Godki Pewakunyu Hanaka (Nez Perce for God Be With You Till We Meet Again)

We don’t know who, how, or when, but we all have opportunities to influence the lives of others. Sometimes we make an effort to improve someone else’s life, but many times, we don’t know if some small act could make a huge difference for someone. And we might never know.

That’s the case with a high school teacher of mine. I had Mr. William Kness for journalism and creative writing my junior and senior years. I have tried to contact him so I can tell him what he meant to me, but I can’t find out if he is even alive. After all, that was more than 50 years ago.

Here is what I mean. He was reading a book about the mistreatment of Indians in the 19^th Century and told our class about it. Living in Western Pennsylvania, I don’t think I even knew Indians were still around. He loaned me the book, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. (https://magazine.gwu.edu/legacy-bury-my-heart-wounded-knee) While I was reading it, the American Indian Movement occupied the village of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. I read up on the brutality of the FBI, the corruption in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the discrimination of Native Americans on their own lands deeded to them by international treaties for “as long as the sun shall shine.”

Meanwhile, an elderly couple in my church with connections to the Nez Perce Indians in Idaho told me the reservation’s minister sometimes took young volunteers to help teach kids in the summer. Because of Mr. Kness and Wounded Knee, I applied and spent the following summer in Idaho with the Nez Perce. It was and still is the best summer of my life. At the end of the summer, I was part of a caravan of Indians from the various Nez Perce churches who drove to a Christian camp meeting on the Lakota reservation in South Dakota. While there, I was able to drive a short distance to visit Wounded Knee, just one year after the AIM standoff with the military, which I had followed in the news.

I was in college then. When I got home from Idaho, I started dating a girl I had missed while away, married her, and moved to Idaho five years after that life-changing summer. I owed that wonderful summer, my move across the country to Boise, and, quite possibly, the girl I married all to Mr. Kness.

That teacher also told us about a journalism scholarship to Point Park College in Pittsburgh that paid full tuition, room, board, and books. I was able to meet with the head of the Journalism Department there. (He went to the same small college and was a member of the same fraternity as my dad and uncle.) He told me if I wanted the scholarship to write, write, write. So I got a job covering high school sports for our local paper, the Beaver County Times, I entered and won high school writing contests, and ultimately I won that state-wide college scholarship to Point Park. I owed it all to Mr. Kness, telling us about the scholarship in my junior year. Until then, I never even heard of Point Park College.

Two summers ago, my wife and I vacationed in South Dakota with our two grown daughters, both born in Idaho. We made a slight detour to stop at Wounded Knee. While there, I thanked God for bringing Bill Kness into my life.

That teacher was in Beaver Falls High School to teach English. He taught me a lot more than that. He taught me to understand what the country did and does to native people, he taught me to stand behind whoever the underdog is, he indirectly led me to the greatest summer of my life, he kind-of brought my wife and me together, he enabled me to attend college for free, he was responsible for me moving to Idaho and being able to camp in the mountains there, and he made possible two visits to Wounded Knee.

This is a long post, but I wanted to tell this story as an example of what you can mean to others without even being aware of the difference you are making. Be ready to listen. Be ready to share your passions in life. Be ready to go out of your way when someone needs you, even if they don’t know they need you.

God bless you, Mr. Kness. I hope somehow you have an idea of how you changed my life for the better.