Historical kicks on Route 66

In addition to minding the livestock, her job included mowing the grass while being swarmed by the farm’s 13 resident cats. She sometimes resorted to drastic measures to keep them out of the way: “I’d stuff them in socks and hang them from the clothesline until I was finished.”

So when she married Merle Haynes at 21, Donna was more than ready to get off the farm. Merle worked in construction at job sites all over the U.S. In 1956, Merle was sent to Florida from Southern California to help build launching pads at Cape Canaveral. America’s space program, including Apollo’s forays to the moon, blasted off from Cape Canaveral, but it wasn’t a big deal to Donna back then. It was just another place to go. 

Donna piled into her car with her dog Sheba and headed down what would be designated 25 years later as Historic Route 66. Pit stops for Sheba gave Donna a chance to sample life along the way. In Arizona, a Native American roadside market seemed like a good place to stop.

Walking among the offerings of pottery, rugs and jewelry, Donna spotted a photograph of a man wearing tribal beads and feathers over the uniform of a U.S. Marine. She learned from the merchant that it was a family member who had served as a Navajo Code Talker during WWII.

He proudly told her that Navajo Code Talkers used their language to communicate during the Marines’ fight against the Japanese during WWII. Enemy code breakers had been unable to decipher the language, and the Code Talkers’ bravery, skill and ability as Marines were a major factor in winning the war.

But this was 1956, and the heroes who eventually gained fame and recognition – in part through the 2002 Nicholas Cage movie “Windtalkers” – were virtually unknown, so Donna eventually forgot about it. 

However, on a trip to Phoenix last year, she spotted a Code Talkers museum, and the memory returned in a flash. 

She spent hours there and bought a book about the Code Talkers, her only reminder of a trip that was steeped in more history than even she realized. Then again, she has a knack for being near history-in-the-making. She can also tell you about the gold dredges she saw in Alaska or about her brother’s crash in an Air Force transport (he survived) that became part of the classic 1949 movie “12 o’clock High.”

I hope others will contact me and tell me their stories. Perhaps, if there’s time, I’ll hear more of Donna’s when I return the book she loaned me. In the meantime, please excuse me. I have to go download “12 o’clock High.”

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