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<\/a>I\u2019ve just learned that Tony Hillerman<\/a>, one of my favorite authors died today. And with him some old friends, Jim Chee & Joe Leaphorn. I\u2019ll miss \u2019em all\u2026<\/p>\n
By AMANDA LEE MYERS, Associated Press Writer Amanda Lee Myers, Associated Press Writer Mon Oct 27, 7:03 am ET<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n PHOENIX \u2013 Tony Hillerman, author of the acclaimed Navajo Tribal Police mystery novels and creator of two of the unlikeliest of literary heroes \u2014 Navajo police officers Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee \u2014 died Sunday of pulmonary failure. He was 83. <\/span><\/p>\n Hillerman\u2019s daughter, Anne Hillerman, said her father\u2019s health had been declining in the last couple years and that he was at Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque when he died at about 3 p.m. Hillerman lived through two heart attacks and surgeries for prostate and bladder cancer. He kept tapping at his keyboard even as his eyes began to dim, as his hearing faded, as rheumatoid arthritis turned his hands into claws.<\/span> \u201cI\u2019m getting old,\u201d he declared in 2002, \u201cbut I still like to write.\u201d<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n Anne Hillerman said Sunday that her father was a born storyteller. \u201cHe had such a wonderful, wonderful curiosity about the world,\u201d she said. \u201cHe could take little details and bring them to life, not just in his books, but in conversation, too.\u201d<\/span> Lt. Joe Leaphorn, introduced in \u201cThe Blessing Way\u201d in 1970, was an experienced police officer who understood, but did not share, his people\u2019s traditional belief in a rich spirit world. Officer Jim Chee, introduced in \u201cPeople of Darkness\u201d in 1978, was a younger officer studying to become a \u201chathaali\u201d \u2014 Navajo for \u201cshaman.\u201d<\/span> Together, they struggled daily to bridge the cultural divide between the dominant Anglo society and the impoverished people who call themselves the Dineh.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n Hillerman\u2019s commercial breakthrough was \u201cSkinwalkers,\u201d published in 1987 \u2014 the first time he put both characters and their divergent world views in the same book. It sold 430,000 hardcover copies, paving the way for \u201cA Thief of Time,\u201d which made several best seller lists. In all, he wrote 18 books in the Navajo series, the most recent titled \u201cThe Shape Shifter.\u201d Each is characterized by an unadorned writing style, intricate plotting, memorable characterization and vivid descriptions of Indian rituals and of the vast plateau of the Navajo reservation in the Four Corners region of the Southwest.<\/span><\/p>\n The most acclaimed of them, including \u201cTalking God\u201d and \u201cThe Coyote Waits,\u201d are subtle explorations of human nature and the conflict between cultural assimilation and the pull of the old ways.<\/span> \u201cI want Americans to stop thinking of Navajos as primitive persons, to understand that they are sophisticated and complicated,\u201d Hillerman once said.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n Occasionally, he was accused of exploiting his knowledge of Navajo culture for personal gain, but in 1987, the Navajo Tribal Council honored him with its Special Friend of the Dineh award. He took greater pride in that, he often said, than in the many awards bestowed by his peers, including the Golden Spur Award from Western Writers of America and the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America, which elected him its president. <\/span><\/p>\n Hollywood was less kind to Hillerman. Its adaptation of his 1981 novel, \u201cDark Wind,\u201d with Lou Diamond Phillips and Fred Ward regrettably cast as Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn, was a bomb. Although Hillerman was best-known for the Navajo series, he wrote more than 30 books, including a novel for young people; the memoir, \u201cSeldom Disappointed\u201d; and books on the history and natural beauty of his beloved Southwest.<\/span> \u201cThose places that stir me are empty and lonely,\u201d he wrote in \u201cThe Spell of New Mexico,\u201d a collection of his essays. \u201cThey invoke a sense of both space and strangeness, and all have about them a sort of fierce inhospitality.\u201d<\/span> He also edited or contributed to more than a dozen other books including crime and history anthologies and books on the craft of writing.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n Born May 27, 1925, in Sacred Heart, Okla., population 50, Tony Hillerman was the son of August and Lucy Grove Hillerman. They were farmers who also ran a small store. It was there that young Tony listened spellbound to locals who gathered to tell their stories. <\/span><\/p>\n The teacher at Sacred Heart\u2019s one-room school house was rumored to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan, so Tony\u2019s parents sent him and his brother, Barney, to St. Mary\u2019s Academy, a school for Potawatomie Indian girls near Asher, Okla. It was at St. Mary\u2019s that he developed a lifelong respect for Indian culture \u2014 and an appreciation of what it means to be an outsider in your own land.<\/p>\n In 1943, he interrupted his education at the University of Oklahoma to join the Army. He lugged his mortar ashore at D-Day with the 103rd Infantry Division and was severely wounded in battle at Alsace, France. He returned from Europe a genuine war hero with a Silver Star with Oak Leaf Cluster, temporary blindness and two shattered legs that never stopped causing him pain.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n He returned to the university for his degree and, in 1948, married Marie Unzer. Together, they raised six children, five of them adopted. As a young man, he farmed, drove a truck, toiled as an oil field roughneck and worked as a reporter and editor for the Borger News-Herald in Borger, Texas; the Morning Press-Constitution in Lawton, Okla.; United Press International in Oklahoma City; and the Santa Fe New Mexican, where he rose to executive editor.<\/span><\/p>\n He quit in 1962 to earn a master\u2019s degree from the University of New Mexico, where he later taught journalism and eventually became chairman of the journalism department. In 1993, he was inducted into the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame. Hillerman was still teaching when he wrote his first novel, \u201cBlessing Way.\u201d A story that always made him chuckle: His first agent advised him that if he wanted to get published, he would have to \u201cget rid of that Indian stuff.\u201d<\/span> Hillerman is survived by his wife, Marie, and their six children. Services are pending.<\/span><\/p>\n ___<\/span> Associated Press Writer Bruce DeSilva contributed to this report.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019ve just learned that Tony Hillerman, one of my favorite authors died today. And with him some old friends, Jim Chee & Joe Leaphorn. I\u2019ll miss \u2019em all\u2026 Acclaimed author Tony Hillerman dies at 83 By AMANDA LEE MYERS, Associated Press Writer Amanda Lee Myers, Associated Press Writer Mon Oct 27, 7:03 am ET PHOENIX […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
Acclaimed author Tony Hillerman dies at 83<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/33904114-6243277619678427376?l=monkeymindonline.blogspot.com\")