Chief Turn 100 in June: A Century of Knowledge, Love and Respect
From the Great Depression to the isolation of Covid Vernon “Chief Silent Drum” Lopez has lived through two World Wars, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Wampanoag fight for federal acknowledgement. Just weeks away from his 100th birthday the Mashpee Wampanoag Chief sat in his parlor reflecting on historic events of his life with remarkable clarity as birds attended the feeders in the garden outside his picture window. The secret to long life?
“Darned if I know,” he grinned. The humble answer is just his way.
He smoked a little, never was a drinker to excess, played, worked, and fought hard for the things he believes in. Married the love of his life and raised two children. It’s been a simple but fulfilling life, but he says there is no magic bullet for what he has achieved. He will tell you he’s just lucky.
To reach this milestone in relatively good health and contentment and have the ability to take care of your own needs in your own home is lucky. He has daily visits from his daughter Marlene who lives next door to the house he built on land carved out of a pine knoll on Meetinghouse Road in Mashpee 1972.
The chief is welcoming to guests who enter his parlor and find him seated on a short sofa draped with an Army themed fleece blanket. “I was in the Army,” he says, proudly talking about his time served with the 214th Military Police in WWII defending the European allies. The barely drafted 21-year-old was delivered to Omaha Beach in the fifth wave of soldiers to reclaim Normandy in the name of France from the Third Reich. Grenades exploding and bullets blazing overhead he stepped over bodies of men who sacrificed their lives in the effort.
“I wondered why I wasn’t one of them,” he said.
The creator clearly had other plans for the chief born in his family homestead on Lovells Lane in Mashpee June 16, 1922. As an infant he earned the nickname “Bunny” from an aunt who recognized the sweet way he twitched his little nose like a rabbit. It’s a name that has stuck with him his entire life. While those that know him well rarely call him Vernon, Bunny is interchangeable with “Silent Drum,” a traditional name he earned in the drum circle where he was caught off beat so many times the other men asked him to hold his drum beater still. The chief laughs telling the story as he admittedly couldn’t keep beat with the others but still enjoyed being in their company so he sat silent at the drum.
Lopez lived through the Depression but hardly realized it. As a boy he walked over Collins Lot to attend the Samuel G. Davis School that now serves as Mashpee Town Hall. It was a good life for children who played freely and swam in the pond when they weren’t helping their families who farmed and fished and hunted to sustain themselves.
He took on odd jobs to help the family including washing dishes at Amelia’s, a restaurant on Main Street, and helping Annie Willard Pocknett with mail delivery.
“She had a Model A Ford but couldn’t crank it so I would give the old girl a whirl to get the motor started.”
By the age of 14 he had saved $7.90 to purchase a 410 shot gun that he learned to hunt with and still has sitting cleaned and ready for hunting in his closet.
“It was a pretty close-knit community. We formed parties and went hunting. There was all kinds of fish and shellfish, we had plenty of food around, you just had to go gather it,” The chief said in an interview recorded in August of 2012. “The big game, we would cut it up and divide it. We did a lot of duck hunting, trapping. There were no stores around, but we lived fairly well. It was a hard life, but a good life.”
Life in Mashpee was unremarkable in most ways except for one event in the spring of 1937 that was unforgettable. Lopez remembers being at the Mashpee Pond with his mother and brother Wilfred to when a large airship the size of two football fields floated in the sky over them. It was the hydrogen powered passenger blimp, Hindenberg. The sight of it was other worldly to them, “I couldn’t take my eyes off it.”
A few hours later the Hindenburg crashed while attempting to dock at an airfield in New Jersey killing 36 people and became the subject of dramatic newsreel coverage.
He remembers the annual powwows back in the day had less singing and dancing than the way they are celebrated today, and more events like picnics and baseball and a foot race from Forestdale to Mashpee.
“The old timers got all of us kids together with their bows and arrows and would shoot them into the air and would have the kids run after the arrows,” the children would race to get them Lopez remembered, “If you found one you got to keep it.”
As a young man fresh out of the Army Lopez got himself a car and a girl. Freddie Pocknett was sweet on a girl who lived off Cape in Stoughton and had been hitch hiking to see her. Lopez offered his cousin a ride and luck would have it, Freddie’s girl Anna had a sister Mary.
“She was a nice looking gal, friendly,” he said, “family were good people.”
It was love at first sight for Lopez who began a courtship with Mary taking her on dinner dates and to movies. In September of 1947 they were married and made their home in Brockton. Lopez got a job at the Avon Cut and Die company making steel die cuts for shoes. Soon after they married Marlene was born and two years later a son Ralph. In 1950 the couple bought a fixer-upper home in Holbrook where they raised the family until moving to Mashpee.
After moving to the Cape Lopez found work locally at the State Fish Hatchery in Sandwich where he worked for 10 years until retiring at the age of 70.
In Mashpee Lopez remained active farming a small patch of land behind his home, hunting and fishing and mentoring young tribal members. After the passing of Chief Vernon “Sly Fox” Pocknett in 1998 he was asked to be among those to be considered to lead the tribe. In a traditional process held at the tribe’s sacred grounds on 55 acres Lopez was overwhelmingly affirmed by the many tribal members who stood behind him. “I was surprised by it to be quite honest,” Lopez said, not having realized all that he had done quietly and behind the scenes did not go unnoticed.
He served on the board of the first Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Council established in 1972 and was a member when the Council petitioned for federal acknowledgement in 1974 and filed a claim for the return of ancestral land in Mashpee in 1976. “Things moved pretty slow” Lopez said of the tribal efforts after the land claim was denied in court and federal acknowledgement became mired in bureaucracy and a legal litmus test that defied reasonable expectations. None the less the tribe stuck it out and more than 30 years later in 2007 the Secretary of the Interior announced the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe was recognized by the Federal Government. It shouldn’t have taken so long said Lopez, and a lot of folks who fought for it died waiting including his son Ralph who died of cancer in 1992 and his wife Mary who died in 2006.
“They smiled on us that day,” he said recalling the grand celebration attended by hundreds of tribal members, town and state officials and the governor, Deval Patrick.
Since then a lot has changed for the tribe he admits. Land has been taken into trust, a new government building has been constructed, the tribe has a health clinic, a school, and tribal housing. “We have come a long way.”
And so has Lopez as he approaches a full century of life, he has few regrets but he knows it is time to step aside and make way for a more youthful leader. “I’m getting tired,” he admitted. He hopes the process will be much the same as when he was raised as chief in a traditional way that is open to all tribal families and considers nominations in a good way.
Paula Peters
