeing the tributes, especially yours, I wondered if I should bother, a tribute only from a reader/fan sort of fades into the background. But the need to express myself about this person who contributed so much to my enjoyment and understanding of a culture that was ignored when I grew up.
First and foremost, being raised in the Wisconsin lakes and woods, my first impression of the Southwest, El Paso, to be exact, was to want to cry. It was so ugly I could hardly believe what I saw. Nothing but dust, hard dirt, no pretty lawns, etc. I did find that riding my mother’s quarter horse along the edge of the mountains was great for just thinking. The beautiful sunrises and sunsets on the Organ mountains, the tiny unexpected flowers in the cliche, the sense of a much larger world than I was used to,these things weren’t so bad after all. After three months there in 1949, I joined the Air Force and could hardly believe my feelings, I was homesick for the mountains, the desert, the colorful buildings, the casual feeling that prevailed. His books brought all that back and things I didn’t even notice. (I’m living in the East again).
But more important, I developed an interest in the American Indian culture after having a grandson who was part Apache, part Cherokee. His grandmother was from the southeastern area of Arizona, another great grandmother was from the group made to take the long walk to a reservation. My niece in Texas is married to an Apache. My own family tree from Wisconsin has an eastern American Indian somewhere in the great-great region of grandmothers. A close family friend during my childhood was curator of American Indian Arts at the Milwaukee museum.
But I never realized the rich heritage we could learn about until I read Tony Hillerman’s books.His books should be required reading for any class of early American history, west to east. We have so much to unlearn and to learn. His understanding of the land and the people, his ability to make them seem like friends you can’t wait to visit again. I feel a loss knowing I can never read another new book but cherish the ones I have read.
If you think this worth passing on to this family, great. But, I feel better having had the chance to voice my feelings. My condolences to you, a friend, and to his family, so lucky to have known him.
RH, Bernalillo
Thank you for your heartfelt memory of Tony Hillerman. I regret that I never met the man. He is the reason we live happily in northern New Mexico today.
My wife and I are from Florida. We graduated from Florida State and stayed in Tallahassee for our working careers. It is located in deep, deep bible belt country and the summertime humidity will buckle your knees but all in all Tallahassee is not a bad place to live. We were settled.
But not irrevocably settled, as it transpires. Ten years or so ago, we read a couple of Tony Hillerman’s novels. His landscape descriptions whetted our curiosity and we decided that it might not be a total waste of time to visit New Mexico and have a look around, first locating it on the map, of course. Well, after our third visit, we were hooked. We sold the house and ridded ourselves of a ton or so of accumulated impedimenta. Kathy retired December 31, 2005. We arrived in Albuquerque on March 18, 2006. It was snowing.
We love it here, just simply love it. We have nailed our feet to the ground and cannot believe how lucky we are to live in this beautiful country. It never tires, never jades. We are Newly-minted New Mexicans and proud of it.
As a rule, you writers cast your words out into the void and never know whose life you will affect. Tony Hillerman changed ours. I’m sorry I never had a chance to thank him.
KA, New Mexico
Read your piece on Tony Hillerman the other day, and I enjoyed it immensely. But to say he was an ordinary guy is not quite how I feel about him. Tony Hillerman made New Mexico something special to me.
I was a New Yorker, born, bred and raised on Long Island, and lived there for my first 65 years. But my Mom moved to New Mexico in 1968, so I spent a lot of vacation time out here in the desert. It wasn’t watery. I had to bring clams on the plane with me when I flew out. Everything was brown, and every plant was malicious. But family is family, so I kept coming west to visit.
Now, I’m a great reader of mystery novels, maybe 100-150 a year. I helped keep the local library’s circulation figures the highest in the county. When I would fly out here for a month in the summer, I would use my Mom’s card to borrow books from the ABQ library, and one day my mother said there was a local author who was pretty popular and I ought to try his books. I think he’d only written two or three at the time, but I took them out and was immediately entranced. The desert was transformed. Now it was ageless, eternal, calming and awesome. It soothed. Harmony had meaning beyond music. Tony Hillerman’s stories were not just mysteries, they were about the character of the Southwest. Road trips ceased to be boring and became fascinating experiences. I can truly say that Tony Hillerman changed the West for me, and now I live here.
When you see his family, please give them my condolences, and tell them that he remains my favorite author.
LB, Albuquerque
Make sure everyone remembers his humanity. How he and Marie, with little fanfare, supported so many causes in our community. I bugged him incessantly for signed books for Goodwill, NAMI, Futures for Children, etc etc. I always used the Domenici card and (even more convincingly) “my dad was part of boomer sooner OU championship team” card because I have larceny in my heart for causes we promote. But I know it wasn’t necessary. Tony Hillerman always said yes and always with humility. I will never forget one book gathering mission. We sat in his writer’s grotto and blabbed. I just felt heaven sent. To be in Tony Hillerman’s writers studio. Whoa. And my parents are long gone, but he meant so much to them. Daddy brought in lots of wells for Kerr-McGee behind Shiprock and gas wells in NW New Mexico. He could never get over Hillerman’s accuracy in describing this setting-Native Americans come to grips-sort of-with energy development. And my mom was a lifelong history buff, and naturally devoured every book. But again- remind all in some way-yes, he brought the magic of new mexico to millions. But every other day, his generosity helped his neighbors in many, many ways.
LL, Barcelona, Spain
When I read the news yesterday about Mr. Hillerman passing away I felt something odd, as if a friend I’d never met was going to be out of touch longer than I expected. I’m writing from Barcelona, Spain, and as many other my relationship to Mr. Hillerman has been built around his books. Four years ago I tripped over to Navajoland for the very first time. Once back I fell for his Chee & Leaphorn characters. I went tyhrough his whole mystery series (thanks Amazon!!!) plus extra books written on the Southwestern topic. I’ve been back to the Four Corners area three more times since and I even nurtured the idea of showing up sometime to his place in Albuquerque. There won’t be. I been the whole day on he internet browsing for something I cannot actually fix. Just to read a bit more about the man. I bumped into your writing piece and I felt the urge to tell Tony Hillerman hágoóné; navajos don’t have a word for goodbye.
