50 Years Ago: Wauneka accuses Times editor of printing fake letters

The fight between members of the Raymond Nakai administration and the Old Guard on the Navajo Tribal Council took a strange turn this week with accusations that the editor of the Navajo Times was using the tribal paper to print fake letters to the editor.

The accusation came from Annie Wauneka, one of the most vocal members of the Old Guard who accused Marshall Tome, the editor of the paper, of writing several letters blasting the Old Guard or having someone on his staff write them for him.

As proof, she pointed out that one of the letters recently printed in the Times suggested that one of the leaders of the Old Guard, Frankie Howard, to “send to the moon,” something she said she heard Tome say about Howard just a couple of weeks before the letter appeared in the paper.

She also said that checks done by her and other Old Guard members could find no actual people with names listed as the authors of the letters.

“No one in those chapters has ever heard of these people,” she said, “because they don’t exist. Tome and others on his staff made them up.”

Tome strongly denied that the letters were fake, but refused to lash out at Wauneka or any of the other members of the Old Guard because “as an employee of the Navajo Tribe (I am) trying to do the best I can in my position.”

He said these kinds of accusations are nothing new as the tensions between the Old Guard and Nakai have increased in recent months and he and the newspaper have found themselves caught in the middle.

Calling the accusations “character assassination,” Tome said he felt the readers of the paper “understand the situation” and realize where the accusations are coming from.

Area newspapers reported a tragedy on the Hopi Reservation occurring on October 30, 1964 in Oriabi when a Hopi family lost three children as a result of a fire that started when a jug of white gas explored in the home of the Taylor family.

Jefferson Taylor, age 4, died on October 3, to be followed within days by Sue Taylor, 6, and Vida Taylor, 7. Another daughter, Lilly, had burns to over 90 percent of her body and was being treated at a Gallup hospital, along with Ely, 10, who was reported to be improving.

The accident occurred about 6 a.m. on a Friday. Authorities said Lilly Taylor was using a gas iron when it exploded, sending sparks into a jug of white gasoline, which was nearby.

The children were in the same room. Neighbors pulled them outside and took them to the clinic at Keams Canyon and from there they were transported to hospitals in Fort Defiance and Gallup by plane and ambulances. The mother and a 12-year-old brother were not injured.

A couple of issues ago, we reported a story of the dispute between Wilson Skeet and Howard Wilson over an accident. In early October, Skeet had won a $38,000 judgement against Wilson, despite claims from Wilson that he didn’t see Skeet and he walked in front of his car.

The jury, by a 10-2 vote, believed Skeet when he testified that Howard was negligent and was driving carelessly.

Just three weeks after that verdict, the two were back in district court in Gallup before Judge Frank Zinn with Howard asking for a new trial.

The reason was because some members of the jury, despite orders from Zinn not to do it, went to the scene of the accident to see for themselves if it could have happened as Wilson described it.

Wilson’s attorney argued that when the two jurors who admitted going there saw the scene, they became witnesses and advised the other jury members what they had seen.

He was especially upset because by viewing the scene, the two jurors came back with the impression that the accident could not have happened as Wilson testified and therefore the jury found in favor of Skeet.

Zinn agreed and said he would set a date later for a new hearing on the matter,

And finally, Joe Redhouse, who lived in Lukachuaki, learned the hard way that you do not buy a horse at a bar.

Redhouse and his friend, Nat T. Slivers were at a bar in Gallup called “The White Spot Bar” when three men came up to them and offered to sell a horse to them for $200.

It so happened that Redhouse had $200 on him and had been wanting to buy a horse so he told the three that he was interested in seeing the horse. He gave the men the $200 and they took Redhouse and Slivers to a water tank south of Gallup and showed them the horse but now they wanted $500 for it.

Redhouse said he didn’t have that much money and doubted that the horse was worth that much so he backed out of the deal, at which time the three men brought them back to Gallup and dropped them off at the KGAK radio building.

But when Redhouse asked for his money back, the men just laughed and took off.

The matter was reported to Gallup police but detectives said they would have a hard time since Redhouse and Slivers could not give police a very good description of the men or the car they were driving.