Willis Conrad, Thank You
Malcolm Terence
June 30, 2004
Willis Conrad
was like Sugar Loaf. He was the center of
the world. I’ve known Willis Conrad for maybe 35 years, since we were just
starting the Black Bear Commune. In those days we hippies must have looked
so weird that most people in Siskiyou County wouldn’t have anything to do
with us. Our looks were no problem for Willis. He was our first friend. He
shared his life and he shared his world with more heart than anyone I’ve
ever known.
Willis was born in the spring of 1936 at Katameen. Willis’ father died when he was six and he and a brother hunted from then on to feed the family.
He began school at the old Junction School
and eventually went to Yreka to attend high school and live with a
grandmother who spoke only Karuk language. He spent two of his three Army
years in Panama, not a bad assignment considering that many American
soldiers were still stationed in Korea. The photos we see of Panama make it
look like Somes Bar.
Photo: Jeff Buchin
He returned to Yreka after the service but fishing was better in Somes Bar. Willis had started dipping so young he couldn’t remember when. So every fishing season he returned to Somes. I mostly thought of Willis as a fisherman and that’s probably how he thought of himself.
Eventually he married Patty Billingsley and had three children – Carol, Irene and Willy.
In 1962 he married Florence Kearney and had five children –April, Mel, Tonner, Shawnna and Carla. He and Florence also had the fortune to adopt Tyler, Briana and Amber.
In those days he worked as a logger, a tree planter and a fire fighter with the forest service.
One fire fighter used to tell a Willis story. It was one of those hot afternoons when the crew was too beat up to keep going so Willis, who was boss, had ordered them to back off into some shade for a long break. After a while, a call came over the radio for Willis Conrad. Before he answered, he ordered the firefighter to start up his saw. When it was running good and loud Willis answered the dispatcher, then yelled at firefighter, “Shut off that damn saw. Can’t you see I’m on the radio.” If you were close to Willis, you were never far from a joke.
Beyond Willis, it was not a friendly place here for hippies in those years. I’m not sure why Willis reached out the way he did. Maybe, it was because Willis grew up in a world where Indians were badly treated. Maybe he was fascinated by White people like us hippies who were lower on the pecking order than Indians. I figured Willis was determined to treat us better than he’d been treated growing up. It was just a bonus that most hippies thought best thing they could be in the whole world was to be like an Indian.
More than anything, Willis Conrad loved children. My clearest memory of him, as he grew older, was sitting in his chair with children playing around him and one kid or two climbing into his lap. The walls of his house were papered with photos of his children. He’d talk to them affectionately, even when he was tired. He talked more and more in Karuk as he grew older. Language had been discouraged, even forbidden, during his youth but he loved talking in Karuk and English mixed to the kids.
“Malcolm,” he’d say. "Whaddya think of this song?” Then he’d sing a song in Karuk. He’d laugh. And sing it again.
One of the children he loved and protected was my son Slate. Sometimes I watch Slate being such a good dad to his own children and I realize he learned a big part of that from Willis. I thank you, Willis, for that and for the salmon and for the eels and even for the Katameen Schmidt , an arcane card game which, as far as I could tell, has two independent sets of rules. I thank you for the thousand jokes that have kept me laughing for 35 years. Most of all I thank you for being my first friend on the river and my friend for all these years.
Peter Coyote wrote to me when he heard Willis was gone, “I'll definitely fold him into my morning prayers… I expect him to come back as the rain.” If Coyote is right, that Willis will come back as rain, then I’ll stand in the rain a lot this winter.