On June 17, 1983, Willie Frank Sr. died. By most accounts, he’d live 104 years. Word of his passing spread as his body lay inside the Wa He Lut Indian School with candles burning on each end.
“Dad gave us 104 years of his life. That’s happy times. Happy times and great times,” Billy observed, thankful for the many years spent together. Billy had shared coffee with his father every day of his adult life. “We accept that death is part of life. You gotta be sad and you gotta be happy. You gotta cry and you gotta be glad. That’s the way we’re going to be here today.”
If the measure of a man can be gauged by the number of people who pay him final respects, Willie Frank Sr. left an indelible mark on Indian Country. His passing brought 450 people to Nisqually. Indians from many nations—Makah, Quileute, Lummi, Skykomish, Squaxin, Elwha, Chehalis, and more—joined a host of dignitaries that included Dixy Lee Ray, governor of Washington, and high-level bureaucrats from the Department of Fisheries and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
“He didn’t rob us when he left,” Adams reflected. “He left us with strength and energy. It is not the end of an era, because Gramps’s life was so involved with bringing new resources to his people . . . to bringing an appreciation of us to people who aren’t Indian . . . to enhancing our understanding of people who can’t know what it is to be Indian.”
Billy stood alongside the casket, holding his fourteen-month-old son Willie in his arms. Two of the most important people in his life shared little more than one year together on the planet. “That’s the one thing I really wish,” says Willie III, “that I could have had a chance to know my grandpa. Even the people I talk to at Nisqually, who really weren’t supporters of the Landing, they’ve all said, ‘Your grandpa was one of a kind. There’s never going to be anybody like him. He was special.’
family members survived assimilation, fought for treaty rights, and founded an
Indian school to preserve their heritage. Seated: Angeline and Willie Frank;
standing: Billy, Maiselle, and Andrew. Image-Billy Franks Personal Collection
“He never cussed. He never talked down to people. He never talked bad about people. It’s so hard, in this day and age, to even think that anybody could be like that, especially dealing with tribal politics. I mean, god dang. I see people—they’ll run somebody down—and then, the next hour, they’re sitting next to them, talking to them. What is that? A lot of fake people, it seems like. He definitely wasn’t. Him and my dad both, they’re definitely not that kind of person.”
After the procession had made its way from the Nisqually Tribal Center to the actual burial ground, a Lummi elder bade farewell, calling on nations to honor the memory of Willie Frank Sr. and fight for their land once again: “I am no stranger to this man we are laying to rest here. He never had golden peace down here with the federal government and the state. It’s high time we get together and start suing the state and federal government. Look at the land they’ve stolen from us. They never ask. They just take it. Somebody has to pay for it.
“This is the land of our treaty rights, our fishing rights and hunting rights. They’re after it. But the state can’t begin to scrape up enough money for our fishing rights.”
“I knew Dad would pick his own time to die,” Billy reflected at the graveside.
Shortly afterward, in a letter to the Tacoma News Tribune, the family acknowledged the outpouring of tributes:
To the editor, The family of Willie Frank Sr., thanks the hundreds of people who helped us honor Grampa Frank in the time following his death. Your generous gifts of drumming and songs, flowers, food, memorial donations . . . his teachings of Indian treaty rights and human rights, and dreams for Indian community life, will not be lost or forgotten. We thank each of you. The Family at Frank’s Landing.
Willie Frank III and his older siblings grew up in different worlds. The chaos and violence of the fish wars had diminished during Willie’s childhood. The struggle for treaty and fishing rights still consumed courtrooms, but the debate largely played out in face-toface meetings between adversaries who were now communicating. Billy stopped going to jail. Violence on the riverbank quieted.
This new spirit of cooperation handed Billy a new opportunity as a father. He had time to give his child. “It was a different day, and a new day,” says Billy. “We took Willie skiing. We’d go to baseball games. We’d go see [Ken] Griffey. We were always there. We’d load the kids up and take them to the ballpark. Of course, you can’t do that anymore. It will cost you 100 to 200 dollars to go there now!”
Early on, Willie shuttled back and forth between Flagstaff, Arizona, where his mother worked for the federal Navajo-Hopi Relocation Commission, and Washington State. “I remember starting preschool down there. We would stay down there for a month and then come back. It was split up. My dad and I would drive down there to go see my mom. She’d work part-time down there, and then she’d work up here also. Then, once I got into kindergarten, I came back up here. That’s when she got a job for the state.”
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