Illness Turns Cowboy’s Focus
To Drawing And Old Stories

By David Bowser

MOUNTAINAIRE, N.M. — When lesser men would have given up, Grem Lee decided to set a new goal for his life.

Lee's great grandfather, Olive Lee, came to New Mexico a century ago to build an empire. As with most strong-willed men, Oliver Lee made staunch friends and adamant enemies in a land governed by Colt and Winchester. Today, in this land where blood feuds are an art form, the mention of the name Oliver Lee still brings quick reactions of love or hate — with little in between.

Born Olive Lee IV, Grem earned his nickname from the mythical, impish gremlin.

"I was a mean little kid," Lee laughs.

Grem's grandfather's nickname was Hop.

"He was named after the Chinese cook that my great grandfather had," Lee says.

Grem's father is called Sato, a name hung on him by his brother, Bob Lee.

"My Uncle Bob couldn't say fatso when he was little," Lee explains. "That's how that came to be."

Growing up on the family ranches in Catron County around Reserve, Grem Lee was raised on horseback, working cattle and listening to the tales of cowboys and early settlers who remembered the days of New Mexico when the family first came to the land of enchantment, isolation and occasional violence.

The family holdings, initially settled by his great grandfather, were taken over in the 1950s by the United States government for missile testing around the White Sands Missile Range. Hop Lee and his brother moved their families to near Datil, south of Reserve, where Grem was born in 1958. Three years ago this summer, Grem's father bought the ranch near Mountainaire where the family runs Hereford and black baldy cattle on some 60,000 acres.

"I like this country over here," Lee says, "but when you're born and raised somewhere, like those mountains out there, it's hard to come to the desert."

Lee says now that he's gotten older, he realizes how lucky he was to be raised the way he was.

"I was on the ranch every summer," he says. "Between my uncle, my great uncle and my grandfather's place, there was about 300 sections of land. It was just non-stop cowboying all the time."

The government still plays a role in their lives. Part of the land, a strip between Lee's home at the end of the mail route south of Mountainaire and the Capitan and the White Mountains which loom on the eastern horizon, is leased by the military as part of the missile range. On days when missiles are launched to be shot down over White Sands, the Lees and other ranch families are evacuated. They pack up and spend the day in town.

On days when he's home, if he's not checking on cattle, windmills or the multitude of other mundane chores that are required of ranch life, Lee is at his drawing table illustrating stories he heard as a kid.

"I've got a big box of tapes," he says. "I'd always gone around tape recording those oldtimers out there. If I sifted through the whole box of tapes, I'd probably have about 60 stories that are unique. Most all of them have a humorous Western twist to them."

Grem Lee's goal is to produce a book similar to Charles Russell's Trails Ploughed Under, using the stories and illustrations based on the memories of friends and neighbors of his youth.

"Everybody's always talking about a coffee table book," Lee says, "but I refer to that one as a nightstand book. That's the kind of book I've always wanted do."

Lee says he's always drawn. Although his formal education in art is limited, he learned much from his Uncle Bob, a well known artist with whom Grem cowboyed as a youngster.

"He's a heckuv an artist," Lee says of his uncle. "He taught me quite a bit. When I really got serious about my art work, my Uncle Bob helped me. I spent quite a bit of time at his house, staying with him."

In the early 1980s, Lee began feeling bad. He shook it off at first, but his condition worsened. In 1986, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

The doctor put it as nicely as he could, Lee says, telling Grem he had a disease that was going to leave him somewhat crippled. It may leave him really crippled.

"That hit me like a ton of bricks, because I had been so active," Lee says.

He had been a state champion hurdler. He hunted with bow and arrow. He broke horses. Even after high school he had stayed active. He'd run four or five miles every day and stayed in good shape.

"I got these medical books and looked in there, and they tell you the worst," Lee says. "That was the worst thing I ever did. I got down in the dumps for about two months. I wondering what the heck was going to go on. I don't know why it hit me, but I just woke up one morning and said, ‘This is it. Get after it.’ After that, it hasn't bothered me since."

When Grem found out he had a health problem, he knew he was going to have to find something to do besides ranching. That's when he took his writing and artwork up seriously.

In his younger days, Lee's collection of stories and sketches were a hobby, a sideline he could attend to only after his chores. He always intended to do something with them, but there never seemed to be enough time.

Lee says he remembers driving home from the doctor's office after being told of his condition.

"I'll never forget that," Lee says. "I've always been a hunter. Driving home from the hospital, I remember looking at a mountain down there at the southwest end of San Augustine plains, called the O Bar O Mountain. I spent more time up there hunting elk. I remember looking at that mountain and thinking I'll never get up there again. Then I thought, 'You big pansy. You'd better straighten out and quit thinking that way.'"

Although he continued to build fence and work cattle, his health deteriorated.

It was in 1988 that he was laid out flat on his back, first in the hospital and then at home, with the worst of what had become an increasing number of spells. For six months he lay there. His left side was paralyzed.

"The first two weeks were pretty rough," he says.

Then he came to the conclusion that everything was going to be all right. He knew what he had to do. It was time to work on his book.

"I guess I should say in a way it was a blessing, because after being diagnosed and ending up where I couldn't do that romantic fence building and hay hauling, I decided I could write and draw pictures," he says.

Although Lee is still involved in the ranch, the physical deterioration of his body has precluded much physical labor. He has increasingly turned to his artwork to support his wife Debbie and daughter Tana, but he says he knows now that being laid flat on his back was a call to finish his book.

"I know good and well if I had not been forced into doing it, it'd have been one of those things you just never make the commitment to do," he says. "I ended up being able to."

As Lee turned to his dream and began drawing and writing down the stories, he worried about how to assemble them and where to find a publisher to print them. His life was about to take another turn.

"Myself and three cowboys were sitting at the Apache Creek store," Lee says, "and we were just waiting like a bunch of coyotes for some fresh gossip to come through the door, for something new to talk about. We were just plumb out of good stuff to talk about."

Somebody, however, brought up the subject of the best movie ever made. All three cowboys agreed it was The Rounders, based on the Max Evans novel.

"I'd never seen it," Lee says.

About two weeks later, Lee came over to Mountainaire from Reserve to pour the foundation for their new home, but it had snowed, so he went to his dad's house to wait out the weather. Looking over the bookshelf, he came across a book called Super Bull. It was filled with people he knew, friends and relatives across New Mexico.

Lee looked at the title page and saw that Max Evans had written it, and that he and lived in Albuquerque. Soon after that, Lee saw a review on one of Evans' other books.

"All this stuff was falling in front of me," Lee says, "so I thought, ‘I need to get a hold of this guy.’"

Lee got Evans’ mailing address and sent him a letter. Within a week, Evans called.

"He said, 'You're Lee, huh?'" Lee says. "I said, 'Yes, sir, I'm a Lee.' He said, 'Any kin to Bob Lee?' I said, 'Yes, sir, he's my uncle.'"

What followed was a cowboy greeting.

"Me and old Bob drank more whiskey than would fit in a dirt cave," Evans exclaimed.

Evans insisted Lee come up to Albuquerque.

"It's been wild ever since," Lee says.

Lee contacted Evans because he had those stories and knew what he wanted to do, but wasn't sure how to do it.

"We got together," Lee says, "and he said, ‘this is what we need to do.’"

But Evans warned him about writing.

"You realize you're going to be broke the rest of your life?" Evans asked him. "It's about like cowboying."

Not to be deterred, Lee attended a meeting of the Western Writers Association in Albuquerque so he could meet one of his idols, a western writer named Elmer Kelton.

"I was dying to meet Elmer Kelton," Lee says. "His writing is something else to me. He's a really classy writer."

Sitting at a table with Kelton, Evans and Luther Wilson with the University of Colorado Press, Lee says that as he talked with Kelton, he noticed Evans and Wilson were carrying on their own conversation.

A few days later, Evans called to say that the University of Colorado Press was publishing his Rounders trilogy, and they wanted Lee to illustrate it.

Lee spent five months working on the book illustrations for Rounders 3, despite failing health, temporary blindness and five days in hospital.

Since the book's release late last year, Lee and Evans have been on book signing tours, so the work on Lee's book has been postponed to some extent, but Lee says he's still working on it.

"I illustrated that Rounders book for Max, so we've been busy with that end of the deal," Lee says. "The other is on hold. I decided when I do it, I need to be able to sit down and lock the door and do it."

Lee says he doesn't want it to be a cowboy book.

"I want it to be one that anybody can sit down and read and laugh," he says.

Although he didn't start taping the stories until about 1981 when he got married, Lee had always enjoyed listening to stories passed down by those who had lived them.

Lee says that after their book signing this month at the Lea County Cowboy Hall of Fame in Hobbs, he plans to return to his work on his own book.

"As soon as that's over, I'm going to sit down and lock the door," he says.

The mettle that brought Grem Lee's great grandfather to this land a century ago and the strong will that made him either a hero or villain to those around him runs deep in the family. Grem Lee says he's not going to let a little thing like multiple sclerosis stop him now from finishing his book. Despite his initial fears, it hasn't stopped him from hunting. Why should it stop his writing and drawing?

"A friend told me I could do everything I had always done, maybe just not as much of it," Lee says. "He was right. I still bow hunt, but instead of me walking to the animals, I have to get where the animals walk to me."

In 1994, he was named Handicapped Hunter of the Year by Safari Club International and spent 10 days hunting on the plains of Namibia in Africa.

Today, Gem Lee spends much of his time, although not as much as he would like, sitting at the drawing board in his studio, pondering visual images of the stories he has collected over the last 30 years.

His inspiration is the desert floor before him and the mountains beyond ... and an audio book in his tape player, Cloudy in the West, by Elmer Kelton.