Note On Posting Photos of Billy Frank
May 26, 2014 at 11:48am
With no disrespect, I have removed injunctions posted on my FB Timeline stating in one form or another that 'Indian
culture requires that all photographs of a departed has to be put away and not shown for one year." There are many
Indian cultures and many Indian beliefs - some in contradiction to one another, but few requiring an absolute
imposition of one's upon another's oppressively or as conflict cause or source. When taking food and aid to and
sharing life with the United Indians of All Tribes on Alcatraz for Thanksgiving 1969, Billy Frank returned believing that
the most valuable lesson carried in the diversity and unity found there was expressed in their words: "Respect your
Brother's Vision - Respect your Brothers' Dream." When joining the National Indian Youth Council in August 1963, I
found comfort with President Mel Thom's published words: "We have no single mold by which we would have all
Indians be shaped or cast. Nor should we."
On my first overnight visit to Franks Landing in January 1964, I viewed in each of three separate homes - Gramps
and Gram's, Al and Maiselle Bridges', and Billy and Norma Frank's - photos, posters or wall tapestries picturing the
late President John F. Kennedy, assassinated and in the grave already - but also only - for two long months
previous. Before I met Billy, he had experienced terrible personal losses in instances of an older 28-year-old brother
murdered before 3-year-old Billy could really come to know him; another brother-cousin-uncle, Herman Klaber John,
who Billy had come to know and love only too well in closeness in his father's home as his father's nephew-adoptive
son, but killed in war in Europe when Billy was but 13; a traditional teaching mentor, the Nisqually fisherman Johnny
Bobb who specially had built the teen-aged Billy's first canoe; and the death of his eldest sister Rose in a car wreck
when Billy was 22. For each, there were too few photos left behind.
In time, I came to hold and embrace Billy privately in his later moments of life's greatest pain and personal hurt: the
drowning death of niece Valerie Bridges on May 15, 1970; the September 14, 1977 death of daughter Maureen and
3-year-old granddaughter Ca-ba-qud the day after Maureen's 19th birthday; the July 1983 death of his 104-year-old
father Willie Frank and the March and April 1986 deaths of his mother Angeline and wife Norma; the July 2009 death
of niece Alison Bridges Gottfriedson; and the November 2009 death of his elder brother Andrew McCloud II. For
each, I was asked to offer eulogy or otherwise write obituaries. And after each passing, Billy had asked me to find
better or best photographs that he could put up in his home or carry with him. In the present moment, his surviving
sister Maiselle - age 90 - has asked me to put together a last album for her of photographs and news stories reporting
on the life and death of her lost "baby brother," Billy Frank, Jr. It will be her comfort in her remaining time already
being ravaged by frustrations of a fast fading memory as afflicted by both short-term and long-term memory loss.
There is no year to halt or waste. There is no time "to put away" - at least for me. As Gyasi Ross writes in Indian
Country Today: " ... we can't do that with Billy Frank, Jr. He deserves a LOT more time." It is a time when all those
photos that Billy took the time to take with countless children should reappear. It is the year when all Indian children
and their families can come best to know the Billy Frank they should know - and to best remember him. Next year
can be or become too late.
Written by Hank Adams
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