By Samar Fay
It almost didn’t happen. A minute or two either way and two women would never have reconnected threads that were about 50 years old.
Mary Hansen Wolfe, pictured right, and her niece were traveling in the fall of 2016, heading back to Mary’s home in Salida, Colorado, after a painting trip to the Vermilion Cliffs in Arizona. On a whim, Mary suggested they detour a bit to Navajoland in the northeastern corner of the state to visit the school where she had been a guidance counselor and head of the dormitory back in 1967-68. Nazlini is still a tiny community of about 500 people, home to a Bureau of Indian Education boarding school. The dormitory housed about 140 children in Mary’s time, kids who lived too far away to travel back and forth every day.
It took them a while to find the school because the roads and landmarks had changed. The school building and dormitories were replaced in the 1980s. They walked around the buildings, aware that they would immediately be seen as strangers and hoping not to be intruders. When a door opened and a woman stepped out, Mary identified herself as the one who had run the dorm 50 years ago.
“You wore a leather bracelet,” the woman said. “You played the guitar and sang ‘The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night’ and you took us on wonderful hikes. You’re Miss Hansen.”
This woman was Lorraine Nells, who was a second-grader when Mary was at Nazlini School.
“It was a God moment,” Mary said later in an interview. “One minute sooner or later and we wouldn’t have met.”
Lorraine, who works at the dormitory, and Mary chatted for a while about the changes in the K-6 school, which boarded about five students last school year, now that the district has school buses. Mary later received a letter from Lorraine, asking for prayers for the school.
Mary related this experience at a mid-week healing service at her home church in Salida, the Episcopal Church of the Ascension. Ascension’s rector, The Rev. Melissa George, asked if the church could help – and so a campaign began. During the winter of 2022 and into the spring, the church collected donations of children’s clothing, shoes, books, toys, games and art supplies, plus bedding and shelf-stable food. Donations and help also came from Ascension’s mission church, Little Shepherd in the Hills, in Crestone, Colorado. Volunteers sorted and boxed the donations in the church undercroft.
In early April, the boxes were blessed and loaded into three vehicles, and the caravan made the three-day round-trip to Nazlini.
The donations will help not only the children in the dormitory, but also their classmates in school. Perhaps when they put on a warm winter coat or read a story book, they will remember that their teacher has a friend from a long time ago, and threads of friendship last a long time. They can grow, too, and encircle new people in a church who learned about Navajo children and care about them. The church hopes to maintain a relationship with the school.