Thursday, December 27, 2012

Jose Delfino J.D. Maes, Jr 1924 – 2012



The man with the golden carbine who supervised the June 8, 1969, arrest of Reies López Tijerina by U.S. Forest Service Agent James Evans, right, backed up by New Mexico State Police officers was Lieutenant J.D. Maes, Jr., left, died December 17, 2012.

He was 88.

He was born in Maes, NM., on March 11, 1924.

In 1979 he retired from the New Mexico State Police at the rank of Major.

I met J.D. Maes Jr., August 8, 2009 at the home of his son, Chris D. Maes and wife, Dianne, of Rio Rancho. Chris Maes was also a retired New Mexico State Police officer whose last assignment was Executive Protection Unit. They both had many a tale to tell.

J.D. Maes Jr,. had worked protecting various governors including, David Cargo and John F. Simms.

J.D. Maes, Jr., was the shift supervisor at the Española State Police Office on the Sunday in June 1969, when Tijerina's wife Patsy, burned two Forest Signs. When arrests were made Maes left Española driving at high speed, arriving moments after Tijerina was taken into custody.

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Ben Luján 1935 – 2012


New Mexico Speaker of the House Ben Luján died Tuesday night December 18, 2012 after a long struggle against lung cancer.

He was 77.

Luján was a life long resident of Nambé, served the House District 46, for Santa Fe County 37 years, and was Majority Whip and Majority Floor Leader before becoming the Speaker.

Though he did not seek reelection, he officially died in office, leaving the Speaker's chair vacant.

Governor Susana Martinez issued a statement:
Speaker Ben Lujan's service to New Mexico spanned four decades and his legacy will live for years to come. He fought for causes near and dear to New Mexicans from all walks of life and guided the House of Representatives through some of the most important debates in our state’s history. Speaker Lujan’s story was one that embodied the New Mexican dream and the American dream.  The son of a sheepherder, he made his living as an ironworker at Los Alamos before running for office and rising to one of the most prominent and powerful positions in the state.

Chuck and I join all New Mexicans in offering our thoughts and prayers to Speaker Lujan's wife, Carmen, his children, and his entire family during this trying time.

His standing as a senior elected office holder gave him great influence, especially within the Democratic Party.
He was only eclipsed in elective seniority by Representative Nick L. Salazar, above right, D– Mora, Rio Arriba, San Miguel, Santa Fe, and Taos Counties of House District 40, who has been a Representative since 1973; Luján served since 1975.

Salazar of Ohkay Owingeh was literally a neighbor, friend, their families socialized together, their children were friends. Salazar worked at Los Alamos doing thermonuclear research and knew Luján through Salazar’s brother who was the shop forman over Luján. Salazar, is the longest serving elected official in the state having served a four-year term as County Commissioner.

Salazar said of Luján’s passing:
I’m saddened in fact by his passing.

In my 40 years of the legislature, I have served under four speakers, but Speaker Luján was my speaker.

He died in office. When he came to the last session, he announced he was dying, but he served. That was Ben; he served to his dying days.

We worked on many projects together; I supported him, and he supported me.

He always gave me good advice.

He’s going to be missed by many people.

Luján was an ironworker at Los Alamos National Laboratories and a shop steward before leaving to begin he political career in the mid 1970s.

“He was a good man, good man for labor, a fair man, honest man; did well, not just for labor, but for the people,” said Marty Padilla, organizer for the Iron Workers Local Union No. 495, based in Albuquerque. Contrary to wikipedia, he was not a contractor, but a common worker.

He didn’t leave his ironworker mentality, as he was a strong and often unbending political force. He had perfected the art of being a “union goon” (in the best sense of the word and that’s from one union goon to another), his ability to articulate at the level of the common man, his persuasive manner, his use of coercive tactics, and horse-trading.

He wielded the power of the Speaker’s gavel with an iron fist and members of the minority party often bristled at his ability to shut them out by his use of what committees he would assign legislation.
Luján, above right, partnered with then Governor Bill Richardson, above left, in standing behind, supporting, and sheepherding Richardson’s agenda through the House.
Luján’s wife of 53- years, Carmen, above left, was a constant presence at political events and helped soften his strong personality. His son, Ben Ray Luján, above right, often referred to as junior, was elected to the U.S. Congress for CD-3 Northern New Mexico in 2008. They were among family and friends as Luján passed away at Christus St. Vincent’s hospital in Santa Fe, after being admitted with respiratory problems earlier in the week.

I will leave it to Santa Fe New Mexican’s Steve Terrell to provide other tributes.

Monday, December 17, 2012

Kenneth Byron Coolidge 1936 – 2012


MAN, husband, father, grandfather, great grandfather, brother, brother-in-law, uncle, and FRIEND; Ken Coolidge, above all, was a human being. All the other accomplishments in his life pale by comparison to what he did for and with people; those close to him and complete strangers.

Coolidge succumbed to cancer after a short struggle. He was 76.
Michael Coolidge, his son responded to an e-mail request for details of his father’s life. I present it here, because it is as complete, concise, and contains all the things I had learned about Ken, but had faded in my memory because of vibrancy of the immediacy of his life when you were in his presence overwhelms the details:
Ken was born in Manchester, New Hampshire, 5 November, 1936, to Ann Gladys Harris, a newspaper woman, and Theodore Coolidge, a professional boxer, who had a varied military, then civilian career, Ken grew up in the newspaper business as his parents owned a weekly newspaper. He grew up in Newmarket, and moved to Somersworth for high school.
His recruiter uncle enlisted him in the Naval Reserve at 17 and he went to submarine school. He got a degree in English from the University of New Hampshire in 1960. Ken and Mariette St Pierre were married 7 February 1959. Their first child, Michael, was born in March 1960, just as Ken went into the Air Force and pilot training. By the time Sharon came along in August 1962, Ken was in Nav/bomb training. His first operational assignment was in the B 66 at Shaw Air Force Base in Sumter, South Carolina, just in time for the Cuban crisis. Ken also did his first tour in Southeast Asia from Shaw. He did two tours in the F4 Phantom in England for a total of seven years with a return to Southeast Asia in between. Then one day in 1975, his career took an abrupt change of direction when he was declared a cop. He went to Moody Air Force Base as chief of police. Three years later he got his Pentagon assignment -- only they decided that USAF Security Police Headquarters was now in Albuquerque, New Mexico! He also joined the Albuquerque Reserve Police Force while there.
He retired from the Air Force in 1982 and immediately joined a company called California Plant Protection. They moved to Camarillo Calif. as a regional director. CPP provided security for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles and later purchased Pinkerton to become the largest Security Business.
In 1994, Ken left Pinkerton to start a company of our own; doing mostly guards at US Embassies overseas. That kept us busy until he was diagnosed with lymphoma in 1997. He handled the treatment well and it seemed to do the job until New Years Eve when we learned the cancer was back. Ken underwent a stem cell transplant early in 1998; after that we decided to make the most of each and every day and succeeded.
We are blessed with wonderful children and their fabulous spouses, 7 amazing grandchildren, as well as 2 great grandchildren and one more on the way who will surely be even more amazing than their parents!
I have left out many things, from Ken’s additional education, his military awards and decorations, amazing trips and adventures, but most of all the wonderful people who so blessed and enriched our lives.
Ken took enormous pleasure in everything he did. His cup always ran over!

So, What’s Wrong With This picture?

 
This is one of the last pictures I took of Ken and his wife of 53-years, Mariette, at the Air Force Academy graduation ceremony in May, for their grandson Alex Kingsley.

I chose this picture because it shows how Ken saw himself. If this is not a portrait of pride, you’re not going to find one anywhere else. Ken was extremely proud of his entire family and he is one of the few people who, when talking about his family, you didn’t need a scorecard to keep up with the players. From the way he so artfully told stories, you always knew exactly of whom he was talking.

The stories he told always had a flair about them; he found humor, pride and joy in his offspring.

This picture also shows the pride he had in his public service. He loved to fly! The Air Force would send him and other crewmembers up into hostile skies in multi-million dollar jets to go find and or make trouble over enemy lines. The necktie is covered with F-4s the lapel pin is also of an F4. It was the plane in which there was only one other crewmember, the pilot; it offered him the greatest opportunity to practices his skills, and it gave him the best view. His specialty was navigation, with a sub-specialty of reconnaissance, taking picture for planners of air strikes to analyze for future missions and for analysis of the effectiveness of earlier attacks. He had flown the RB-66 as navigator and was a navigator-training officer.

He has a camera around his neck. He always wanted high quality pictures and he made sure he got it.

He was not one of those often-typical fathers who have hundreds of pictures of the first-born, then fewer and fewer pictures of the other children as they came along. He was more likely to have more pictures as the grand children came along. I didn’t get to see too many pictures of his great grandchildren, but I sure heard about them.

After his family and his national service, he never looked at change as a set beck, but as a challenge. When the Air Force took him off the flight line and assigned him to a desk, he quickly realized it didn’t have a tail number, controls, or switches, and levers, so he set about learning how to be a Chief of Police.

It is quite a switch when you think about it. You are suddenly the boss in a job you’ve never done. He joined the Albuquerque Police Department Reserve program as much to learn about civilian policing as he had for his real quest to learn more so he could put his experiences into his work. He was then the wordsmith for writing Air Force wide security policy and understanding the realities of the street made him cautious about writing rules that could be carried out.

He and I became partners patrolling the streets, mostly because I allowed Reserve Officers to drive the patrol car.

Along the way he had obtained a master’s degree in counseling and put it to great use.

He prepared himself for the civilian world, in part to share his passion for flying, by becoming a certified flight instructor. I became his first student. He was not really that hard to teach how to teach.


In one of those nervous moments, while practicing night landings, at a small private airport, where turning on the runway lights was controlled by clicking the aircraft radio, we got around to practicing the problem of approaching a runway where the light went out after the set time or as an emergency procedure. To try to break the tension I was experiencing I asked a stupid question. “what do you do if you turn on the landing light and see something on the runway you don’t like (I was thinking an airplane, without lights, or a deer)? Ken’s answer, ”Turn off the light.” It broke the tension and snapped me back to reality – land beyond the obstruction or go around.


His humor was always on the surface, it wasn’t biting, but he would nip you.

He was always good counsel and a great listener. However, the true mark of his friendship was best demonstrated in those rare times he sought out my counsel, because he knew I had experience in the subject he was just entering.

We were good friends and enjoyed each others company. He also was a rare individual were the other people who were his friends, were instantly your friends also.

He was a faithful supporter of my efforts in the on-going battle to improve government. He always advocated a firm letter to open the challenge against a governmental encroachment on civil liberties and personal rights. His suggest draft was right to the point. (For my readers who don’t mind his eloquent, yet accurate choice in the use of the English language, click on the lightened area below to see his word choice).

Dear Sir,
FUCK You very much! Strong message to follow!
Love and Kisses
Mark


He will be placed to final rest at Arlington National Cemetery.

I made this personal, but I believe everyone Ken knew has an equally compelling story.

If one believes in Heaven, then I’m sure Ken is already signing up angels to take his flight navigation course for those new wings.