Date: June 20, 2009
Time: 11 am- 3 pm
Where: Chavez Creek Cabin in the Ticonderoga.
Wear comfortable outdoor clothing and shoes.
Lunch and Beverages and Music will be provided.
Please bring your BEST MUNDY STORY!
Directions and Accomodation Information to Follow.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Memories of Mr. Mundy
I first met Mr. Mundy in 1980 or 1981, introductions performed by Mr. Dan Rivera. I had met and had become acquainted with Mr. Rivera several years earlier and always made it a point to visit his establishment when in the area.
On this particular cold late Fall day, I had just finished field dressing and packing out a nice bull elk I had taken on the Sargent after a 3-day hunt. I was dirty, well-grizzled, and had dried blood up to the elbows of the insulated overalls I wore over the usual Wranglers, shirt, longjohns, boots, etc. The only incongruous item was the relatively pristine black and white ball cap with the New Mexico State Police logo over the bill that I had found in the ditch and inexplicably decided to plant on my head.
Let me explain that I was (and still am) the sort of guy that can fill up a door. At the time, I stood 6’5’, weighed about 240 lbs. and was 28-29 years old.
The bar was pretty full when I scrunched my way through the door and greeted Mr. Rivera. While I was placing my package order and fishing through my overalls for my wallet, everybody but Mr. Mundy and the proprietor just sort of stood up and angled out the door.
After the introductions, Mr. Mundy invited me to sit down and have a drink. Mr. Rivera poured and poured and I left 3 hours later, well-lubricated, having been regaled by all sorts of stories and being subjected to Mr. Rivera’s box of photographs of folks meeting one sort of violent demise or another. I will never forget that time and consider myself very privileged to have witnessed the bond between Mr. Mundy and Mr. Rivera.
It was only when I got up to leave that Mr. Mundy suggested that I reconsider my choice of headgear around those parts. I saw Mr. Rivera nodding in silent agreement, but didn’t fully realize what I had done until much later.
Over the next decades, whenever I encountered Mr. Mundy on my increasingly infrequent visits to Chama, he always made a point to call me by my name and shake my hand. I doubt it was because I was memorable. I am pretty well convinced that it was because I was introduced by his good friend Mr. Rivera and was the dumbass who ooched into Mr. Rivera’s establishment wearing a found cop hat.
Mr. Mundy was a profoundly good man and one of the last of his breed. Men like him were rare in his time and probably don’t exist today. Certainly, there are no more like him being born and bred.
--- Darrell Nance
On this particular cold late Fall day, I had just finished field dressing and packing out a nice bull elk I had taken on the Sargent after a 3-day hunt. I was dirty, well-grizzled, and had dried blood up to the elbows of the insulated overalls I wore over the usual Wranglers, shirt, longjohns, boots, etc. The only incongruous item was the relatively pristine black and white ball cap with the New Mexico State Police logo over the bill that I had found in the ditch and inexplicably decided to plant on my head.
Let me explain that I was (and still am) the sort of guy that can fill up a door. At the time, I stood 6’5’, weighed about 240 lbs. and was 28-29 years old.
The bar was pretty full when I scrunched my way through the door and greeted Mr. Rivera. While I was placing my package order and fishing through my overalls for my wallet, everybody but Mr. Mundy and the proprietor just sort of stood up and angled out the door.
After the introductions, Mr. Mundy invited me to sit down and have a drink. Mr. Rivera poured and poured and I left 3 hours later, well-lubricated, having been regaled by all sorts of stories and being subjected to Mr. Rivera’s box of photographs of folks meeting one sort of violent demise or another. I will never forget that time and consider myself very privileged to have witnessed the bond between Mr. Mundy and Mr. Rivera.
It was only when I got up to leave that Mr. Mundy suggested that I reconsider my choice of headgear around those parts. I saw Mr. Rivera nodding in silent agreement, but didn’t fully realize what I had done until much later.
Over the next decades, whenever I encountered Mr. Mundy on my increasingly infrequent visits to Chama, he always made a point to call me by my name and shake my hand. I doubt it was because I was memorable. I am pretty well convinced that it was because I was introduced by his good friend Mr. Rivera and was the dumbass who ooched into Mr. Rivera’s establishment wearing a found cop hat.
Mr. Mundy was a profoundly good man and one of the last of his breed. Men like him were rare in his time and probably don’t exist today. Certainly, there are no more like him being born and bred.
--- Darrell Nance
The loss of a legend
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William H. "Billy" Mundy
William H. Mundy, Jr., 91, died peacefully at the Arbors of Del Rey, a Vista Living Community, in Las Cruces, New Mexico, on April 6, 2009.
"Billy" Mundy was born in Dona Ana, NM on October 3, 1917 to William H. Mundy and Elizabeth Mundy. Bill attended New Mexico Military Institute in 1937-38 where he was an alternate on the polo team and New Mexico State University. In 1938 -1939 he guided tourists on mules in the Grand Canyon for the Fred Harvey Company. Bill also worked for the infamous Las Cruces Rancher, Emmitt Isaacks, where he met his future bride, Ethel Isaacks. Bill and Ethel were married in Nutt, NM in 1941.
Bill and Ethel moved to Chama, New Mexico in 1949 to settle his dream. Bill and Ethel endured the violence shown against them in the early days of their ranch settlement and continued to persevere through six decades of Rio Arriba County unrest. Bill’s enemies were fierce and his friends the "best a man could have." Bill was called "Mano de Águila" (Eagle Hand) a name bestowed to him when he lost his pinkie and part of the use of his hand in a hunting accident. Bill and Ethel survived a near-fatal car crash on our country’s Bi-Centennial in 1976. He was an active member of the Los Rancheros Vistadores- Bustardos Camp and rode with Ronald Reagan in 1989. The Mundy Ranch is also home to the "Mundy Buck" (pictured) the #1 World Record Mule Deer in the Burkett Scoring System and the widest Buck entered in Boone & Crocket.
Bill Mundy was a hard worker, a hard hitter, a horseman, a hunter, a mountain man, a fence and road builder, a rodeo clown, a rancher, a cowboy, a cowman, a tier of knots, a nail ‘straightener’ and baling wire fanatic, a rock-hound, a land baron, a poet and an artist, a nature conservationist, a comedian, an organizer, a collector of everything, a dad, grandpa and great-grandpa, an uncle, a father-in-law and a part time husband, a full time ladies man and most of all he had a great line of B.S. He never lacked for a first-rate story!
Bill is predeceased by his wife, Ethel and his sister, Florence (Betina). He is survived by his two sons, Emitt W. Mundy and James W. Mundy, grandsons, Print, Cache, Robert and Mark Mundy, and four great-grandchildren, Tyler, Annalee, Aria and Trew Mundy, and his nephew’s, Joe Morrow and William (Bill) Morrow.
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