The heart of the matter: A local hero retires
Best Friends Animal Sanctuary would not have gotten beyond the “You fellas wanna do what?” stage of evolution without the generosity and open-hearted support of a few local families with pioneer roots who went out of their way to help the founders through the hiccups and hardship that a bunch of city slickers predictably faced in coming to terms with 3,300 acres of essentially raw land in one of the most inaccessible regions of the country.
One of those spontaneously generous people is Nick Ramsay, who has been a part of the Best Friends story since before the founders broke ground in February 1984. And his entry into our saga said so much about the heart of this little town and the Muppet-like adventures of the founders.
In August of ’83, a contingent of soon-to-be founders of Best Friends rolled up in Kanab, Utah, in a 1982 GMC Suburban diesel — a workhorse hauler that had a well-earned reputation for eating its own transmission.
They were in town to have a look at a white elephant of a ranch property that had been known as a movie ranch and the starring backdrop for a series of Westerns from a bygone era going back to the 1930s, including classics like The Lone Ranger, Mackenna’s Gold, and The Outlaw Josey Wales.
Those of the team who were visiting for the first time were as gobsmacked as everyone else who first sets foot in Angel Canyon. But the job at hand was to identify potential building sites and the challenges to be faced in bringing in power, water, and phones across miles of high desert to service buildings for animals and people.
The day was baking hot at around 100 degrees with monsoon season humidity. They got separated and lost a few times and climbed up and down rocks like children, documenting the whole thing on 35 mm film. At one point, Faith Maloney succumbed to heatstroke and had to sit in the shade of a red sandstone boulder with cold water compresses, compliments of one of the many springs in the canyon. In the finest British tradition, it was “keep calm and carry on.” With Faith and a companion sidelined until the day began to cool, the others continued to explore.
God, I wish I had been there! It really was like that song, “Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.”
By the time it was safe for Faith to hike back to the closest approach the Suburban could make, it was close to 6 p.m. And it seemed like a good idea to use the last few hours of light to take the east-to-west drive through Zion National Park, a spectacular drive through a mile-long tunnel with windows opening out onto the canyon and a switchback road descending through towering cliffs.
This was before cellphones, and traffic was sparse in those days. About 2 miles from the park entrance, the transmission began to whine, then groan, then grind, and then seize. They were stranded. Nothing to panic about. They’d passed a pay phone a mile or so back, but a shredded transmission, they thought, could confine them to their various motel rooms for maybe weeks.
Francis Battista, who was the driver, walked back to the pay phone next to a souvenir shop and snack bar and called the number the shopkeeper gave him. It was for Nick Ramsay’s Shell station and towing service. In about 40 minutes, Nick pulled up in a wrecker with his infant baby daughter, Bobbie Sue, beside him on the front seat in one of those baby carrier/buckle-in car seats with the plastic swing arm for carrying. Nick invited Francis to ride in the wrecker to reduce the weight of towing a fully loaded Suburban.
They got back to Kanab, and Nick was super helpful and quite optimistic about having the transmission swapped out in a few days. But they were still without a way of getting around, and there were no car rentals in town. In fact, there wasn’t really much of anything in Kanab at the time beyond souvenir shops, cowboy gear, hardware, two breakfast joints, and a fish-out-of-water Italian restaurant owned by a former professional boxer from New Jersey.
When Francis returned to Nick’s Shell the next morning to get the story on fixing the Suburban, Nick, with no prompting, offered his wife Carol Lynn’s station wagon as a free loaner for the crew to be able to get around.
Think about that. Loaning the family station wagon to a group of total strangers — and pretty strange strangers they were — with nothing more than a handshake. That’s Nick, and that’s the heart of Kanab. It was a gesture of friendship that was the cornerstone of a 42-year relationship. We returned the favor with unquestioning loyalty to Nick’s Shell and eventually Ramsay’s repair shop. As Best Friends grew, so did Ramsay’s, and over the years, we pointed all our new staff to Nick’s.
When I arrived in Kanab in the mid-1990s, I joined the Nick fan club and have been a member ever since.
Well, last Saturday evening, I had the honor of being invited to Nick and Carol Lynn’s retirement party. After 50 years of serving the community and extending the same brand of genuine kindness to untold numbers of travelers in distress, Nick sold the business to another local family. It was a simple and loving celebration of shared memories and mutual appreciation.
I cried, Nick and Carol Lynn cried, Bobby Sue cried, Francis and Silva cried, the ex-mayor and various very tall, very large, good ole cowboys cried.
Now if this were a city council meeting, you probably couldn’t get the assembled company to agree that the sky is blue. But on Saturday night, we all agreed that some things are way more important than the color of the sky, and that’s why I love this town.
-Julie
