Column | I knew him as Monty
By George Hardeen
For the Navajo Times
I knew Dr. Charles Roessel as Monty, as he was known to so many, since 1984 when we all worked at the Navajo Times together.
He was one of those rare, always kind, always gentle, always joyful souls with his usual smile on his face.
Those were great days in a busy newsroom. Loren Tapahe was our publisher and is still a friend. Mike Kellogg was our business manager, who I don’t see nearly enough. The legendary Mark Trahant was editor and publisher who has done so many amazing things in journalism at so many amazing places, never to be repeated, and who remained Monty’s best friend through the years and to the end.
Monty was the paper’s managing editor. I had the glorified title of deputy managing editor which meant I was the one with the red pen who made our incredible reporters cry.
There were those who wrote the news and those who took the photos – reporters Betty Reid, Deenise Becenti, Carolyn Calvin, LeNora Begay, Roberta John, Marley Shebala and Brenda Norrell.
Tom Arviso and Oree Foster were on the sports desk selling tons of papers week after week to the parents and grandparents of Navajo high school athletes.
Photographers Paul Natonabah and Kenji Kawano filled our pages with historic photos as that history was being made.
Two other legends walked among us – the ineffable, prolific, incomparable Bill Donovan and the peerless investigator, author and historian Jerry Kammer. I’ve kept a Kenji photo of a young Bill on my wall all these years, and still text or talk to Jerry about all things Navajo all the time.
Keeping us going by selling the ads was the joyful Donna Lee and the kindhearted Sam Billiman. Willie Holtsoi and Leonard Sylvan somehow kept the cantankerous presses running.
Five mornings a week, you could enter the Motor Inn – now the Quality Inn – to see half the people there with the daily Navajo Times TODAY raised to their faces.
Among all the frenetic energy of chasing breaking stories, getting them written, photographed, edited, laid out and printed, was the calming energy of Monty moving through the newsroom with a sense of ease.
Now he has left us, as has Sam, Oree, LeNora and Bill before him. We remember and miss them all.
On Monday, those I spoke to were as bewildered as I by the emotions that invaded us at the news that Monty was gone.
In whatever ways we could, we sent thoughts and condolences to his beautiful children Jaclyn, Bryan, Bobby, Robyn and Kimberly, his siblings Bob, Ray, Faith and Mary, to his beloved best friend Karina Roessel, and to his nephew Carl Slater whom all reading this know, and in whom some of us can sometimes hear the patriarch of the Roessel clan speaking.
We send good thoughts to all those who loved Monty at Diné College, Rough Rock, Round Rock and wherever he walked.
It comes to this. Monty was an important part of the history of the Navajo Times and the gone-too-soon Navajo Times TODAY he had a large part of creating.
Having known this man, none of us want to say goodbye or farewell. We just want to remember his gentleness, his smile, his achievements, his art and the way he showed us a life well lived and the time he had very well spent.
Highway 264,
I-40, WB @ Winslow