his mother. “I was always her number one priority. I’ve never seen anybody like
her, the way she cared for people.” New son Willie with Sue Crystal and Billy. Image-Billy Frank Jr Personal Collection
Chapter Thirteen of “Where the Salmon Run” written by Trova Heffernan and sponsored by Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed.
Chapter Thirteen | Resilience
Billy is sometimes compared to the Energizer Bunny, the immortal character that came to life in 1989 beating the drum for the long life of Energizer batteries. Billy’s own ability to keep “going and going and going” is perhaps more remarkable noting the blows that could have swayed him off track. The elder has been dealt his fair share of grief.
In the early 1980s, Billy and longtime wife Norma separated. The couple had a hard time, says friend George Walter. “I think they had a disappointing marriage in that they didn’t have children [biologically]. I think that Billy always made sure that he cared for her, took care of her. She was part of the whole team down at Frank’s Landing for a long time.” Despite the parting, they maintained an amicable spirit. Billy still cared for Norma as she suffered from diabetes, a chronic disease that afflicts Native Americans more than any other ethnic group. “I did what I had to do and there was no inference, argument, or anything,” he says of their split. “We never had an argument.”
Billy’s relationship blossomed with Sue Crystal, the “larger-thanlife” Magnuson aide.” Her and I was just side by side,” Billy says. “She did what she does, and she let me do what I do. We just complemented each other, and kept on going.”
“She was like a force of nature coming into his life and completely turned everything upside down,” says Patricia Zell, a longtime close friend of the couple.
Billy and Sue married Indian style in a ceremonial symbol of their commitment. “That was good enough for us,” Billy says. Crystal once likened her relationship with Billy to a peaceful boat ride on the river.
Their relationship was somewhat unexpected, Zell says. “They were from such dramatically different backgrounds. Their temperaments were night and day.” Crystal was the only child of Jewish parents who exposed their daughter to every educational opportunity. She earned her law degree at the University of Washington and eventually immersed herself in politics. “Having worked with Warren Magnuson and Ralph Johnson, she was more politically savvy than Billy,” says Zell. “Billy learned from her.” Zell describes Crystal as “a man’s woman” with off-the-charts intelligence who never pulled any punches with Billy. She was a voracious reader. Books from every genre were scattered about the house.
“I knew Sue when she worked for Maggie,” Bill Wilkerson says, “and then I knew her, of course, when she worked for the state. Bright, go-getter, real, solid—you always knew what Sue thought, very strong, adored Billy. She was agency director for a long time, and very good at it. She knew healthcare backwards and forwards. She was a neat gal and I always liked her. She had people who didn’t like her, but it’s because she articulated her position and advocated it.”
Tom Keefe once asked Crystal about the difference in age between her and Billy: “Billy is twenty years older than you. What do you guys talk about?”
“What do you mean what do we talk about?”
“You’re from different generations. You probably don’t even listen to the same music.”
“But Thomas, we’re in love! Music doesn’t matter.”
“I used to grind her pretty hard on it,” confesses Keefe, “but she took it in stride and called me the big brother she never had. Billy and Sue had a very special relationship, full of love and laughter. When Willie came along, it just got better.”
Like his dad, Billy fathered a child late in life. He was fifty-one, in April 1982, when William Frank III arrived, with an uncanny resemblance to William Frank II. It was one of the great days of his life, Billy says. Paying homage to a family lineage that reaches back to territorial times, the new baby took both names of his grandfather, Willie Frank and Qu-lash-qud.
The Frank family eventually moved to Johnson Point, a short distance from the Landing, the only place Billy has ever really considered home. Juggling high-pressure jobs with high-pressure family demands, Billy and Crystal depended on good friends. Keefe recalls one instance when he dropped Crystal off at the airport. She closed the car door and leaned in to Willie, a toddler of one. “OK, Willie. Now, Uncle Tom is going to take good care of you.”
Willie took one look out the car window at his mother, toting her luggage down the long departure corridor, and one look back at Keefe sitting behind the steering wheel. “He screamed at the top of his lungs until I got to my house in Seattle,” Keefe vividly recalls. “I told Willie afterward, ‘I never, ever experienced a kid who did not inhale! I thought you must have been breathing through your ears, because you screamed for forty minutes straight.’ I mean, my head was ringing when it was over.”
In a display of the communal lifestyle that Billy has lived, Norma often watched Willie, and the two shared a bond. “Oh yeah, she just loved that guy, you know,” Billy says. “She loved kids beyond belief,” agrees Georgiana Kautz, Norma’s younger sister. “Not only did she adopt, she took care of Willie.”
In 1983, when Willie was a toddler, a gall bladder ailment sent his namesake and grandfather to the hospital. The elder, the last fullblooded Nisqually Indian alive, was 104 years old. Doctors were at first reluctant to operate. “He was in pain. After we had all talked about it, they finally decided to go ahead and operate,” said granddaughter, Alison Gottfriedson. “After the surgery, the doctors came back and talked to us. They were astounded at his good health, and said he went through the operation very well.” Even so, the long life began to take its toll. “While some of his family were at the hospital, I suggested that they look at Gramps’ hands,” said Hank Adams. “They were young hands. They were not 104-year-old hands. They were hands that labored for Indian people all of his living days.”
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