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esilience 193The Frank family eventually moved to Johnson Point, a shortdistance from the Landing, the only place Billy has ever really consideredhome. Juggling high-pressure jobs with high-pressure familydemands, Billy and Crystal depended on good friends. Keefe recallsone instance when he dropped Crystal off at the airport. She closedthe car door and leaned in to Willie, a toddler of one. “OK, Willie.Now, Uncle Tom is going to take good care of you.”Willie took one look out the car window at his mother, toting herluggage down the long departure corridor, and one look back atKeefe sitting behind the steering wheel. “He screamed at the top ofhis lungs until I got to my house in Seattle,” Keefe vividly recalls. “Itold Willie afterward, ‘I never, ever experienced a kid who did notinhale! I thought you must have been breathing through your ears,because you screamed for forty minutes straight.’ I mean, my headwas ringing when it was over.”In a display of the communal lifestyle that Billy has lived, Normaoften watched Willie, and the two shared a bond. “Oh yeah, she justloved that guy, you know,” Billy says. “She loved kids beyond belief,”agrees Georgiana Kautz, Norma’s younger sister. “Not only did sheadopt, she took care of Willie.”In 1983, when Willie was a toddler, a gall bladder ailment sent hisnamesake and grandfather to the hospital. The elder, the last fullbloodedNisqually Indian alive, was 104 years old. Doctors were atfirst reluctant to operate. “He was in pain. After we had all talkedabout it, they finally decided to go ahead and operate,” said granddaughter,Alison Gottfriedson. “After the surgery, the doctors cameback and talked to us. They were astounded at his good health, andsaid he went through the operation very well.” Even so, the long lifebegan to take its toll. “While some of his family were at the hospital, Isuggested that they look at Gramps’ hands,” said Hank Adams. “Theywere young hands. They were not 104-year-old hands. They werehands that labored for Indian people all of his living days.”