Tag: Tuba City

LOUISA WADE WETHERILL: “The Slim Woman” of Kayenta — Harvey Leake (ZX#83)

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“The person who seems to be influencing the life of Navajos most is Mrs. John Wetherill of the Kayenta trading post, Arizona. This cultured woman wields more power among them than any chief, or ‘head man’. She is a white woman adopted into the tribe and is a real leader among them, holding her position as a recognition by the Indians of her sympathetic interest in their life. A queen could hardly be more loved by her subjects. She is at once the judge, physician, interpreter, adviser and best friend of her devoted wards.”

Joseph F. Anderson, Archaeology student of University of Utah Professor Byron Cummings

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HERB RINGER & his Love for the Rural West’s Small Towns (1940s-50s) Volume 1 (ZX#54) w/Jim Stiles

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On May 30, 1939, Herb Ringer’s life changed forever. As he drove away from his family home in Ringoes, New Jersey, he could not have guessed that as he backed out of the driveway and turned west, that his life would never be the same again. And yet the departure was hardly a happy moment for Herb. In fact, he dreaded it. I’m sure it felt more like the most painful of deaths than the beginning of a new and indescribably beautiful future.

Herb had been married for less than two years, but it had been a disaster. Neither of them was happy. But Herb made a decision that in 1939 was almost unthinkable. He decided to file for divorce. Though his wife was just as unhappy as he was, the stigma of divorce was more than bare. She pleaded with Herb to change his mind. He was barely less humiliated than she was. He didn’t want to be known as “that man” who divorced his wife in the little hamlet of Ringoes. And so Herb made a decision that he thought might make the process less painful for both of them. He would travel all the way across America, to Reno, Nevada. Even then it was known as the “Divorce Capital of the World.”

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When Herb first started giving me his photos, I realized that he took the time to do what few of us even consider. We took the scenic shots. Herb often turned the camera around and took pictures of the people who were taking pictures. And he stopped to photograph the little towns that most people just wanted to get through. Eventually he would give me all his photographs. Thousands of them. And among them dozens…scores…hundreds of little communities in the West that everyone else ignored.

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UNSUNG VIDEOGRAPHERS of CANYON COUNTRY: 1949 —Ray & Virginia Garner (ZX#43)

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But my photo collections are still images. Trying to locate movie film, especially going back to the 1940s and 1950s has been almost impossible. Sometimes the best I could hope for were John Ford Westerns and one of George Stevens’ last films, “The Greatest Story Ever Told.” All the exterior scenes were shot in Glen Canyon, as the dam was being built. 

But recently, and sheerly by accident, I found the film in its entirety on the internet. It had been donated to the National Archives and though the film quality still pales by today’s standards, it is the history in these films and images that I love, more than the film quality itself. Ray and Virginia Garner started making films in the late 1930s. Ray’s first known project was a film about ascending the Grand Teton with a group of Boy Scouts in 1936. Sadly the film has been lost. But it was the beginning of an independent filmmaker career and soon, a wonderful collaboration with his new wife Virginia. Though the title of the film I’m offering here gives credit to Ray, Virginia, or “Jinny” as she was known to everyone, was not only his equal in the filming, production and presentation of what were often silent films, she was certainly more photogenic and appears often in them.  That’s’ what gives these 16mm movies such a personal feel. As I understand the story, they toured the country with their movies and at various gatherings, they would narrate the film in person as it was being shown.

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