Santa Fe Living Treasures – Elder Stories

In another of her adventures, Emily "went down Wolf Creek Pass without brakes--and lived."

In 1944 she and her husband came to live in Santa Fe. They bought land and built a house in Pojoaque, where they raised their family of four children. "There were maybe nine thousand people here then. It was very beautiful and simple," she said.

In the late 1960s Emily went to New York to seek what her children called "her late blooming fortune." With Margaret Mead and editor Normal Cousins, she promoted an "interesting but rather vast" scheme for global cultural exchanges, International Cooperation Year. The President's wife took an interest. Emily and two hundred others were invited to a White House conference. Lunch with Lady Bird Johnson was lovely, but "there were no results."

The Wheelwright Museum, designed by Emily's friend William Penhallow Henderson, drew her into an enduring commitment. She calls the museum "my beloved place to be. In a way, it is my own temple." She was president of the board at the Wheelwright from 1983-85, executive secretary of the Southwest Association of Indian Affairs from 1971-76.