S moke S ignals
APRIL 1, 2016
13
Good eggs
Logan Clark, 7, opens the plastic eggs he
collected during the Tribe’s annual Easter egg
hunt held at Tribal Housing on Saturday, March
26. Behind him is his sister Arya Clark, 3.
Photos by Michelle Alaimo
Talon Vanecek, 1, waits for the Tribe’s annual
Easter egg hunt held at Tribal Housing to begin
on Saturday, March 26.
Ray explains his nickname
ELDER FEATURE continued
from front page
Charlotte Wittlinger.
And if by good you mean living
life to the fullest, Ray did just that
starting at an early age.
“I was a little hooligan,” Ray re-
calls of his youth. “I got in trouble
just like anybody else, but I always
had to go help with the Elders. That
has always been.”
He sits back in the bed and closes
his eyes in the memory.
“He is very spiritual,” says Kath-
ryn. “We carry with us a huge
heart. We spent a good share of
our lives with the traditional sun
dance and vision quest camps, and
we would go for weeks. He was the
security there.”
Kathryn says the two of them
traveled with family members
throughout Oregon, Washington
and California to the sun dances
and the vision quest camps.
Mushy’s quest began when he
was born in June 1947 in Willami-
na, where he spent his early years
in a house with his grandmother,
Thelma Dinehart. And although
Mushy started out there, he didn’t
establish a presence in Willamina
until his teenage years.
“We’ve been friends since the
mid-1960s and we kind of hit it off
right out of the gate,” says Tribal
Elder Steve Bobb Sr. “We both liked
cars. We both thought we were
cool, you know, and we figured the
chicks all liked us. We were just
kids. I think we both always had
that rebellious sort of attitude. We
both had tattoos way before they
were trendy – decades before they
were trendy. We kind of hit it off
that way and we were always good
friends.”
“I had slicked-back hair and
painted-on pants,” recalls Mushy of
his teenage years. “He (Bobb) had
a tractor. He’d drive my motorcycle
Photo by Michelle Alaimo
Tribal Elder Richard “Mushy” Ray, front, with his siblings and Tribal Elders,
back from left, Donna Lux, Shelly Kent, Arnell Houck and Terry Houck at a
Celebration of Life held at the Elders Activity Center on Saturday, March, 5.
and I’d drive his grandpa’s trac-
tor. We became friends and I ran
around with him.”
Mushy spent time in the woods
like most everyone else in the West
Valley during his younger years,
but he spent his time behind the
wheel. He drove log trucks for Zim-
brick Logging. When that business
went under, he started his own
trucking company called Richard
Ray Trucking.
At one point, his company had
five trucks after starting with just
two.
“When Zimbrick’s actually went
out of business, Mushy went on
his own in his mobile home towing
business,” says Tribal Elder Bob
Mercier. “We were both truck driv-
ers and so we had a lot in common,
and we used to in our business
complement each other by he would
help me and when I could I would
help him and it just went that way.
He is just an all-around good guy.
We’ve been super friends for years.”
“We hauled oversized loads,” re-
calls Mushy. “Mostly mobile homes
and we had quite a few deliveries.”
Mushy, who started driving log
trucks when he was 16, shared the
origins of the well-known nickname
when he talks about his early days
of driving.
“It was actually my CB handle,”
says Mushy. “I drove truck for
over 50 years. It derived from
when I had a really bad radio
and I would have to talk on one
channel and answer on the other.
Everybody said it sounded like I
had a mouth full of mush and the
name stuck.”
Tribal Elder and Tribal Coun-
cil Chairman Reyn Leno says he
remembers working with Mushy,
hooking up his truck for him at
Zimbrick Logging.
“I was a chaser.” Leno recalls.
“I would always be hooking up his
truck and doing things like that so
I knew Mushy way back. He would
be there at 3 or 4 in the morning
and he would be the last guy com-
ing back and he would be trying to
get that last load. He was always
going and laughing and having a
good time. He loved driving truck.
There was no doubt in my mind he
was happy when he was sitting in
the seat of the truck.”
Leno says he was sad to hear of
Mushy’s current battle with termi-
nal cancer.
“He was one of those that being
Tribal and having the (federal)
recognition back really meant a lot
to him,” says Leno. “He was just
always Mushy.”
Mushy gave back to his Tribe over
the years, serving on the Timber
and Elders committees.
But being Mushy these days
means being in pain. He looks back
on days of working in the woods,
driving trucks, riding motorcycles
and racing cars, and realizes he has
lived a good life as he prepares to
walk on surrounded by his family.
If we each create a family legend
in our lifetime, then Mushy’s leg-
end came at one of the sun dances
he was working when he made a
choice to accept the pain of battling
cancer.
Kathryn says there was a young
boy dancing outside the circle at
this particular sun dance. Because
of his age, he was not allowed to
dance.
“His name was Paul,” says Kath-
ryn. “He had cerebral palsy. Just
walking caused him so much pain.
Mushy saw him and sat down near-
by. He (Mushy) was asking Creator
to please take away the pain from
Paul. Let me handle the pain. Let
me carry it for him.”
When the ceremony concluded,
Mushy needed help walking while
Paul walked away seemingly pain-
free.
“I prayed to take the pain away
from Paul,” says Mushy. “It works.
It really works.”
Like in the rest of his life, Mushy
volunteered to carry one last load.