My friend Bruce and I met many remarkable, giving people when we rode our bicycles cross-country in 1984.
Among them were the Cookie Lady in Virginia and Lazy Louie in Missouri, both known for offering welcome support for exhausted traveling bicyclists.
Not so well-known is Roy Hawthorne, who lives in Window Rock, AZ, on the Navajo Reservation. We met Roy and his wife at a Fourth of July Navajo Rodeo in Gallup. They invited us to their home to spend the night the next day. That’s where we learned that Roy was a Navajo Code Talker who fought in WWII and the Korea, where he lost his leg.
(The Navajo Code Talkers was a Marine Corps cadre formed in WWII to use the Navajo language to communicate on the battlefield. The Japanese never figured out the “code”.)
With pleasant memories of the Hawthornes’ hospitality and Roy’s patriotism and sacrifice, I was happy to see President Trump honor them at the White House on Monday.
But that turned into shock when Trump used the occasion to make a racial slur to take a jab at an opponent, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren….. MORE
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