Sylvan Rogers Jack, who died Sept. 17 at age 89 at his home in Redmesa, spent all his life in the vast, dry Four Corners land, mostly working at trading posts where he spoke fluent Navajo with clients from the nearby Navajo reservation.
One of 10 children born in Mancos to Clara and William Jefferson Rogers, descendants of the Mormons who settled in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, he began working at his elder brother’s trading post in Round Rock, Ariz.
Few trading customers spoke English. So Jack taught himself to speak Diné, the Navajo dialect so famously difficult it formed the base of an unbreakable military code during World War II.
When Jack helped establish Navajo sessions at the Mormon temple in Monticello, Utah, his fluency astounded the congregants. Years later, one of them stopped Jack’s son, Darel, to repeat his surprise.
“He told me that the Navajo people still talk about how my dad sounded so much like a Navajo, they can’t believe a white man can talk like that,” Darel Jack said.
When Sylvan Jack fell for Opal Briggs, a young Colorado woman, news of their engagement infuriated one of her former beaus.
The day before the wedding, the ex-boyfriend showed up and mistook Jack’s nearly identical younger brother for the guy who stole his girl.
“He got hold of my dad’s brother, Nelson, thinking he was the groom, and beat the tar out of him,” Darel Jack said.
The newlyweds left for their honeymoon the following day, while Nelson Jack recuperated.
Sylvan Jack spent most of his adult life working at trading posts in Shiprock, Littlewater, Rock Point, Piñon and other Four Corners towns.
He tried other vocations – selling insurance, working construction – but always returned to bartering and bantering.
Jack, who always wore a sturdy turquoise-and-silver Navajo ring, formed lasting friendships with many of his Navajo and Hopi clients. The Navajo called him C’isc’ilee – Diné for “Curly,” after Jack’s corkscrew hair.
Over the years, Jack amassed a sizable collection of Navajo rugs, including a titanic weaving so big that he couldn’t pick it up unaided, much less unfurl it in his home or store.
It was only slightly dwarfed by the record 38-by-26-foot, 800-pound Navajo rug woven in 1976. Eventually, Jack traded his big rug for a big rig – a brand-new pickup truck.
Survivors include sons Ronald Jack of Fruitland, N.M., Robert Jack of House, N.M., Darel Jack of Redmesa and Tim Jack of Las Vegas; daughters Oleen Barks of Bakersfield, Calif., Pam Adams of Las Vegas, and Joan Clark and Nada McConnell, both of Farmington, N.M.; brothers Clarence Jack of Farmington and Alden Jack of Glenwood, N.M.; sisters Irene Black of Farmington and Edna Guillory of Kirtland, N.M.; 28 grandchildren, 47 great-grandchildren; and one great-great-grandchild.
His wife of 53 years and two grandchildren preceded him in death.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-820-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
