Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 3, 1993 TAG: 9306030132
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: LITTLEWATER, N.M. LENGTH: Medium
But this year, the holidays are different. A mysterious disease that can swiftly kill people 30 and younger is causing fear and frustration in Littlewater, which has lost four men and women in their 20s in the past six weeks.
Charles Herbert, 17, was riding a borrowed brown pony Tuesday up the 10-mile-long dirt road linking Littlewater with the nearest paved highway.
He was fretting about not being able to find his own horse lost somewhere out there, he said, pointing to the endless expanse of windswept yellow rock hills.
"I'm paying close attention to my health," the small, thin Herbert said. "They say if you have a cough or a fever you should go see a doctor right away, and that is what I would do."
Herbert, a senior at Crownpoint High School, said warnings about the disease, which has killed 13 people on or near the reservation, were passed to his class by his teacher and over the intercom just before school let out.
"They told us to have a good time but to be careful for the summer," he said. "They said teen-agers get this disease."
Riding with Herbert was his friend Nathan Robertson, 15, a sophomore at the same school. He is a cousin to Florena Woody of Littlewater, who died May 9.
"I'm not too scared," he said. "You don't know what to look out for anyway. Your parents tell you to be careful, but no one knows to be careful about what."
Bennie Henrico, 47, has been president of the Littlewater Chapter - the local Navajo political government - for 12 years. A tall, burly man with silvery hair and a fierce mustache, he wears a black Western shirt that buttons across the chest, a black Stetson, jeans, and battered cowboy boots.
"This is a young person's problem," he said. "That's what the community health workers who came out to see us told us. They made two visits out here to give a presentation.
"This morning, I had an old man come to me to talk about it. He was very worried. I told him this happens not for old people but for young people. He felt good, and went home."
The family of Florena Woody still is in mourning. The family trailer sits about 100 yards off the dirt road, surrounded by cars and pickup trucks.
A man in his 20s dressed in shorts who says he is Florena's brother comes out and says, politely, that the family does not want to talk about the death. They are upset, he said, that early press reports said the disease might be spread by drug use or sexual activity.
In peaceful, tiny, Littlewater - a community of 1,000 people about 40 miles east of Gallup on the Continental Divide - those big-city issues seem remote, and to raise them seems insensitive, he said.
This is a place where life is simple.
It is also a place where to even discuss a death in the family may be taboo. Navajo culture is loaded with such restrictions - for example, no one will even talk about someone who died until three days have passed.
In the case of the mystery disease, with researchers likening its virulence to AIDS, many families also feel shunned by their own community.
The family of Florena's fiance, former Santa Fe Indian School track star Merrill Bahe, also of Littlewater, who died May 14 after being stricken en route to Florena's funeral, also declined to discuss the disease.
At Borrego Pass Trading Post, owner Merle Moore, a lanky Anglo with a straw cowboy hat and a back-country profusion of hospitality, said that life has not been the same since word of the sickness got out in early May.
There are no phones to speak of in Littlewater, and so the store phone, he said, has been ringing off the hook as people call to check on the health of their loved ones.
Moore said he and his wife get concerned any time one of their customers even sneezes.
"We had a young girl in here who asked for some cold medicine, and she was coughing," he said. "She said it was nothing, but I told her to get herself to a doctor right away. This thing can kill you just like that.
"The next day, her mom came in, and I asked her if her daughter did get to the hospital [the nearest one is the clinic in Crownpoint].
"She said, `Oh yes. I want my daughter alive.' "
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB