The Arizona giant we should have thanked earlier

Morning. In today’s opinions newsletter : Honoring our elders, the Coyotes exit aftermath and Phoenix’s lack of Michelin-starred restaurants.

I never met Leona Carlyle-Kakar, the longtime leader of the Ak-Chin Indian Community.

But a heartfelt letter to the editor about her contributions sparked my curiosity.

Carlyle-Kakar died on April 14 at 88. According to her obituary, she served on the tribal council for 40 years, including as the tribe’s first female leader.

Among her many accomplishments, Carlyle-Kakar was a fierce advocate for tribal water rights who vastly grew the Ak-Chin’s irrigated acreage. She oversaw the tribe’s farming operations for a half-century, until she retired at 80.

What a dynamo, right?

Intrigued, I found her in the way-back machine, in a 1980 Arizona Republic article about the tribe’s struggles to irrigate largely on groundwater (remember: this was five years before Central Arizona Project water reached Phoenix, and yes, I’m aware that 40-plus years later we’re still talking about the same issues).

That’s where the grainy photo above comes from, and I can just see it in the way she’s sitting: The determination, the fight, the passion to make her community better.

There are so many Arizona leaders like Carlyle-Kakar, the giants on whose shoulders we now stand.

It’s my bad for not saying thank-you to her when I could.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: The Arizona giant we should have thanked earlier