Some people go through life collecting years, while others collect stories. Beatrice Coffey-Thayer, who left us at 99, had the extraordinary misfortune of possessing both in such abundance that the rest of us could hardly keep up.

She carried nearly a century with her, but she never seemed burdened by it. She wore it more like a well-loved coat, full of pockets, and every pocket contained another story.

Beatrice was one of my favorite Paiute elders. She had the authority of the wise: when she began to speak, sensible people stopped their foolishness and listened.

She was born in 1927, a descendant of the Paddy Cap Band and Snake Band of Northern Malheur Paiutes, and came to the Reno Colony with her family during the Great Depression. They knew poverty intimately, including hunger, a lack of electricity and transportation, and even living in a tent.

Then came Stewart Indian School, where Beatrice encountered the sort of discrimination that Native children were too often expected to endure.
She taught herself to read, became a lifelong learner, and developed an appetite for knowledge that would prove considerably more useful than anything handed down by people who thought they knew better.

Then there was the war.

At 17, Beatrice decided that rolling bandages for wounded soldiers was admirable but insufficient. She wanted to serve in uniform.

So she joined the Women’s Army Corps after claiming to be older than she was. This was, perhaps, her first official demonstration that when the government placed a rule between Beatrice and her objective, the rule was likely to lose.

When the people assigned to get her to basic training failed to appear, Beatrice did not sit around waiting for the machinery of bureaucracy to discover its missing cog. She made her own way to Fort Des Moines, Iowa. Thus began a military career with the Women’s Army Corps, U.S. Air Force, Army Reserve, and Nevada Army National Guard.

She became a medic, handled troop records, served as a chaplain assistant, and eventually worked with sensitive military correspondence. She practiced typing whenever she could find a typewriter, and that persistence eventually helped her obtain top-secret clearance.

Her service took her to Germany from 1952 to 1956, where she met Walt Thayer. They married twice in one hour—first in a civil ceremony and then at the base chapel. One wedding was apparently insufficient when two governments, a husband, and Beatrice Coffey were involved.

After leaving active duty in 1958, she raised her sons, worked, and cared for her family. But retirement from one uniform apparently did not mean retirement from service.

At about 48, she returned to military life, serving another 13 years in the Army Reserve and Nevada Army National Guard. She became a recruiter, played clarinet and French horn in the Guard band, and continued training into her 50s.

She eventually served her people with the same determination. She worked with the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, participated in cultural and enrollment efforts, attended ceremonies and powwows, and marched with Native American color guards. She became a Woman Warrior whose greatest weapons were not anger or force, but endurance, knowledge, and service.

In her later years, she became “Queen Bea,” a title nobody who knew her would dispute. She traveled on Native American Honor Flights, visited Pearl Harbor, gave the invocation at the USS Arizona, and saw her story preserved by the National WWII Museum.

History will remember the uniforms, medals, airplanes, and remarkable accomplishments. Those of us who knew her will remember something much more important: her voice, her humor, and her determination.

Pesa mi’a, Queen Bea.