She gives to the Navajo elders — and they give to her

SALT LAKE CITY — There is a coffee cup in Linda Myers' office with the saying ALWAYS FOLLOW YOUR HEART.

This is a story about doing that.

She was 35 years old in 1986, working in the art shop she leased on Park City Main Street, when a Navajo woman came in the door and asked if she could place a flyer in the window.

To this point in her life, Linda, a Utahn born and bred in Salt Lake City, had never spoken a single word in conversation with a Native American.

The flyer was advertising a fundraising event coming up at Prospector Square, where the young woman, Rose Hullinger, would be selling her hand-woven rugs and showing a documentary about the plight of displaced Navajo people called "Broken Rainbow."

Not only did Linda post Rose's flyer, but she also went to the event.

After that, she says, "everything changed in my life."

That's putting it mildly.

In the 40 years since, giving aid, comfort and compassion to aging Navajo elders has been the centerpiece of Linda Myers' life. She has made more trips to the Navajo Nation reservation — and slept under more roofs there — than she can count. She has learned the language (it's how she met her husband, Navajo native Rodger Williams). She leases a large warehouse in South Salt Lake just to store all the goods that regularly make their way to the rez.

Last year her Adopt-a-Native-Elder program, with its hundreds of volunteers and 13 yearly food runs, delivered 1.1 million pounds of flour, cornflakes, Spam, corned beef, beans, rice, potatoes, water, clothing, toilet paper, medical supplies, food cards and firewood to some of the most remote addresses in America.

And all because back in 1986, Linda was one of the four people who showed up to Rose's show.

At first, she assisted Rose in soliciting aid for the Navajo. She wrote an article in the Park Record and hung pictures of the Navajo in her shop on Main Street. She sold some of her art pieces — Linda's a weaver — at arts festivals and donated the funds to Rose's food runs.

Then she went to what she calls "the land" and her involvement found a new level.

She sat with the Navajo in their native habitat, observing them as they lived their traditional ways. Her heart went out especially to the older inhabitants of the mesas and burrows — the elders. Many didn't have electricity or running water, some were blind, more than a handful were over 100 years old (a result, Linda opines, of "not eating gas station food" all their lives).

Linda remembers how wary the elders were. They looked at "this young white girl who doesn't understand what they're saying" — like an apparition.

"On that first trip, the lady that took me out, she said to the elders, 'This young lady, she's going to help you,' and these old elders said, 'She's just a kid, how's she gonna help?'"

One woman spat at her and said something in Navajo.

The woman's daughter turned to Linda.

"She wants to know how long will you keep coming?"

Linda remembers being stumped for a reply. She honestly wasn't sure how long this would last. But the elder had her answer just a few months later when Linda returned, and then kept returning. They became fast friends until the woman died and Adopt-A-Native-Elder helped with funeral expenses.

In 2000, Family Circle magazine heard about what Linda was doing and included her in an article about "Women Who Make a Difference."

Suddenly, thousands of letters were pouring in with small donations of $5 or $10. Linda and her fellow volunteers tore off the return addresses and wrote a thank-you note to each one. The Adopt-a-Native-Elder program now had supporters across the nation and the world. Every year, the list grew as more people signed on to "adopt" their own Elder (committing to provide a certain amount of goods and services for the year) and volunteered to go on the food runs.

In 2026, as Adopt-A-Native-Elder (anelder.org) celebrates its 40th year, there are 854 elders in the program, and a waiting list to adopt even more — a far cry from the 15 elders Linda adopted when she first started.

"I'm very blessed that I get to do this with my life," says Linda, who, along with everything else, is busy preparing for the program's 40th birthday party coming up this summer. At 75, she's reached the minimum age to qualify for "elder" status in her program. She could start giving herself benefits.

But as she'll be the first to tell you, her benefits started 40 years ago when she was 35 and a young Navajo woman walked into her art shop on Park City Main Street and asked to place a flier in the window. She's been collecting them ever since.

"It was just what was to happen," she says. "There is a calm that comes to me when I leave the city and head to the reservation. The large red rocks and mesas and dusty red roads are waiting for me. The silence, the beauty, and the stillness — and the Elders — are the balance in my life."

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