Font ResizeNEWCOMB — A lot could go wrong when someone marries a pen pal from prison.
But a lot could go right.
That's the way Wil and Linda Yazzie, of Newcomb, tell their tale.
The nonfiction story, published in a book called “Total Pardon,” and available on Amazon starting Feb. 14, is one of love and loss, of pain and growth, of taking chances and offering second chances.
It's a story of a naive woman from Ohio who never smelled the odor of alcohol and a hardened Navajo man who couldn't put down the bottle. It's a story that spans three decades and more than 2,000 miles.
And ultimately, it's a story of faith.
Wil
Wilford Yazzie, 65, was born in 1946 at home in Phoenix, with a midwife and medicine man present. His parents were migrant workers and alcoholics.
Early on, his family moved to Shiprock, a place his parents called home, he said.
"I never knew I had a home until that point," Wil said.
Soon after that, Wil's father got a job in Cortez, Colo., and Wil had to change schools. In Cortez, he was one of only three Navajo students, and Wil capitalized on the novelty, charging his classmates to "see this Indian dance," he said.
"I'd make about 50 cents, then I used it to go to the movies and buy Cokes and popcorn," he
Wil's family moved back to Shiprock in 1952, where he enrolled in boarding school at age 6.
"I remember the teachers who spanked me, who abused me," he said. "They cut my hair, they told me not to speak Navajo."
Wil also endured sexual abuse during his boarding school years, which stretched through 1959, he said. Meanwhile, his home life was crumbling; his parents got divorced in 1954 when he was 8, and he was passed around among relatives. He also picked up gambling by age 12.
Initially afraid to drink because he witnessed his father physically abuse his mother, Wil had his first taste of alcohol in 1961, at age 15.
"The first time I drank, I passed out," he said. "I liked it. I was all delirious. It seemed fun to be staggering around. I forgot everything and I was happy."
But alcohol cost money, and Wil began to steal from service stations to support his growing addiction. The year he had his first drink coincided with his first arrest. He spent a year at a federal reformatory in Englewood, Colo.
Thus began a lifetime of drinking, gambling, stealing and prison time.
By the time he was 28, he had been in and out of jail dozens of times, gotten kicked out of an American Indian school in Oklahoma, and hopped around the West, getting into trouble in Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona.
Every new location welcomed him with the same set of problems: drinking, gambling and stealing. He watched
"I was drinking a lot," he said. "I was in and out of jail. I would get out of jail in the morning and I'd be back in jail the next night. That was my life."
Wil was in solitary confinement in the Santa Fe prison doing time for receiving stolen property, and additional time for violating his probation and escaping from prison, when he saw a notice in the Navajo Times from a young woman seeking a Navajo pen pal.
"I tore it out and put it in my pocket," he said. "About a month later, I remembered I had the address. I don't remember what I wrote, and I had nothing to say, but I wrote to her."
Linda
Linda
Born in Cincinnati to a strict evangelical Christian family, Linda contracted strep throat at age 4. Her health deteriorated as she battled rheumatic fever followed by rheumatic heart disease.
She wasn't expected to live.
But Linda survived, and, while she recovered, read everything she could about the American West. From the pages of her books she developed a love for cowboys, horses and American Indians.
She also started communicating with pen pals all over the world.
"Because I didn't go to school until the seventh grade, I was a very shy, backward girl," she said. "So animals were my best friends until I started getting pen pals."
At age 26, she decided to search for a Navajo pen pal. She wrote a letter to the Navajo Times in September 1974, requesting correspondence. The Navajo Times printed her request, along with an address.
"I got about 100 letters," Linda said. "They were all from men, and most were in prison."
Having never gone on a single date, Linda was overwhelmed.
"I was a child even though I was 26 years old," she said. "I never knew there were bad people in the world. I had no idea about evil."
One letter stood out from the rest: the one written by Wil Yazzie, prisoner No. 23126 in the Santa Fe Penitentiary.
"I felt a bond with him right from the start," Linda said. "After reading his letter, I had no interest in any of the other letters."
Linda, who devoted her life to God at age 8, immediately began evangelizing to Wil through letters that grew in length to 20 pages as she opened her heart to him.
"I felt God had his hand on Wil," she said. "I never thought I would marry, and I knew I would never have children, but I felt like I needed to write to Wil."
Wil and Linda wrote to each other from October 1974 until February 1975. On Valentine's Day in 1975, they expressed their love for each other.
"We shared photos of ourselves," Linda said, "but we hadn't even talked on the phone at that point. When we realized we were falling in love, we made plans. When Wil got out of prison he would move to Cincinnati."
Wil was paroled in 1976, but he didn't make it to Ohio.
Wil
Always a good student, Wil earned a GED and pursued an associate degree in social work while in prison. He also attended church and identified himself as a Christian.
He planned to work during the summer of 1976, before going to Cincinnati in October to marry Linda and continue his education.
But Wil ended up in a bar with a gun. He went back to prison for five years, leaving Linda empty-handed.
Linda
"He wrote to me, and he was honest," Linda said of Wil. "I cried and I cried."
Linda's mother, who always was uneasy about her daughter's pen pal, advised her to end the relationship.
"She was afraid I would get hurt," Linda said. She was right.
"Sure enough," Wil said.
Though she knew of Wil's addiction, when he chose alcohol over her, Linda was devastated.
"Alcohol won," she said.
But there was something about Wil, Linda said. Going against her mother's advice, she decided to move forward with the long-distance relationship.
"I couldn't give up on him," she said of Wil. "Everyone in his life had given up on him. I couldn't."
The relationship continued. Wil and Linda wrote for another two years and, in 1977, Linda took a trip to New Mexico to meet him.
"I was worried he would think I was ugly," she said.
Not at all, he said.
Wil
When Wil was paroled again in 1978, he accepted an escort straight to the airport, where he boarded a plane to Ohio. He married Linda two weeks later on Sept. 1, 1978.
Wil, believing he would be a minister, applied to Bible school. He was denied. He settled on social work and enrolled in the University of Cincinnati. Linda worked as a librarian's aide at a school down the street.
Wil and Linda lived in an apartment in her mother's basement; her father had died when she was a teen. But, free from the confines of prison, Wil immediately returned to drinking.
Linda
"The first time he came home after drinking, he kissed me, and I smelled alcohol," Linda said. "He said it was aftershave, and I didn't know any better."
When Wil came home drunk, however, Linda knew her new husband was an alcoholic.
"I knew he loved me because I never saw him take a drink," she said. "I never saw him with a cigarette or heard him say a bad word."
Wil continued to drink for the next two years, checking into rehab when things got too bad. Then, on April 9, 1980, he disappeared.
"He dropped me off at school," Linda said. "I turned around and waved to him when I got up the stairs. When I got off work, he didn't pick me up."
Linda walked home.
"It was a Wednesday," she said. "It was pouring rain."
She made Wil's favorite meal: fried chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans. He never came home.
Wil
"The image of Linda smiling and waving is something I will never forget," Wil said. "I kept saying I wouldn't drink, but then I drank. It hurt her. I didn't want to see the hurt on her face. I thought it was the best for me and the best for her."
Wil cashed his scholarship checks, used Linda's credit card to buy a plane ticket and came back to New Mexico.
"For the next 28 years, I kept remembering her standing at the top of that porch," he said of Linda.
Once he got to Farmington, he pawned his wedding ring to buy alcohol.
Linda
Linda continued to wear her wedding ring, though she filed for divorce three months after Wil left.
"For the next 28 years, I never dated anyone," she said. "I never loved anyone else, never said "I love you' to another person."
Linda went to school to become a minister and served as a caretaker to her sister, who died in 1994, and later her mother, who died in 2008. As the decades passed, however, she did not stop loving or praying for Wil.
"I had not heard one word from him," she said. "I didn't know if he was dead or alive."
Wil
When Wil was arrested in Farmington in 1981 for grand larceny, the judge tried to put in him prison for life as a repeat offender.
He checked into rehab in Gallup, where he stayed drunk for the entire 30 days.
He was arrested in Cortez in 1986 for assault after he accidentally knocked down a girl. The judge ordered him to a state mental hospital for an evaluation.
He drank anything he could find with alcohol in it hairspray, mouthwash, Lysol.
"The 1980s were the worst years of my life," Wil said. "I was in and out of jail and rehab. It was terrible. Ninety percent of the people I'd hung out with, the gang members, had passed away from alcoholism."
Eventually, the judge and the prosecutors in Cortez wanting Wil out of town, bought him a one-way bus ticket to Los Angeles.
Wil dropped out of a Christian-based rehab program, then checked into one specialized for American Indians. He stayed there for 90 days and took advantage of healing practices like sweat lodges and powwows.
But he got drunk again after he checked out of rehab and ended up in a hospital bed.
"The nurse sprayed my feet with Lysol because they were so dirty," he said. "I used to drink that stuff."
After being released from the hospital, Wil went to a halfway house, where he was required to get a job.
"Two weeks later I got a check and man, I was proud," he said. "That was my first real job, my first check. I kept taking it out of my pocket to look at my name on it."
Wil finished a degree in social work and started a program for American Indian youths who were joining gangs or getting into drugs. He also met a woman, Jo Ann, who he married.
An American Indian living in Los Angeles, Wil eventually fell into acting. He ended up with roles in "Sioux City," "On Deadly Ground" and an episode of "Star Trek The Next Generation."
"For once, money wasn't a problem," he said. "I owned two houses and I bought five cars I don't know for what."
Then he started drinking again. He lost his nonprofit organization, his home and his wife. He got a DWI and lost his driver's license.
"I was down and out," he said. "I was sleeping in boxes. All the things I used to drink, all the things I ate out of Dumpsters if I saw an apple on the road covered with ants, I wiped the ants off and ate it."
Finally, he turned to God.
Linda
On September 26, 2008, Linda responded to an e-mail from Wil.
Linda's sister had contacted Wil on Facebook, and Wil had asked if he could write to Linda and apologize. Twenty-eight years had passed since Wil had left.
"He e-mailed me, said he was sorry, that he had become a Christian," Linda said. "I wrote back, "I forgave you when it first happened.'"
Wil and Linda began writing to each other again, this time by e-mail. They started talking on the phone every night.
In October 2008, Wil asked if she would consider remarrying him. Linda thought about it for a couple of hours before calling him back to say yes. He flew to Cincinnati and they married Nov. 22, 2008.
The couple started a Christian ministry and Wil did counseling, but they both wanted something more. In June 2010, they packed everything they owned into a pickup truck and drove to Newcomb.
"We literally stepped out on faith," Linda said. "Wil had a home site lease in Newcomb and we got a loan on a trailer."
The couple started Christ is the Answer Ministry at the Newcomb Assembly of God church, just across the highway from their home. And Wil finally is going to school to become a minister.
"When they told us what they wanted to do, we just felt it was a necessary work," Pastor Duane Hammond said of the Yazzies and their ministry.
Roughly 100 people call the Assembly of God their home church, Hammond said. The Christ is the Answer Ministry adds a dimension he never could.
"I guess we've always kind of dealt with the alcohol problem or drugs, or abuse problems," he said. "I don't consider myself a trained counselor. I can tell them what the Bible says, I can tell them what I've seen, but these guys have gone through it. It really means a lot more to the people than just a pastor talking to them. They've been there."
Total Pardon
Wil's and Linda's story also is reaching people beyond the small reservation town of Newcomb.
During Wil's acting days, he met a South Carolina-based writer named Jodie Randisi, who has put their story on paper. The book will be available on Amazon starting Valentine's Day, 37 years to the day that Wil and Linda first verbalized their love for each other.
Randisi was no stranger to the Navajo Nation or its unique challenges. Thirty years ago, she took a teaching job at a boarding school in Chinle, Ariz.
When she agreed to write "Total Pardon," she said her life came full circle. She also had a lot of fun with it, she said.
"Would you marry your pen pal from prison?" she said. "I'm thinking not. He was a repeat ex-con, a hardened criminal. She was a Christian woman, looking for a Navajo pen pal."
Randisi calls the saga the "most amazing reversal of destiny."
"Wil didn't get killed in like 17 different incidents," she said. "He's putting together meals from Dumpsters while Linda's back in Ohio on her knees, praying for him every day."
The book will be available through Amazon's CreateSpace feature, which allows authors to self-publish and print on demand. The Yazzies plan to use the proceeds from the book to broaden their ministry or even start their own church.
But for Wil and Linda, the book pales in comparison to the life they are building.
"A lot can go wrong when a person marries a pen pal from prison," Linda said.
That statement makes her laugh.
