2020-07-21

Jay Silverheels Gets Star in 1979

Harold Jay Smith aka Jay Silverheels    
When I was a kid I watched The Lone Ranger religiously. Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels were staples of my childhood for the entirety of at least their first run ... and likely well in to syndication as well.

I wasn't so much a fan of westerns per se, but more so a fan of characters and theirs struck a cord in my television watching and thusly I persisted thoughtout my childhood. They were simply always there; a standard to which other programs were compared.

Harold Jay Smith aka Jay Silverheels was a Mohawk (also, an Aboriginal Canadian and superb athlete) and is noteworthy being the first Native American to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It was on this day in 1979 he got his star.

That would have placed me a month or so out of the Navy and so I really wasn't all that I would become at that point.

Dr Ted Rotz the radiologist called me a "late bloomer".

    Jay Silverheels Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
He was a horseman who raised, bred and raced Standardbred horses in his off time. He was once asked if he would consider racing Scout, his steed from the television series in a race to which he responded that he could outrun the horse, ie, likely not.

He was married in 1945 and the father of four daughters named Marilyn, Gail, Pamela, and Karen, and a son, Jay Anthony Silverheels Junior who followed his father into acting.

His end came after a stroke in 1976 — from which he lingered for years before passing in 1980. He was cremated and his remains returned to the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario.

Thus ended a pillar of my childhood. Soft spoken but a powerful and effective portrayer of Native Americans I have always remembered Jay Silverheels as a symbol of dignity over the years.