On the road again: Three brothers make final journey to NM with their late father

Road trips were a big deal with Keith Edwin Gawith Jr. Traveling out of Albuquerque, he and his wife, Ruth, eventually motored to all 50 states.

When the couple's children — Kathy, Keith Edwin "Eddie" III, Paul and Marlin — were kids, they were part of the traveling adventure.

"We'd drive from Albuquerque to Vancouver (Washington), up into Canada, down through California, across the desert, a couple of times out across Oklahoma, to family reunions in Sweetwater, Texas, and also up in Ojito (New Mexico)," Paul Gawith said during a phone interview.

Paul, 60, a financial representative and also a program analyst for U.S. Corps of Engineers, lives in Vancouver, Washington. He said he and his siblings made those trips with their parents in a variety of vehicles — a 1962 Chevrolet station wagon, a 1969 or '70 Dodge Coronet, a 1970 or '71 Chevy Impala.

"No air conditioning in any of them," Paul said of the cars. "We'd end up in the oddest places. One year we went over Wolf Creek Pass into Pagosa Springs (Colorado) and stayed in a motel there.

"We were all in this one room. There was a window over one of the beds that opened into a horse pasture. We didn't know the window was open. There was a curtain over it. Early in the morning, Mom starts whispering at my dad. 'Stop that. Don't do that. The kids are in the room.'

"A horse had stuck its head through the window and was licking her face."

Paul laughed at the memory, just as all the kids and their father laughed at the time. Eventually, even their mom was able to laugh about it.

Ruth Gawith died in Albuquerque in March 2018, and a couple of years later, Keith Edwin Jr. moved to Vancouver to be near Paul.

"He did not want to leave Albuquerque," Paul said of his father. "And we all knew he would go back there to be buried. About three years ago, he said, 'When I die, I'm going back to Albuquerque, and I don't want to be on an airplane. Throw me in the back of a pickup and haul me down there.'"

Paul said his father wanted to make stops along the way — at the graves of his mother and father and other places that had special significance in his life. He wanted one more road trip.

Keith Edwin Gawith Jr. died March 17 at an assisted-living facility in Vancouver. His three sons gathered there, loaded their father's embalmed and boxed remains in a black Chrysler van and set out.

On the road again.

A new land

Keith Edwin Gawith Jr. was born on Sept. 6, 1935, and spent his earliest years on his family's farm in the timber country of Buckley, Washington. He was just 14 when he left home to work and live at Joe Albert's dairy farm until graduating in 1955 from White River High School in Buckley.

He joined the Air Force, was trained for duty with the Air Police and arrived at Manzano Base in Albuquerque in December of 1955.

"Coming from Washington, a very green land, to the brown land of New Mexico, he thought he had gone to hell," son Marlin Gawith said.

But he soon found something positive about his new location.

Keith Edwin met Ruth Davis, a member of a longtime Rio Arriba family, at the First Church of the Nazarene in Albuquerque.

"She was wearing flats, and the story is my dad said, 'That's a girl from the country, and that's who I am going to marry,'" Paul said.

They were married on Sept. 28, 1957, in the church where they met.

Keith Edwin worked as a machinist at Sandia National Laboratories and also at an Albuquerque machine shop. Although he did not know at first what to make of the dusty land of his adopted state, he came to love it and consider Albuquerque his home.

His declining health made it necessary for him to move back to his native state of Washington to be near Paul.

He was 88 when he died.

Daughter Kathy still lives in Albuquerque.

Son Eddie, 62, is a retired waste water treatment mechanic who lives in Norwalk, California, and son Marlin, 53, is a database engineer in Shawnee, Kansas. The three brothers planned the road trip to Albuquerque — sort of.

"We had great discussions about the things we would remember and where we were going," Paul said. "We kind of knew what we were doing some times, and some times we didn't. But we were like, 'Here we go.'"

They set out from Vancouver on March 21, a Thursday. Their first stop was Carbonado, Washington.

Tractors and Texaco

"Carbonado used to be an old mining and timber town," Paul said. "My dad's mom and dad had a home there and are buried in the cemetery with other family and friends. Then we went to White River High School in Buckley. The big, old white building where my dad went to school is not there now. But there is a log out front with the school's name on it."

The next stop was Joe Albert's dairy farm, where the brothers' father had worked. Joe Albert died in 2017, but the Gawith brothers met with Albert's son, John.

"There's a rusty 1948 tractor there that John said would have been the one Dad used when he was there," Paul said.

From Washington, they rolled south to Dublin, California, the location of Camp Parks. It's an Army facility now, but the Air Force operated it when Keith Edwin did his training there in 1955.

"We drove around trying to get to where his barracks were, but it was blocked off," Paul said. "But we took a picture of the Camp Parks sign. It was the same sign that was in a picture of Dad with his training group."

They almost skipped Las Vegas, Nevada, but made a quick stop for a few pictures.

"Mom and dad went to Vegas once," Paul said. "I don't know what happened there, but Mom didn't like it much. She always said the real Las Vegas was in New Mexico."

Eddie's family was waiting in Laughlin, Nevada, to pay its respects.

"I was just happy to see my family," he said. "My daughters have very busy lives, but they showed up. Just being there with them meant a lot to me."

Winslow, Arizona, was a gas-stop location for Gawith-family road trips, so the brothers stopped there to take pictures of a Texaco station.

And then — New Mexico.

Red clay, Red River

The brothers had fond memories of the place their mother grew up — the settlement of Tapicitos, near Ojito and Lindrith, in Rio Arriba County, northern New Mexico.

"My dad loved it up there because that's where my mother came from," Paul said. "Mom came from a family of 14 children. I remember some awesome Thanksgivings up there. My cousin has a hunting place on the old ranch there. Oh yeah, my dad loved to hunt — deer, elk."

The Gawith brothers drove into Tapicitos at about 10 p.m. on Saturday, March 23. They stayed the night at a bunkhouse near the Tapicitos corral on their grandfather's ranch, a place they remember working with horses and cattle when they were young.

But snow came in during the night and there were three inches on the ground on Sunday morning.

"We wanted to get up to where my grandfather and grandmother lived and where they had a store, but when we turned on the road, the whole vehicle just sank in the adobe mud," Eddie said. "Paul had to back out of there."

Their goal was just three miles away, but might as well have been 300.

"When that red clay up there gets slick, it's a mess," Paul said. "I remember dad getting stuck so many times."

They started toward Red River, which had been a favorite family getaway. Their dad and their uncle Harold Davis built a cabin in a valley outside the town.

"By the time we got to Taos on Sunday, the snow was really coming down and it was getting slick and dicey," Paul said.

Things didn't get better, and they didn't get to the cabin.

"The snow started coming down really fast, and Paul was the first to say, 'I don't think we can even make it up the pavement out of town,'" Eddie said.

Marlin said it would have been extra special to get to the cabin.

"Because we spent so much time there," he said. "But I'm glad we got into Red River. Red River is always changing, but some of those core things that have always been special to my family are still there — the Community House, where they had lots of games and we'd watch movies on, I think, Monday nights."

And there's the red table at Yesterday's Diner. Paul said the table had been in his family's home in Albuquerque and then got moved to the cabin near Red River and then ended up in the Red River diner.

"Dad used to sit at that red table every time he went into that place," Paul said.

Keeping a promise

At sunset on Sunday, the brothers arrived in Albuquerque with their father's body. They had covered 2,410 miles in four days.

A viewing will be held for Keith Edwin Gawith Jr. from 7-8 p.m. April 5 at French Mortuary, 7121 Wyoming NE. Burial will be at 10 a.m. April 6 at Gate of Heaven, 7999 Wyoming NE.

"I'm glad we made the trip," Eddie said. "It was meaningful."

Marlin said it was in ways like most family road trips, good times and tense times, joking and arguing.

"Sure, going down the road, there'd be times when one brother wanted to go this way and another one that way," he said. "But it was good for us to be able to talk and to laugh, be together and reflect."

Paul is certain the trip was a good thing.

"We were all three committed to do this, to keep the promise we made," he said.

"But this was the first trip we didn't hear anything from Dad. He just seemed to take it easy."