by Tim White
Ulee’s cousin Jackson was wrestling, like many natives, with a drinking problem. He went through a treatment program and did some time in prison for resisting arrest and aggravated assault. But sober, he was the nicest man in the world. He lived with us and ran the program for the working poor. He could relate to anyone.
Hector Whitebird Sundown had gone on to play in the pro football league, following in his brother’s footsteps. LaGrande had by then become a powerhouse, maintaining its dominance as a Division II school and drawing great recruits from throughout the West Coast. Hector, a quarterback like Ulee, was drafted by New York and led the team to a championship his rookie year. He was the first rookie to accomplish this, but New York was a team ready to win.
At half time during the championship game, the new Republican President awarded Ulee the Congressional Medal of Honor for his sacrifice in defending the Montagnard village. Ulee accepted it on national TV, which cemented his legacy as a war hero. Ulee stood before the president in his dress blues Marine captain uniform with his chest covered in medals. He seemed emotionless, but I cried. His brother, Hector, came out of the locker room at half time to watch. He held his helmet high over his head as the crowd applauded his brother. No wonder his second half was inspired. He truly was a better quarterback than Ulee, and now he was on the cover of all the magazines and the guest of all the talk shows. He had no problem communicating to international press. He was entertaining and cute. And he knew it.
While we were at the game, Nhung asked if she could stay home. She had seemed kind of melancholy lately and had had a bad case of influenza, followed by a cold that would not leave. I had her tested for allergies, but nothing showed up, so we left her with Grandmother Sundown who had been an outstanding nurse most of her life. When we came home from the mountain peak experience of watching Hector play so well and win the most valuable player and Ulee awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, Grandmother Sundown did not seem to be too excited about her boys’ achievements.
When we were alone, she told me. “I know I am not a doctor, but I think you need to test Nhung’s blood cell count.”
I asked, “Why, would you think that?”
Grandmother gave me a hug. “Because I think she has leukemia.”
I tried to quiet my fears until we could get her back to Seattle for a blood test. I told myself that my mother-in-law was probably just overly cautious because Joey had it when he was a boy. But Ulee immediately began to grieve in private. He told me that Agent Orange must have done damage to everyone who was exposed to it. When the hematologist called us in for an appointment, I knew there was something wrong. He would have told me over the phone if it was a false alarm. It was like living through a nightmare. I am a fine doctor; why didn’t I see this earlier? I thought.
Fortunately, we were in one of the best spots in the world to battle leukemia. Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center was world famous for their Nobel Prize winning treatment.
Leukemia used to mean almost a zero chance of recovery until one innovative doctor did what no one thought could be done. He labored in the basement of a rented facility, leading a team of dedicated scientists to kill the diseased bone marrow through near lethal doses of radiation and chemical therapy and then replace it with a bone marrow transplant to establish a healthy bone marrow and blood cancer free system.
Going through the treatment was brutal, and for a while we all practically lived at Fred Hutchinson. Ulee really fell to pieces and was losing his faith.
He kept asking, “How could God allow children to suffer in this world.”
I would say, “You are the pastor—you are supposed to tell us.”
Ulee would scream, “I don’t have an answer.” He spent most of his time on his knees asking for a miracle. He had seen God do amazing things before through prayer. Why not now? But nothing.
Nhung asked him, “Daddy, why doesn’t God make me and all the other children in this hospital well?”
Ulee would just say, “I don’t know baby. I don’t know.” Nhung said, “Well, you are a pastor. Tell God to heal me.” Ulee got on his knees and prayed with all his heart. Others that he had prayed for through the years had seemed to miraculously experience healing. Why did this only happen sometimes. When Ulee prayed, there were no lightning bolts. Just love flowing into his heart.
One day when Nhung was going through a torturous dose of radiation and chemotherapy, Ulee couldn’t look her in the eye. He talked about her but not to her. He prayed about her but not with her. She was a patient, not one of the loves of his life. I followed him out in the hall and grabbed him by the neck.
“Everyone who visits Nhung treats her like a science project; you are her father and her pastor. How dare you treat her that way?”
Ulee cried. “I am sorry; I just don’t understand how I can believe in God when there is so much terrible unjust tragedy in the world.”
“Well, quit crying like a baby—you have a man’s job to do: deal with the world the way it is not just the way we hoped it would be. Faith doesn’t cause us to avoid all tragedies; it’s how we navigate the very worst in life by being surprised by the love and joy in the midst of it. Now get back in there and love my daughter and make her laugh. Then you can say a prayer. Because if you don’t, no one is going to.”
Ulee walked back in. Now he touched the plastic cover over her bed protecting her from infection.
“Daddy, I’m scared.”
Ulee said, “I know, but I love you.” Ulee told her about heaven—about Jesus and how much he loved her since she was born. He told her that she looked like Winston Churchill when she was born. She laughed. Then Ulee prayed. I could feel heaven in the room when he prayed. Then he kissed the plastic where she put her cheek up to it.
One day as we rode down the elevator, I nudged Ulee and whispered, “That is her oncologist.”
Ulee reached out his hand. “I would like to shake your hand, doctor. You saved my sweet daughter Nhung Sundown’s life.”
The doctor said, “Can I buy you and your beautiful wife lunch in the cafeteria?”
We both said, “Let us buy.”
At the end of lunch, the doctor saluted Ulee. “Winning the Congressional Medal of Honor is a big deal.”
Ulee saluted him back. “Someday you will win the Nobel Prize for medicine, but it’s not the prizes, it’s the thousands of lives you saved. You are the hero.”
Nhung just kept getting better after the bone marrow transplant . . . thanks to God and our oncologist, and all the nurses and staff that did God’s work at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center.
It wasn’t too much later that a single mom came to our church. She had escaped with her son by climbing out the bathroom window in Wyoming to keep them safe from domestic violence. She came to meet with Ulee, telling him she was always afraid and her boy was growing up with anxiety as a constant part of their lives. Ulee promised them that they were a part of a community now—a church fellowship.
“You are safe. We will call the police. You know we have a lot of police officers in our church. We will call the FBI. One of the assistant directors goes to our church. We’ll call the Marines, the Navy, the Army, the Air Force, and the Coast Guard if we need to.” He even said, “We even have boy scouts in our church and we promise to protect you.”
It wasn’t more than three months later that Ulee got a call from her seven-year-old son at home. He said, “Pastor Ulee, how are you doing?”
Ulee said, “Fine—a bit tired. How are you doing, Nick.”
The boy spoke casually, “Not too well. I think my mom just died.”
Ulee said, “Nick, what do you mean?”
He said, “I was talking to her in the kitchen and she just fell hard on the ground and isn’t moving.”
Ulee said, “I am going to be there in five minutes Nick, and I’m calling 911. They will probably call you. Follow their instructions carefully. I’ll be there as fast as I can.” I called 911 and gave them Nick’s phone number an
d address. Ulee jumped in his old Volkswagen bug and sped off. When he got there the fire department and police had already arrived. The police captain was talking to Nick. When Nick saw Ulee, he yelled, “That is my pastor!” and tried to break free to run to Ulee.
The police captain (same as the one at the suicide incident) said, “Let him go.” Nick ran into Ulee’s arms, crying. Nick said, “I don’t have a family now.”
Ulee said, “Our church is your family. That is the reason God made churches.”
As good as Ulee was at being a pro quarterback, he was better at being a pastor.
But the church was struggling financially. Ulee just was not the best financial manager. His heart was too big and the church gave so much to the poor. After one business meeting, Ulee decided to go back and play football one more season to make some money to pay off our church building that would always be a real sanctuary of refuge.
Ulee contacted the Seattle Sharks who immediately signed him. There were soon calls from around the league of players who wanted to play for Ulee’s team. Patty came down from Canada and made the team as a backup fullback. That season was the most fun Ulee ever had playing football.
The Sharks made it to the conference playoffs but had sustained so many injuries that their defense was overwhelmed. Ulee volunteered to play the final quarter going both ways. Playing quarterback and free safety. It was a brutal game and Ulee broke two ribs, both thumbs, and a big toe. Seattle was fortunate to win.
Ulee’s first and last Championship was against his brother’s team, the powerful New York Lumberjacks. Everyone knew Ulee was injured and they were not sure if he would start. But when the game started the stadium was full of Marines from around the world. New York won the coin flip and elected to play offense. When the announcer announced the starting defense for Seattle was named Ulysses Looking Glass as starting at free safety the crowd went wild. Even the New York fans cheered, and Ulee’s little brother Hector smiled from ear to ear. It was an historic game down to the last moment.
Ulee intercepted his brother on the last drive and ran it back for the game-winning touchdown. He was awarded the most valuable player on defense and offense. If you have never been to a Championship Game then it is hard to imagine when they play the song from Queen, “We Are the Champions,” and grown men cry like little boys. The Sundown family had a group hug. And Ulee lifted me up on is shoulders saying I was his hero. It was a moment we would all never forget.
Chapter Thirteen
The Hero as Archetype
AS WE HIKED down the trail back to the Sundown lodge, I was peppered by questions about churches and organized religion. I tried to answer truthfully and biblically. Always defending the fact that churches are not perfect but Christianity was meant to be lived as a team. The church as imperfect as it was is still the bride of Christ and the family of God. That night back at Sundown lodge the story continued.
Ulee was through with football, and it was time to move on, but he turned his attention to the World Athletic Games in Seoul Korea and the US track team. Since he had donated his salary to his church he was technically still an amateur qualifying for this team. A Canadian sprinter and long-time friend of Ulee’s encouraged him to compete in distance-running. He was convinced that Ulee could be one of the fastest men in the US if he were trained properly. So, Ulee began to train with his Canadian friend to prepare for the World Athletic trials.
I thought, here we go again—what is it with this man? There is always one more mountain to conquer. For Ulee there had always been this comparison to Jim Thorpe, the world-class athlete who had won in the Olympics to bring fame to Natives for generations.
Ulee made the team as the third runner in the 10k, 6.2 mile run. It was a huge honor just to make the team. Ulee would have the honor of competing in the 1988 Seoul World Athletic Games.
Ulee had run ten miles practically every day of his life, so the grueling training schedule seemed almost effortless for Ulee. In fact, he breezed through the preliminary races.
Ulee explained to me one night that competing in these games felt like his destiny. He thought his competitive turmoil had ended with his retirement from pro football—but he was wrong. His fire still raged.
Ulee was not expected to finish better than last place in the 10k event. He had never run a world-class time, and he had no experience in world-class races. It was an accident that there were only two remaining hopes of the United States to medal in this event. But Ulee wanted to make a great noise for all Native people, like Jim Thorpe before him.
Ulee went out fast and took the lead. “Find your pace quarterback! Find your pace!” his coach called. Ulee stretched out his stride as he had so many times in his mountain runs. He held the lead at a pace he could not maintain for one mile before being challenged and pushed by a Kenyan runner and another from Great Britain. They took the lead, and Ulee pushed them for the next two miles. The pace was too fast, and the three led all others by 75 yards. At three miles, the Kenyan and Brit dropped back into the pack and then fell behind. They were spent. The pace Ulee set was too grueling. Ulee also fell back into the pack, catching his breath, running through the pain, trying to stay with these world-class runners.
The pain was grueling for Ulee—he regretted the hubris that had made him think he could run with world-class runners. But that pride would not let him quit. The two miles of pain he had left was nothing compared to the pain he endured in Vietnam and that of his POW brothers.
Ulee smiled as he looked in the stands and saw his son Telemachus and his daughter and the two boys, Plato and Aristotle, all cheering,
Ulee thought of Achilles Joseph Sundown. He thought of his parents and his grandparents—of Jackson Sundown winning the world championship rodeo. He thought of Chief Joseph and the Wallowa Mountains. And he thought of the kids and me and of Vietnam and Israel—fighting hopeless battles. He thought of Columbia Park and sitting on the front hood looking at the stars with me that night in between wars.
As I watched him, I thought of Hawaii and how I wished we could have stayed there together. But Ulee was a Nez Perce warrior, and that was not his place. I thought of how I beat him in grade school, and I wondered if I kept running competitively if I could have made it to the Games. I think I could have—I think that could have been me. But then I remembered my work as a pediatric neurologist and how fulfilling that was: I was helping kids going through their own torture—kids who were running their own impossible race.
At 200 meters left in the race, he had accomplished the impossible; he was still in the middle of the pack, shoulder to shoulder with the premier distance runners in the world.
But he was exhausted with nothing left. The pace of the pack picked up. Ulee knew this was his last chance. He remembered carrying the Navy captain and running as Viet Cong shot at him. He thought, This is nothing—no one is shooting at me. He went into a full sprint just as he had done there in Vietnam, exhausted but needing to run hard.
The crowd roared as Ulee emerged in the front of the group, neck and neck with two other runners. Ulee leaned into the finish-line tape, winning the gold medal. Telemachus, Nhung, Plato, and Aristotle came down on the field and took the victory lap with their dad, taking turns carrying the US flag. We all cried as they played the national anthem. Ulee had tears gushing down his cheeks. Sitting by us were football coaches and Ulee’s parents, not to mention all his brothers and their families.
As the national anthem played, he flashed back to Luau’s death, Bruce’s death on their first mission, and all those who died in the last stand for the firebase that was overrun. They were like apocalyptic scenes no one should have fixed in their mind. And you can imagine the emotion Ulee felt—it took everything he had not to sob.
Ulee became a worldwide celebrity with his fame from the World Athletics Games. Now, he was more than just a football player who could scramble and throw. He was an inspiration.
Ulee believed that every nation should be patriotic and that patr
iotism was only dangerous when people defined it by comparing and degrading other cultures and people groups. He believed that nothing could ever be accomplished if we hated ourselves or others. And the lack of loving one’s nation does not bring more peace and respect to this world; it robs us of a platform to live at a higher level of expectation for improvement and freedom.
We started receiving lots of invitations for Ulee to speak or make appearances, including North Africa. We had heard my sister Maria Jose was there and hired a detective to find her. The detective found her working in a house of prostitution. We traveled to the city, sending word that we were coming to get her. As Ulee and I walked up, we were met by a man who told us that my sister did not want to come home after all. Ulee forced his way into the brothel with the private detective and myself following. He made his way to the back where there was screaming. There lay my beautiful Marie Jose, dead in her vomit from an overdose of heroin. The spoon and the needle were right there. The man with her told us that he had tried to stop her—that he knew that was too much heroine. I rolled her over and wiped off her face with my dress, and I let out a scream.
Ulee tried to comfort me. I slapped him and said, “Men abuse so many women.” I must have stayed there for thirty minutes crying before Ulee could bring me back to sanity.
After Ulee and I returned from North Africa, one morning, I had a call from one of my colleagues, and they asked if I had seen the Seattle papers. I rushed out to get ours on the steps before Ulee woke up. There was the headline: “Multiple Sports Star Accused of Steroids.”
Sprinter Husain Knight had been stripped of his gold medal in the 100 meters because of performance-enhancing drugs. The story said there were rumors of widespread steroid use on the team and accounts that Ulee had taken steroids while serving in Special Forces. He was probably using them again, one source told the newspaper, which would explain why he performed so well in the World Games.