BROUGHT TO YOU BY SNOWWOWL.COM A NON-COMMERCIAL NATIVE AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL WEBSITE SPECIAL-RAVEN HAIL OBITUARY
October 17, 2005
Susan BatesRaven Hail, noted Cherokee author and lecturer, passed away October 14, 2005, in Asheville, North Carolina.
A member of the Bird Clan, she was born in 1921 near Dewey, Oklahoma, and was raised on her mother's Cherokee land allotment near Welch. She attended West Anthracite and Prairie Center country schools. She studied at Oklahoma State University and Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
Her works include The Pleiades Stones; Windsong: Texas Cherokee Princess; The Raven Speaks; Ravensong, Cherokee Indian Poetry; Native American Foods (Food the Indians Gave Us- a children's coloring book); The Raven and the Redbird (a play in three acts); and The Cherokee Sacred Calendar, A Handbook of the Ancient Native American Tradition.
Ms. Hail was a member of the Western Cherokee Nation in Tahlequah, Oklahoma and is listed in Ohoyo One Thousand (1982), Native American Women (1993), the Reference Encyclopedia of the American Indian (1995), and The Encyclopedia of North American Indians (12 volumes, 1997).
Funeral arrangements are incomplete pending the location of her son.
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"I dared to reach for a Star:
longing to taste the wonder
of the splendor over yonder,
like a bird on the wing.
I gathered words as wild flowers
arranging them in a vase of verse,
captured dreams in metaphors
fashioned garlands of phrases
into wreaths of memory,
scattered them as rose petals
out and away to the four winds.
I translated into foreign tongues
and to the final universal language, Music:
sang my song unto the mountain, and
the echoes came back sevenfold.
I created a wellspring of inspiration
where thirsty Fellow - Travelers came to drink.
It's not over till it's over ---
well, it's over for the here and now.
I traded in my grand piano for a
harp and hitched a ride on the tail of a Comet
on my way from Earth to the Moon.
This stone marks the spot where I am not.
I was never earth - bound in my life;
why should it be different now?
I'm way up there on that twinkling Star
in the Sky.
Spoon River
(one voice from the grave)
Written by Raven Hail upon the death of her dear friend, Dorothy Greenlee
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Rest well, dear Friend.<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
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