Cornel Pewewardy, Cindy Famero Host Birthday Event
Cornel Pewewardy and Cindy Famero celebrated their birthdays on Saturday, January 28, at the Comanche County Fairgrounds in the Prairie Building.
They opened the event to the public to invite friends and family.
Pewewardy, who celebrated his 71st birthday, said he felt glorious and honored that his family put together a birthday party.
“And, of course, it paralleled with Cindy Famero so our birthdays are so close together because we are,” he said. “And so, I first balked at the idea of a birthday party. But I thought about ‘it’s not just for me, it’s for our family.’”
He said his favorite part was getting ready.
“Not even having an alarm clock just waking up like Christmas morning you know, you want to get presents like that,” Pewewardy said. “It’s exciting to know that you got your task list already together and come over here and case out the room to see if the tables and chairs are there. How you’re going to decorate and just let people know that they’re all invited.”
They opened the event with prayer and Kiowa War Mother songs because Pewewardy is half Kiowa.
“But now we’re singing in all Comanche Hymns and so that makes me feel good because it reminds me of all the songs that I grew up with, who taught me songs, whose favorite songs, who composed these songs and more importantly what do the songs mean in Comanche,” he said. “That just brings me to tears.”
Pewewardy’s next year's goals include rebuilding.
“We’re just now coming out of the darkness of COVID-19,” he said. “And it really has done damage to our people, in our family particularly. We lost so many people, not within our family, but the extended families of the Comanche and Kiowa; many of the Southwest Oklahoma. And it does an impact upon us because we aren’t able to meet face to face and eat and solve and resolve problems and it just becomes distance. And when you communicate on Zoom, online instruction, things like that, it’s kind of three or four dimensions from real and you can’t really see and feel the feelings that come from the people that you’re talking to. Or when you’re in chat groups, it tends to be further away from authenticity to me. So what I’m saying is that we’re regrouping as family, we’re reuniting as family and then too as Comanche’s and Kiowa’s we’re rebuilding ourselves.”
Pewewardy said the event was a good time for people to come together.
Cindy Famero, celebrating 52, said she didn’t expect so many people.
“People can choose to be at other places, and they chose to be here,” she said. “Lots of really familiar faces that we would consider family. And that’s what we wanted, we wanted family and friends to come. It was open to the public, so there’s been people coming in and out, too. So, it didn’t matter we’ve been able to feed everybody and welcome everybody which is what we like to do.”
Famero said the hymn singing brought her back to her childhood.
“I grew up at Post Oak Church and you know you really sat reverently, you listened to them sing and the elders sang,” she said. “So, you’d hope to catch whatever you were supposed to catch as far as the language. But today, it really brought me back to that special place. I felt really good, I felt inspired. You could feel the spirit of the song even if you don’t understand the words or the language. And a lot of people weren’t raised to know what the meaning of the song was, but yet they learned the song anyway and so that’s why I just felt the singing.”
Famero said having everyone at the party was honoring.
“Leaving here and going abroad, west coast, you didn’t have that familial connection, but coming back and knowing that these people know who my family is and who my parents are, treated me like their own, has really been so honoring and special. I appreciate that and I value that in our community,” she said. “And it was really good to see a lot people that I often help that come and are here to celebrate with us and me and my family.”
Famero said she plans on putting health first.
“My health is on the front, it hadn’t been in the past,” she said. “I’ve always helped others first and then took care of myself last. Well now, it’s me first and others are just waiting for me to gear back up. So, I really value that, I really value the fact that I can sit back and relax.”
Famero said it was a challenging year.
At the event, there were plenty of presents.
