By Puyallup Tribal News Staff
A Puyallup Tribal Member 55 years of age and older is recognized as the Honored Elder each month at the Elders Luncheon at the House of Respect on the Puyallup Reservation.
Siblings Frank Wright and Illa Wright were chosen as the Honored Elders for the month of April. Frank was blanketed by Puyallup Tribal Council Chairman Bill Sterud and Councilman Fred Dillon. Illa was blanketed by Vice Chairwoman Sylvia Miller and Councilwoman Annette Bryan on April 18.
Each Honored Elder is recorded, detailing their life experiences. The following is Frank and Illa’s story in their own words.
Frank Wright
“I just want to thank the Tribal Councils, or the many Tribal Councils I have worked for. I want to thank the Members for the opportunity to work for them. I was actually on the Council in the early 1980s, chairman of the council during that period of time. … There is so much history you can never put it into one simple booklet, it would take volumes and volumes.
“Growing up as a kid, sitting on the bow of the boat going fishing with dad, growing up and had the opportunity to run the first fish cannery that the Tribe had in the late 1970s or early 1980s. I had an opportunity to go to Japan and sell our fish products over there. I got to open the first liquor store the Tribe had. Got to go to Oklahoma and negotiate a contract with the liquor distributions out of Oklahoma.
“I had the opportunity to be the general manager of the Tribal operations. As we looked at gaming, I was lucky enough that I got to work down in Las Vegas. I worked for Steve Wynn. I was able to bring that experience back to the Tribe and help establish the casinos as we have them today.
“One of the most important things for people to understand is the many sacrifices my mom and my dad had sacrificed their entire life to make sure all of five of us kids were able to get educated and bring home our education to the Tribe. As a matter of fact, dad was pretty specific about it. Before he died, he goes, ‘I didn’t waste my time grooming you all to do these things to have you take your skills and go somewhere else.’ So, as you’ll see, most of us are working at the Tribe or have worked at the Tribe.
“Individually, our families had many, many sacrifices. When you are working at the Tribe, you have to put in so much effort that you don’t always get to spend the quality time that you want to with your family. Myself, when we were building the casino, my wife Michaela was home with the kids making sure that all of their needs were taken care of. Often, they would have to go on vacations by themselves because I was busy on projects that I couldn’t leave. That was a major sacrifice.
“I was lucky enough with my first marriage to have a daughter, Teresa, and a son, Chad. They grew up and they had an opportunity to go to college. They came back here with their skills and they were able to take over a lot of the things that I was responsible for over time. That relieved me of some of the pressures that were on me.
“When we first grew up, there were people like Bill Sterud and I that the councils really leaned on because we were young, we were educated and we had the opportunities to express our skills here.
“There was a lot dumped on us, a real lot, because there weren’t many people here as now you see we have thousands of people that work for the Tribe. In the beginning, it was hundreds. Actually, in the very beginning, it was under 100. Whoever was here had to do everything.
“We are just blessed we had an opportunity to grow. For me, it was really living a dream. I had always dreamed that one day we would take care of our people, and we have. When gaming came around, we were able to take everybody off of the welfare rolls in the state.
“It was fun when I went to the bank when we first started getting money to see the Tribal Members there with smiles on their face because, finally, they had a steady income coming in. Back in the old days, the Tribal Members were often when they were even more qualified than the non-Indians they weren’t able to get the positions. My dream was that everybody had an income, everybody had an opportunity to go buy new cars, buy washers, buy dryers, buy houses and just live the kind of life that they should.
“This was our land. I’m happy now that we’re able to go back and start purchasing and bringing it back into Tribal ownership and be recognized by everybody. We are a major force in the community nowadays. When the Tribe barks, everybody jumps. They know the power that the Tribe had. Everybody is becoming more and more educated, and everybody is keeping their skills here which makes me really happy. Like you will see on the end, Declan (Spencer) here, he is young, he went to college and he is bringing his skills back. That is Illa’s grandson. We’re blessed. All Tribal Members are blessed, and I think everybody recognizes the fact that who in this world other than the Weyerhaeusers and Microsoft families have the opportunities that we have here? It is nice that we have the chance to be part of it.
“Most people don’t recognize it because you think in Tacoma, Washington, you go to Las Vegas and you see all those big casinos and stuff and you go, ‘Wow, they make a lot of money.’ We make way more money than all of the casinos in Las Vegas. We have been in the top tier. In other words, in the top four or five casinos in the country for 25 years. That makes me real proud. … The way I measure it is, how much money goes to the bank? Sure, those casinos in Vegas do more volume. In other words, they have more money coming through the door, but they don’t have more money going to the bank and staying there. Our profits are much higher than other operations.
“I just can’t say enough about what it takes. We were blessed mentioning mom and dad and all the sacrifices they made and all the support. A lot of what I knew, I learned from my dad. I taught my kids and we all worked. Illa, being the oldest in the family, has done a great job of what mom and dad started, which was keeping the family tightly knit. Without all of the family members, I’m talking from babies to adults, we’re all there for each other. That’s why I mentioned my step kids never had seen that before. They had never been part of a Tribal family. They didn’t see how when we would travel, like go to Disneyland or something, that maybe 50 or 60 of us would go. And then for dinners, Illa would cook for 60 of us or something. We were really, really blessed.
“I was lucky that I guess I am saying as the new people into the family, I mean, they are not really new because we were married for 25 years, for them coming into our culture, for them to experience and see that is how I measure things. How does everybody perceive, when they look from the outside, the way we are? I have so many non-Indian friends. When I invite them to the functions over at the house or I invite them to canoe journeys or something, they go, ‘This is real, it’s here in the community.’ There is no part in their community that do the kind of activities we do. All of you young kids are carrying on that trait and making those opportunities available for the public to see, so they see that this is the way life is really supposed to be. Native people are still true, they are still loyal to each other. We take care of each other. That is the most important thing that people see as we’ve become richer as a Tribe. The councils have done a great job of making sure everybody is taken care of. That was my dream, too. All of our dreams. Everybody in the Tribe is thankful for what we have.
“I got my older sister here who has helped me through life. A lot of people never knew I struggled a lot health-wise in my 20s. I damaged my back. I struggled with a bad back for 55 or 60 years. … Twelve years ago, or something, I came down with cancer. I never told people in the community that I was sick. I was very sick. I had multiple myeloma, which is a deadly disease. There is no cure for it. I learned from my Aunt Faye and my dad because they both died from cancer that you’ve got to fight. You’ve got to keep on fighting. I was able, with the support of everybody in the family, to fight my way through it. Seven of those 10 or 12 years was horrible. I couldn’t breathe. It affected my breathing, but when you have your family and all the love you find a way. Then, dealing with two back surgeries and stuff, my sister Illa, I stayed with her so she would make sure I ate every day, all my meals. I stayed there and she took care of me.
“Life is better when you know you have somewhere to lean. I have had my family, I had a wife that was really supportive to make sure that I was doing what I needed to do, too. Those are the blessings. The biggest blessing is when the kids grow up and everybody goes to college. Everybody remembers where home is, and they make their way back and offer their skills to the Tribe.”
Illa Wright
“My parents were Frank Wright and Jane Wright. We lived in a little house. We had a small house (under 700 square-feet). … Eventually they found a house up past Saint Joseph’s. … We’ve been there ever since. It was our grandpa who had the trust land. We would go take him his dinner every day when we were little. It was nice.
How many of you were in the house?
Frank Wright
“Seven. The first house was a two-bedroom home, and then what Illa was mentioning is when they were building Saint Joseph’s Hospital. There were a bunch of houses that were owned by doctors, big houses. Believe it or not, it was a big house when we built it. We all ended up with a bedroom.”
Illa Wright
“We still have it.”
Frank Wright
“As we got older, one of the things that was the real blessing is we always had a roof over our head and we always had something to eat. That’s all that mattered in life. … She (Illa) was the head cook our whole life.”
Where did you go to college?
Illa Wright
“UW (University of Washington).
“At the beginning, I worked … somewhere back by where the road is. I cooked down there. The kindergarten kids were there, and the first grade and the second grade. Eventually, we got Chief Leschi, and I worked there, too. … After that, the last 23 years now I was at the casino. I was there to do different things.”
Is there anything else you would like to say?
Illa Wright
“Our family when we have family dinners, there is so many of us. It is a good thing we have a big home and a big field area.”
Frank Wright
“The amazing thing is, my dad always had a dream of how he wanted the house to be. With so many kids and grandkids, he never had the amount of money that he wished he could’ve had to finish his dream on the house.
“Three or four years before mom died, we had the house remodeled, and I’m going to say we all did because we all played a part in it. My dad always dreamed there would be one big room down in the basement where there would be long tables and everybody would have a place where they could have all their drawing things because my dad and my grandma had a lot of artistic talents.
“He wanted all of that stuff down there, and by then, the game kits were coming out, the video games. Dad said, ‘Well, we need a big TV with video games.’ So, Illa and I worked really, really hard on making sure we put that room together like he wanted it. He wanted the stairwell in a different place so we could better utilize the space upstairs. He wanted the living room tied in with the dining room with no walls so we could have gigantic tables.
“We were able to accommodate 40 or 50 people at the long table, and then there was another 30 spots or something downstairs like dad said. Let the kids come in the door and go downstairs, and I used to tease dad, I said the kids are always going to want to be right in the middle of everything we are doing. They’ll never use it. But when we built it like that, that was the first place the kids would run. The kids would run down to their space down in the basement. We were blessed. That was another one of his dreams that we got to live out. It was pretty amazing.
“Our parents just made sure we were OK because when we were growing up, like all of the research for the Land Settlement, there were just a handful of us that did it. You had my dad, Si (Silas) Cross, Judy Wright, Bill Sterud and I. That was the group. We did all the research. We went down to museums everywhere, we went to back to D.C. to the Smithsonian Institute where they store documents and you would spend weeks and weeks, and it ended up being years, with dusty, old books that you would be looking for information.
“My whole life was working with my dad on issues. From a young person all the way up into being an adult. So, when he passed, mom knew that there would be a big hole in my heart. I talked to him every day even when I would make my trips, like when I went to Japan, I would still call my dad every day. There was a big hole and she filled it. Mom knew how important that would be.”
Illa Wright
“One thing is they used to take us on trips and we would be going here and there to see our other family that live in Tulalip and Yakima, they used to be so good. They were wonderful parents.”
Frank Wright
“The Indian Mission here at the church right over here is an important factor in all of our lives. One way or another I think every Tribal Member made their way through that church because every Christmas that was probably the only Christmas present people got. On Thanksgiving, there was Thanksgiving dinners. Every Sunday there was a potluck. The mission played a real big role in our lives. My dad and my grandma made sure we really toed the line on church. We ended up having to go two or three days. Every week we had a church function. The Indian Mission played a big role in everybody’s life.”
