Painting The Sky

FAREWELL TO A GOOD FRIEND

I have posted a younger picture of Betty Huffmon as seen on the flaps of books she and I have written together. I have been receiving e-mails from people in Alaska as a reaction to her passing and they all have been a reminder of how fortunate I have been to have her as a personal friend and writing partner.

Betty was the first Yup'ik teacher in Alaska. After working with me at the Bilingual Education Center in Bethel, she later directed the Bilingual/Bicultural Center under LKSD, first as part of a team to make Yup'ik a first language in some of the delta schools and then to create a second language program in other villages in western Alaska. She and I met 35 years ago and lived across the dirt road in the luxurious trailer court of Bethel, Alaska.

There are so many things that I have learned from working with her. But most of them can be summed up in one sentence. "There is something good in everyone." She has woven together a Yup'ik family whose mother owned her own reindeer herds, a French Canadian father who was an entrepeneur in trading along the rivers and coasts of Western Alaska, boarding school living and an exquisite knowledge of the rest of the world and how important language is.

Betty told me the story of THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE. It is the story of a little boy who is sent out to hunt food for himself and his grandmother, but eats everything himself. When the story was told to Betty, the little boy pops as he comes into the hut through the eye of grandmother's needle. Betty said that since this is not a time of starvation in the village the lesson did not need to be harsh. Instead we created the universal, loving grandmother who draws out the good from the little boy named Amik.

Later we created BERRY MAGIC from a snippet of a story she remembered. It is the story of how the different kinds of berries came to grow on the tundra. Both of us liked the idea that good ideas lead to good results if you act on them and can create a little magic. Collaboration between us, between two cultures, two generations and two different minds often took 5 years but led us to learn the value of finding a common voice. We were working on a rewrite of THE GHOST FISH when she died. I hope her voice will still work with mine to finish the story.

For anyone visiting the Anchorage area, she has made the largest individual donation ever given to them of over 500 artifacts (furs, ivory, trading beads, dolls and baskets.

My thank you goes to her family who let me accompany them to take Betty to Goodnews Bay for her burial and feast. It was wonderful to watch as everyone in the village welcomed her home for her final resting place.

With Betty leaving, it is my hope, and I am sure it is Betty's as well, that more writers from Alaska will come forward and write for children and that more of the folklore and everyday stories will see their way into trade book form to share with the rest of the world.