Navajo Solar Lights installation trip

~ eClub Rotarian Jackie O.

The Navajo Solar Light Project has been an on-going partnership between the eClub of the State of Jefferson and the Rotary Club of Durango Daybreak.

Gathering at Chinle Planning Hope to get instructions to load up where we’re going and who we’re working with.

The Navajo Nation is comprised of about 27,000 square miles of land in NE Arizona, Southern Utah, and NW New Mexico and is home to about 180,000 members of the Navajo Tribal Council. Approximately 16,000 people currently live "off the grid" with no access to electricity, sewer or water supplies. Since gasoline for their generators is frequently too expensive for these remote, mostly elderly tribal members, the illuminated portion of their day largely ends with the setting sun. A solar lighting kit that utilizes a roof-mounted solar array to provide charging power to three lithium-iodide battery packs that, in turn, provides power to an LED array. The included wiring systems allow us to place the three lights in areas designated by the clients, while a fourth line provides power for charging cell phones.

The primary beneficiaries of the project are Navajo elders (over 60 years), and those for whom light is needed to maintain indigenous crafts that perpetuate the Navajo culture. Additionally, an installation contributes to the success of a young student with their studies, children who can now do their homework each evening.

eClub Rotarians Jean and Jackie assisted with the May 2024 installation. We we’re only able to do one installation because the other locations that were given us either did not have the owner at home, wasn’t answering their phone, and the last case scenario was that the person that requested the solar was not actually needing it. 

(Photo Left-Robin handing Dan the panel)

A solar light installation can be difficult because of the different types of homes ranging from Hogan’s to shacks. At the installation Jean and Jackie assisted in, Dan tried to drill the hole through both walls of Leonard‘s house, but was unsuccessful, his drill bit was too short. Suddenly, Leonard went outside and retrieved to 2/12 inch long drill bits, he said he had never used him before. Dan was then successful in getting through both inside and outside walls. His wife Robin was outside trying to feed the solar panel wires into the house, but there was too much insulation and even with two different wires, she was unable to get the wires through.

Again, Leonard went out and brought back in a pair of surgical forceps, viola, mission completed. He had no idea what they were, or what they were used for but he found a new use for them outside of the medical field.

The groups were split up with folks only doing one day of installs to avoid too many on a team going to people's homes. A tour was available so that folks who want to do the tour, could do the tour one day and installs on the other!  (Photo Below - Music! Jean & Leonard then find a good country music radio station. Look at the smiles on their faces!) 

(Photo Below - Stringing the light lines. With Leonard's help, the crew places the light lines where he wanted them to be hung.)                                    (Photo Right - Solar panel installed.)

Installations complete! From left to right, Jean Hamilton, Jackie Oakley, Robin Clark, Dan Clark, Leonard Chee, and Nancy Dosdall.
Nancy is an engineer who helped Joe Willams start this program eleven years ago. She rocks!

The Origins of Flag Day

 This was the resolution adopted by the Continental Congress on June 14, 1777. The resolution was made following the report of a special committee which had been assigned to suggest the flag’s design.

 That the flag of the United States shall be of thirteen stripes of alternate red and white, with a union of thirteen stars of white in a blue field, representing the new constellation

A flag of this design was first carried into battle on September 11, 1777, in the Battle of the Brandywine. The American flag was first saluted by foreign naval vessels on February 14, 1778, when the Ranger, bearing the Stars and Stripes and under the command of Captain Paul Jones, arrived in a French port. The flag first flew over a foreign territory in early 1778 at Nassau, Bahama Islands, where Americans captured a British fort.

Observance of the adoption of the flag was not soon in coming, however. Although there are many claims to the first official observance of Flag Day, all but one took place more than an entire century after the flag’s adoption in 1777.

The first claim was from a Hartford, Conn., celebration during the first summer of 1861. In the late 1800s, schools all over the United States held Flag Day programs to contribute to the Americanization of immigrant children, and the observance caught on with individual communities.

The most recognized claim, however, comes from New York. On June 14, 1889, Professor George Bolch, principal of a free kindergarten for the poor of New York City, had his school hold patriotic ceremonies to observe the anniversary of the Flag Day resolution. This initiative attracted attention from the State Department of Education, which arranged to have the day observed in all public schools thereafter.

Soon the state legislature passed a law making it the responsibility of the state superintendent of public schools to ensure that schools hold observances for Lincoln’s Birthday, Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, and Flag Day. In 1897, the governor of New York ordered the displaying of the flag over all public buildings in the state, an observance considered by some to be the first official recognition of the anniversary of the adoption of the flag outside of schools.

Another claim comes from Philadelphia. In 1893, the Society of Colonial Dames succeeded in getting a resolution passed to have the flag displayed on all of the city’s public buildings. Elizabeth Duane Gillespie, a direct descendant of Benjamin Franklin and the president of the Colonial Dames of Pennsylvania, that same year tried to get the city to call June 14 Flag Day. Resolutions by women were not granted much notice, however, and it was not until May 7, 1937, that Pennsylvania became the first state to establish the June 14 Flag Day as a legal holiday. Flag Day is a nationwide observance today, but Pennsylvania is the only state that recognizes it as a legal holiday.

Bernard J. Cigrand, a school teacher in Waubeka, Wisconsin, reportedly spent years trying to get Congress to declare June 14 as a national holiday. Although his attempts failed, the day was widely observed. “Father of Flag Day” honors have been given to William T. Kerr, who was credited with founding the American Flag Day Association in 1888 while still a schoolboy in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

(Above- By Unknown author - This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3g06262.)

Both President Wilson, in 1916, and President Coolidge, in 1927, issued proclamations asking for June 14 to be observed as the National Flag Day. But it wasn’t until August 3, 1949, that Congress approved the national observance, and President Harry Truman signed it into law.