More than 60 years ago, an American Indian boy climbed a mountain and peered across the Sonoran Desert. He saw the shimmering reflection of the Gulf of California and wondered about the world beyond. Then he returned to picking cotton in the fields of southern Arizona, where the summer sun pounded like a hammer on his back.
The boy turned 7, and his grandmother told him to board a school bus. You will be the first in our family to get an education. Yes, Grandma. That rickety bus bounced and jounced along dirt roads and pulled into an Arizona elementary school.