Charley Spining and Anne Doyle

00:04 My name is Aunt while I'm 35 years old. This is March 20th 1907 to 2006 and we are in Flagstaff, Arizona and I am interviewing my good friend Charlie spinning.

00:24 My name is Charles spinning. I'm 65. No not 65-64 almost 65. This is March 20th at 9 2006 were in Flagstaff, Arizona and and oil is a good friend.

00:42 So Charlie I've met you in Flagstaff working at the wine Loft. How do you think that other folks inside staff know you or know of you? I've lived here 30 years now, and I've been in and out of Flagstaff all my life having being a native, Northern, Arizona.

01:02 And I think they know me mostly from my more than 20 years at the Weatherford Hotel.

01:09 Where I helped out get Charlie's Restaurant going and working on the renovation and restoration.

01:16 How's the weather for tell because I was related to the current owners there. So people knew me from playing the piano there at lunch time for many years was Charlie's named after you.

01:27 Indirectly

01:30 We decided that Charlie's look better on the window. Then the names of my two brother-in-laws.

01:37 So is that name for me?

01:39 Were you born in Flagstaff know I've lived here 30 years, but I was born in ganado, which is may be familiar to some people not to everybody but it's up on the Navajo reservation.

01:54 About 40 miles south of Canyon De Chelly and 30 miles west of Window Rock pretty much dead center on the Navajo reservation 200 miles Northeast of here.

02:07 Did they have big Winters in ganado bigger Winters than we do now. It's condados. Actually just 500 feet lower in elevation than Flagstaff.

02:19 6500 feet so we were frequently snowed in in the winter.

02:24 When did you move to Flagstaff 1976 after teaching five years at Window Rock on the reservation and following years in the Navy in The Graduate School and calling so you graduated from high school and ganado and then went to graduate school 1959. I graduated in ganado and then went on College.

02:52 Service in the Navy and then graduate school in Boston.

02:56 Back to the reservation and then I always knew I'd probably end up in Flagstaff always been one of my favorite places in the world and you went back to Window Rock to teach was that like I'm going home for you, but was like a homecoming from Boston to Window Rock.

03:17 Yeah, I guess so and I knew it was ironic there. I was teaching children of people that I'd grown up with frequently that I knew it cannot. Oh, how did you become to be born in Canada?

03:30 Are your parents that's a long story my parents while we have a tradition of missionary service in my family. My grandparents were both Presbyterian missionaries in Chile South America and my father have free finished medical school.

03:50 Had some had had some financial assistance for the Presbyterian church, and he was planning to just go out for two years to serve as a medical doctor on the Navajo reservation in 1937, Italy

04:04 And that was his initial in hand, but he ended stay in there for more than 30 years. So I happen to get born there with my sister and brother.

04:15 What were some of the influences that you had there in terms of?

04:22 People in place, but can you tell us my idea in this interview was sort of to give an idea of the

04:31 A unique place in northern Arizona history

04:36 And in our world in general of of many types of people who came together in a unique place.

04:44 Back in the beginning of the last century. Ganado is actually founded in 1901 and has a seventy-year-old history when you say goodnight. I was founded in 1901. Do you mean ganado as a town? I'm sure that it had a place name before it was ganado. How how did Minato become that place name is known as we know is ganado on maps but wasn't always of course. That was a Navajo name for the place look on Titan, which means the place of the reeds.

05:19 And there's a very weedy wash that runs by there with many whole Anasazi ruins on the edges of the wash there.

05:29 In the 1880s the famous traitor.

05:34 John Hubbell came there and established his Trading Post which is still there as a National Monument. I think that was in there before the turn of the century.

05:44 And then he invited Catholic missionaries originally to come there because being a Roman Catholic himself from Albuquerque. He wanted to have some kind of an educational religious.

05:57 Venture there

05:59 And that didn't work out as a Catholics went on over to St. Michael's closer to Window Rock. They were some Presbyterian missionaries. I guess poking around there and the same time and invited them to come in the name. Cunado. Some may wonder why there's a Spanish name of town in the middle of the Navajo reservation.

06:21 Comes from one of the famous Chiefs that were very good friends of Hubble because all traders in those days had to establish.

06:31 Working relationships with the local powers out there and there were many Navajo Chiefs and Chieftains. It were had Spanish names. Barboncito Monday legal and witch's Donatos

06:45 Which meant he had many cows are many many herds and the name of the novel came from the chief futos condados.

06:55 Who was a good friend of Hubble and who is now buried with the Hubble family knocking on a hillside are Hillside across the wash from the present Hubbell Trading Post before it became ganado. Was there another name before that?

07:14 Well, they originally wanted to call it, Pueblo, Colorado.

07:17 The red because of the wash that ran by and always had red muddy water in it. And of course that got confused with the city in Colorado Pueblo Colorado on the post office didn't approve of that became many colonists became muddy cow.

07:34 Or cows anywhere.

07:37 What other types of people were there in ganado with your family? Will of course the local residents?

07:48 Who lived around the navajos then is now or very dispersed in their living. They didn't take now congregated more into towns and communities at that time. Everyone lived in their family units scattered within a 40 to 50 mile radius of

08:08 That location and they came in to trade with Hubble and then they gradually became involved with the Presbyterian Mission there that grew over the next thirty years into a more of a community.

08:23 You mentioned to me once about Mennonites. What's that? Well, I was focusing as I was thinking today about what that place meant to me and what it

08:32 Why I am the person I am today. Perhaps is having grown up there been born there and grown up there.

08:39 Already has a minority as well as an Anglo person or a pale-face for a bilagaanas it cause an elbow.

08:48 I was there by virtue of birth accident of birth. It gave me a very different perspective I think on.

08:57 Cultural relationships on

09:00 Attitudes of people

09:03 Who have moved into a newer place and then where their relationship with people who have been there for generations and centuries Maybe?

09:12 And it it's a bit of a controversy today as to what was accomplished there and how it was done and

09:20 Weather bringing a new religion in the new way of thinking to people that have their own perspective in their own ways.

09:28 Was ultimately what it was intended to be your how it worked out.

09:33 They were free.

09:35 Focuses their part of it wasn't all just religion, but there was also the educational component of a full 12 year boarding school there and then the medical work which brought my father there.

09:48 He came there originally to establish the school of nursing which he did in the late 1930s. And which continued to about 1950.

09:59 And they train many many not only Native American nurses but Spanish American girls that came over from New Mexico and those people are still many of them out there working some them retired now, but they went through a full medical or a nursing training program there and that was my father's initial impetus and going there, but you asked about other people right in there because that's one of my

10:29 Focuses today where the people that influenced me and then who influence the multitude of students that went there the

10:38 They serve not only Navajo students, but many Hopi many persons from Laguna that went to Laguna Pueblo over by Albuquerque.

10:47 Anna smattering of Traders kids government workers Kids Park Service kids who didn't have another place to go to school.

10:57 And they were went through the school program there.

11:02 This attracted a staff of people from all kind all walks of life.

11:09 The original impetus there was from a couple who had been missionaries in China.

11:16 And they came there in the 1920s. I believe 1927.

11:21 They brought many of their stereotypes of missionary Inca.

11:26 Non-white populations, which was a factor in the early days there.

11:33 But they also we're determined to make that place a monument to service of people who in their perception.

11:43 Would benefit from an education of a

11:48 Bringing them into a survival in the world. It was surrounding them as the reservations were established back at that time.

11:58 And they

12:00 The turn that place into a true Oasis

12:04 Bringing cultivating Financial contributions from churches all over the United States which were utilized for build building very beautiful. Sandstone structures that are similar to The Sandstone buildings on the NAU campus here in Flagstaff native sandstone.

12:23 Landscaping with Lawns with trees with they had green houses there. They had a fully-functioning farm.

12:31 It was a self-sufficient place.

12:35 We had our own power plant. We imported coal over the mountain from mines over by going to Gallup.

12:43 And the place was run by the student labor force because this is the way they didn't have to pay tuition, but they worked there running the place really in the farm. When you say the place the mission compound with the cupboards approximately 300 acres of land. When you move to cunado. What was there was there just the trading post and my parents went there before I was born.

13:10 There was two trading posts are and there was a school the church that was built the same year. I was born.

13:17 And the hospital where my father worked for over 30 years and then all the auxiliary buildings for dormitories for the students that went to school there though.

13:29 A commissary the power plant made the place run if all the electricity the steam heating was all produced there locally the farm.

13:41 So is a huge complex and you asked about the people that went there they were

13:48 Individuals from all over the United States with various motivations because they were Mennonite farmers and you mentioned to me Mennonite there and you speak so many different languages. I wonder how you became to have an ear for different languages such as I think you speak fluently Navajo. I don't know how you can speak a lot of Navajo.

14:14 Because we were a bilingual place there for the most part and our church services.

14:21 We're done both in English and Navajo. And then of course I grew up with friends.

14:27 Who their primary language was never home? So I had an ear to think anybody that grows up with Navajo?

14:35 Develops an ear for other language forms a knife.

14:40 Enjoy learning exotic languages. I think like Russian and Chinese. Would you consider music Russian Chinese simple languages? Would you consider a music another language in that? Maybe you developed an ear for music as well? I think so part of the experience of growing up there was

15:01 That we made our own entertainment. We were isolated. We didn't have paved roads out there at all until the early 1960s late 50s.

15:11 So we did our own entertainment my mother and grandmother were both cannas.

15:16 Taught me to play the piano we had radio.

15:21 We listen to the

15:23 New York Sunday broadcast was Toscanini from the NBC Symphony

15:29 We had all this coming in through the radio waves radio and we always had good music in our home.

15:37 So it's kind of a anomaly out there living so far out in isolation, but still having all the

15:44 Culture because of our what our parents wanted and desired for us is that may be why you think you became to be interested and music and Multicultural multiculturalism and interest in traveling in that sort of thing. I think so travel a lot throughout the world and use my language ability.

16:10 I think it's an advantage to grow up in a place where you're not just like everybody else and every other kid on the Block.

16:18 Where you hear other?

16:21 Other languages in your ear you have exposure to

16:25 Different cultural values to different events going on in people's lives that are important to them and you sort of unconscious. We absorbed that as a child.

16:37 Which I value today, but you asked about the type of people at the Mennonite Farmers I mentioned because they were some family of Kansas farmers who were conscientious objectors during the. Of World War II and they went there as an alternative to military service and they became some of the most important people there because they could do everything.

17:03 They were the kind of people that could Farm they could build things I could fix things and they became invaluable.

17:11 As a staff there in just keeping the place going and repairing things and Building Things.

17:19 And then there were a lot of

17:21 Hello ladies, not always old ladies some young ladies both old and young.

17:28 But we sort of

17:30 Some of them we we saw through them and others we worship this as people very enlightened people that came from make it extremely.

17:39 High levels of Education in the Eastern universities many of them

17:44 They had excellent academic qualifications.

17:49 And they weren't necessarily interested in proselytizing on converting but

17:55 Standing is examples in and using their teaching skills. There's one woman that my mother always said was a true Saint and you don't meet many Saints in this world.

18:08 And she was one of them actually one of the most influential my Musical.

18:13 Experience because she was a fine musician herself the Mennonite lady. She wasn't Mennonite. I don't know really her religious background, but she was up in the financial field. She ran the Hall of finances of the play.

18:29 And she played the organ in the piano and that's what you play. And she was one of these saintly people you just know. You know, she she could do no wrong.

18:40 There were people like that there were other teachers and then later on. We had a very

18:46 Cross-cultural staff one of my important experiences was with a lot of African American.

18:56 Staff that came there because they had gone to Presbyterian schools in the South places like Tuskegee and Boggs Academy in

19:06 Berea College in Kentucky places like that

19:12 And they weren't necessarily able to find really meaningful employment and that you were in back in the 50s 40s and 50s and some of my messages best friends.

19:23 And teachers were African American.

19:28 People that would you know, if I Dolphus ollis little kids we are always welcome to come to the apartments and eat some soul food. Really learn something about African-American humorin.

19:40 Another lifestyle. It was just sort of interpolated on top of this other cross-cultural American Indian Caucasian Afro-American and they were Asians it came there as well.

19:53 Most of them through their Presbyterian Church connections of schooling

19:58 Having been brought up in places such as the Cameron house in San Francisco that

20:04 Whisper in Chinatown in San Francisco, and it was the same type of school.

20:10 They were schools over in New Mexico for Spanish-American.

20:14 Population in these people all just sort of mixed together in this

20:19 This place out there in kannada with anything and ganado all these different folks meeting and sharing.

20:28 Did you live in California for a little while know my parents grew up in Southern California? Okay, and then they went to my father went to medical school University of California.

20:41 And they were in Berkeley my mother Todd and I

20:44 Very exclusive girls school in Berkeley

20:48 And then they went out to the reservation.

20:52 Which was somewhat of a culture shock.

20:55 But they brought their liberal leanings and their cultural inclinations with them.

21:03 And that's what influenced me as a child.

21:08 I just I was thinking about this process of thinking about what to talk about with storycorps and I was wondering what other things you've thought about in this process because it seems like storycorps itself makes a person think about what they want to share or where they've been or what they feel is interesting maybe or important or topical.

21:35 And Timely perhaps but also I think that what you know is so interesting to me in terms of all the music and the culture on the fight to Pike the organ and piano is because he's different languages like you're a little walking

21:49 Knowledge base experience to me. So I think it's anything you say is interesting, but

21:56 I think the things.

21:58 Bring people together regardless of their background or their

22:03 Cultural heritage for their economic

22:07 Situation in life where they grew up what region of the country is always true to me to Things music and language.

22:17 And the fact that you can communicate obviously through language if you can speak somebody's language not necessarily fluently.

22:26 And I work here in Flagstaff and agency where I'm able to use a lot of my novel home.

22:32 Because we have a the clientele Navajo speaking clean town and then my travels in there in Asia. I was in Taiwan in the Navy I've traveled in China.

22:45 And I just sort of

22:48 And I am able to throw out little bits of this language of that language and it just opens Whole New World.

22:55 Two people and they have a no a new relation with you new respect for who you are.

23:02 And then of course, it's it's a given that we can always communicate through music. Even if we don't speak the same language.

23:12 So those two areas of my upbringing and things that were most important to me that I value the most as I look back on that whole.

23:23 Concept of a of a missionary proselytizing organization

23:29 I see it very differently now and at that time I probably didn't think about it as a child.

23:36 We have reunions out there periodically with all the people I grew up with them people that went to school there and we talked a lot about this what?

23:46 What it meant? Why would why was it there did it achieve its goals?

23:51 Sedition definition itself School

23:55 And there are countless examples of people who?

24:00 Didn't necessarily they weren't necessarily happy there because of what they were doing and why they were there but they still value their educational.

24:10 Foundation and they prospered and done very well for themselves in life subsequently.

24:17 Many of them are in tribal government in positions of of school administration out there on the reservation there have been legislators that graduated there. There was a

24:28 Wonderful art teacher their name. Jenny Lind was a sweet little lady Swedish lady. Who is the ultimate inspiration for

24:37 RC Gorman the great Navajo artist who just recently died.

24:42 They're examples like that of Staff who made a difference.

24:47 The people that were there and they now go back and reminisce about this person that person who made a huge difference in their life.

24:56 As they did for me.

24:59 I don't need the Mennonite farmers and the Saints and the less saintly.

25:05 All types of people

25:08 There are lots of influences in your life here in Flagstaff to that. You've met the member you telling me a story about who was it the queen of Russia or something?

25:18 I mean queen liliuokalani lived in the weather for dotel the weather for today is just another microcosm of

25:28 Of unusual people if you can call them enough and there was a rather schizophrenic little lady that lived there for years and years and said she was the

25:41 Daughter the Queen of Egypt in the king of France or the other way around people like that. I've always gravitated toward because they're

25:51 They're fascinating in the and if your responsive to who they are, you always learn something from them. Do you think that that Rings true with most of us human types, you know, the more of that we were able to listen or be responsive to we learn something.

26:09 Will definitely we have to be open.

26:13 They had a his concert with the Flagstaff symphony last week of cross-cultural influences of Native American music and modern dance and symphonic music and it's the same.

26:26 I think what the creators of that we're attempting to do is the same impetus of understanding and

26:35 Getting over conflicts and flashes and misunderstandings and

26:41 Alter music for music and the Arts in general. I'm coming up with an idea right now that maybe because

26:50 You were raised as a minority. I suppose in ganado that that loud you a lifestyle of listening and receiving and appreciating other people's cultures as opposed to imposing one's culture on to

27:06 All right even into in a space our room. Are you just placed yourself in a different way?

27:13 I'm not a verbal person. So I'm talking into a microphone is

27:18 Is less healthy to me than sitting back and observing not too good.

27:31 No, I wouldn't be able to think of anything meaningful. That's okay. It's a such a beautiful language did not behzade though. It's either.

27:42 What was that means I don't understand much never I should learn that one too. I can teach you a lot of useful.

27:52 Useful terms and how to get along. That's the most exciting thing about not knowing a little bit little bit of a lot of language is it

28:02 If you have the basics, and then I think I have a

28:06 A knack of relating seemingly unrelated things grammatically in so that you can plug yourself into a difficult Ali different language and see the, now what is most people just fight another language as you can or afraid of it where they don't they don't see the the links

28:28 That make language is work and that work in one language in.

28:33 And the same in another one.

28:35 I want to ask you about ganado again. And where did your parents did they live there the rest of their lives or what happened? Was that the whole thing took on a very different focus in the late 1960s and 70s because it was a time of a lot of social ferment in this country and

29:00 People were donating to other things other social causes.

29:05 Where there was a tremendous financial support from

29:09 Major churches back in the east in the midwest that really made that place.

29:16 A little bit just continue to function that was beginning to dry up.

29:20 And there was at the interest in staff people coming there.

29:25 As much as was in the past so the school closed in the 90 late 1970s the medical facility. Is there still there, but it's struggling to survive.

29:38 And the whole Community is rather fractionated now and not really knowing what they want to do with that property.

29:44 Because parts of it still belongs to the

29:48 Arizona Senate Presbyterians ended they had long-term leases on that. But ultimately it is part of the reservation and Navajo tribe and the people that live out there ultimately need to decide.

30:02 What the future of the place is where did so many options but they're still

30:07 Going round and round right now.

30:10 So my parents did not.

30:13 Live out their lives are they they went on to retirement over in Santa Fe. Cafe has most of the staff.

30:20 Moved on. Does a reach retirement age when you talk about their unions.

30:27 And ganado who is attending those reunions.

30:31 Will their graduates all the way from 1931 to the oldest. I think the oldest to graduates are still living.

30:40 One of them was

30:42 An Arizona state senator Arthur Hubbard was one of the first graduates. They're all the way up to the late 1970s.

30:51 I think 1970 was the last class so they were and then all the people that went there in between. We just get together and reminisce.

31:01 And talk about ways that we can still have an input into the preservation of the the history of the place. Do you go up to the when you say reservation? What does that mean? When I say to go to the rez Mendoza?

31:15 Common term is cliche of the rez we have.

31:24 Did I see out and second Mesa and I hope your reservation which is of course an island in the middle of the larger Navajo reservation.

31:32 Ganado is pretty much Central in the hole.

31:36 Combine Hopi Navajo reservation area of Arizona

31:41 So it sucks.

31:44 It's a geographical spot.

31:48 Right within this massive land area that is now considered the Navajo reservation in the thirties. They were still determining those lines when my parents went out there.

32:01 It was not such a concept of the reservation and was a it was a part of, Arizona.

32:08 And then later on boundaries and lines were more clearly defined although some of those go back into the 19th century as well.

32:19 This being the first day of spring it makes me think about seasonal changes and how

32:26 Maybe when you were growing up you were aware because of the landscape that you're living on of seasonal change and space and time and I wonder how

32:38 You feel about.

32:41 The seasons now or if you're is aware now, maybe as you were then of concern for many reasons so we can all argue about climate change or whatever because they were definitely

33:00 Huge seasonal variations when I was going up there and then you see that in the little you worked in the museum and you work with Native American art what they portray and lot of their paintings in the landscape.

33:16 These vast Open Spaces the mesas the Hue valleys which is very much a part of ganado because it's an extremely beautiful setting of colorful Mesa Sandstone huge open valleys, which is pretty much still that way.

33:34 And we had very severe Winters back then we had beautiful Springs because of the

33:42 Planting that these early missionaries did we had flowering fruit trees that would signal spring that we're always sense of apple blossoms and Plum blossoms. And then the trees would lose all their foliage in the fall and we have that earthy.

33:58 Fall smell we play in leaf piles like kids did in the midwest where they had trees that lost their leaves and change the color and we had wonderful Summers that

34:10 Never got too hot. We had lungs freeze to play on climb and make tree houses.

34:18 It was sort of like you lived in the midwest in many ways.

34:23 Because the people many of the early people that came they were from the Midwest and their architecture their plantings their ways. They did think they brought it with them brought their with their Midwestern Heritage. That was another interesting mix there.

34:40 Cultural identities

34:45 Seasons were very important. Like it's a little crowded in Flagstaff even because it's so it's not as vast as a landscape from The Horizon while we still have the sky. I think I like stuff is

35:01 Not necessarily what I always thought place. I would always want to live even though I always thought I'd be comfortable here, but with the changes with the increased population.

35:12 Traffic all that stuff

35:15 It has definitely changed but I live out in the county where I still have spacin.

35:21 Sky as long as I can extend that perimeter. Do you think that your life is what you expected it to be in terms of ending up here in Flagstaff for

35:35 As traveling and all the experiences you had was that what you thought your life would be.

35:41 I don't know if I ever worried about it too much things just sort of evolved. I'm happy that I live in.

35:48 Relatively peaceful clean, environment relative to a lot of other places.

35:55 But I still have I'm still close enough where I can go out to my roots and and it anytime I can visit people that I grew up with out there and we can

36:06 Go back to who we were then.

36:09 40 50 years ago people don't leave the space here. I don't think so easily.

36:17 No, we get to bound up in making a living here.

36:23 Busy stuff that I have to make myself step back like we're having a reunions out there in June again.

36:32 I work with some people that live here in Flagstaff to or alumni African Auto School.

36:39 And we're working on that Gathering again, then we'll have

36:44 It's more like a gathering.

36:47 Cuz it's all all ages and all people from all the different classes and went there. I don't either Mission high school, but also the nursing school.

36:58 Then my father was involved with.

37:03 Where where what would your words of wisdom be for us today? I know that you contributed an awful lot to Flagstaff and you've contributed a lot to the community as a whole and probably to the world knowing you're working China wherever you were with the Navy. So where what do you see yourself doing this next couple years or the older I get the more I go in my music.

37:28 No talents because

37:32 I teach Chinese occasionally, you know, and I do a lot of music with our local musical theater.

37:41 Tonight I'm going to go off to see atracoes and help them out because we need a piano player.

37:47 I've been going to be retiring as I reach 65 in a couple of months and I plan to do a lot of music that I've always done but still want to do okay long as I can do that playback at Charlie's to go back to Charlie's play lunches.

38:07 Is there anything from your your notes that you would like to talk about?

38:13 I just wanted to let think I circled there's something on my little list of the example. Okay example of people, you know not.

38:25 The people that I grew up with are in that I admired and whose legacies live on.

38:33 They set an example by their own lives.

38:37 They didn't just seen her. They didn't preach or say you got to be like me or you got to live this way or do this way the ones that were are still highly respected and revered and remembered from that time.

38:50 And they live by their example.

38:53 Even though most of them has passed on now many of them are elderly or no longer living there.

38:59 They're images of of humans human beings who were

39:04 Examples for younger generation just by the who they were in the way they lived and their relationship to other people whether they were Navajo Hopi Anglo, whatever.

39:20 And that has all come back even though there are many of them are not here to hear that now.

39:27 They live on in our memories as Supreme examples of human kindness and service in dignity.

39:37 And that's my my main focus and

39:41 Recalling that time and place which may be gone forever but lives on in people's memories in

39:51 And what their values are today right leave a lot of memories from there?

39:58 I could go on for hours on Pacific.

40:04 But the memories are

40:09 Are kept Alive by our associations with the people that want that we keep in touch with him the friends we have.

40:17 That we grew up with and who value what they

40:22 Retain from that experience.

40:26 They weren't.

40:28 Shipped away it will be a school somewhere. I can get on a bus every August and be sent away somewhere. They they were skipped close to home where their parents could come and visit them.

40:38 And they could go home.

40:41 Even though Transportation was difficult out there in those days and you use pretty much stayed where you were.

40:48 My earliest memories are of horse-drawn wagons.

40:53 The Christmas is that we had when people would come in from miles around.

40:59 Do we have huge bats of mutton stew and everybody come in in their their wagons and park their horses and sit around and eat mutton stew and sing Christmas songs.

41:10 Get a an orange and some candy and a bag of gifts that were provided.

41:17 That was one of my favorite memory. I was every Christmas.

41:26 Something else you like to do. I don't know if we're out of time.

41:31 Well, thank you Charlie for leading by example as well.