Calvin W. Fast Wolf

1938 - 2015

BORN

1938

DIED

2015

FUNERAL HOME

Sullivan's and Duggan's Serra Funeral Services

6201 Geary Blvd

San Francisco, California

Calvin Fast Wolf Obituary

Name: Committal for Calvin W. Fast Wolf
Start: 2015-11-10T20:30:00.000Z
Location: St. Helena Cemetery

Calvin W. Fast Wolf

Sept. 28th, 1938 - Nov. 1st, 2015

Calvin was a long time resident of the city of San Francisco; passed away on Nov. 1st, 2015. Member of the Oglala Lakota Nation.

Committal services 12:30pm Tuesday, November 10th, 2015 at the St. Helena Cemetery 2461 Spring Street, St. Helena, CA 94574.

To plant trees in memory, please visit the Sympathy Store.

Published by San Francisco Chronicle from Nov. 5 to Nov. 8, 2015.

Memories and Condolences
for Calvin Fast Wolf

Sponsored by Sullivan's and Duggan's Serra Funeral Services.

6 Entries

Joel Drummond

April 11, 2025

I was the youngest student of Calvin Fast Wolf when he taught the Lakota language at Chicago's Newberry Library's D'Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian in the early 80s. I was 16 years old at the time and I had received a scholarship to study the Lakota language with Calvin as part of an experimental history program grant for disadvantaged youths.

As a young Black kid from one of the worst high schools in the city, the opportunity to meet Calvin and study the Lakota language and culture was mind blowing! He was warm, patient, and funny, and he always found our efforts to understand the language and cultural aspects to be fascinating. The Lakota way of viewing the world is so different from ours -- yet he bridged the differences with a big, beautiful smile and wonderful warmth, and humor: the way a skilled comedian can get a crowd laughing with him at their common absurdity. He was fantastic!

That last year of his language program, he had 31 people sign-up; so he had to split it up into two classes. I was the youngest, and the person closest to my age was 28; everyone else was in their 40s - 60s and no one had less than a master's degree. That all went over my head back then because I was 16, but Calvin was so great at keeping us all on the same page. He had wonderful little handouts and he took special care to make sure that I understood because I knew nothing of grammar.

What I did know was some conversational Lakota coming into the class and I cold imitate Calvin's accent; which was fun, because it always made him do a double-take and the other students laugh! It was a fun and welcoming environment for a 16-year-old Black boy from the Southside who never ventured over to that part of town due to poverty. I found it very intimidating because I was in the night class, which let out late, and everything was outside of my experience. But Calvin and everyone made it a welcoming, positive experience and I cherish these memories to this day.

I also babble in Lakota everyday to this day! I never lost my love for it and I still have the Father Eugene Buechel Lakota-English Dictionary (Lakota Ieska - Ieska-Lakota Oie Wowapi Wan) Calvin recomended for the class.

My experience learning Lakota in Calvin's last class spurred me to learn other languages and to eventually become a medical interpreter.

Prior to that, however, during my senior year of high school, I met another student of Calvin's who was filling in as a substitute teacher and overheard me speaking Spanish and commented on it. I asked him if he spoke any Spanish? And he said "No, but I speak a litte Lakota." "I speak a little Lakota, too!" We then began talking to each other in Lakota and the whole class went silent -- and watched us; this Black kid and this white adult jabbering away in an unfamiliar language. They asked what we were saying and asked us to interpret what the other person was saying, because they weren't sure that it wasn't jibberish; which we did. We were so excited to find someone else who spoke a little Lakota, and it turned out that this substitute teacher was in the "day class" and I ended up in the "night class" when Calvin divided the 31 students into two classes!

So, my experiences with Calvin and his class were phenomenal! He left for San Francisco after that class and I didn't hear anything about him until 25 years later when I was living in California and I needed to print up some business cards, and I was looking through a book at Mailboxes, Etc. and I ran across Calvin Fast Wolf's card as one of the sample cards! It truly blew me away... All of those warm memories came flooding back, and I remembered that he had said that he was moving to San Francisco!

One day, many years later, I was watching videos of old Native American photos and I decided to Google Calvin. This was how I found out he had passed. I was very saddened to learn that. I wished him well and prayed he had had an enjoyable life. He was truly a wonderful teacher and he deserved good things!

I was also surprised to learn that he was the great-great-grandson of Chief Red Cloud, because, to my recollection, Calvin never said a word about his famous relative.

I did not know anything about Calvin outside of the class when I was 16, or after the class, when he moved to San Francisco, but he made a profound impression on me during my formative years and I wanted to honor his memory by relating the profound impact he and his class had on me.

Rest In Peace Calvin. Bless you for all that you did for us.

Cristina Goulart

May 24, 2024

I took Lakota language classes from Calvin Fast Wolf in San Jose at the American Indian Center in the 1990s. He was kind and patient and totally welcoming to us non-Indians. I got so much out of his classes even beyond the language lessons. May his soul rest in peace.

howard duckman

August 15, 2021

I remember cal when he worked at the Institute of Gas Technolog;y (IGT) in the 70's when he was still married. At IGT he was efficient and had an understanding of the synthetic natural gas production in the semi-works process. After the reduction in personnel at IGT. I met him again while he was teaching Lakota to college students at the Newberry library in the early 80's. Because he was teaching this language he said he could look forward to each day after the the IGT layoffs. It wasn't long afterward he said he was leaving Chicago for California with a job in the petroleum industry. In all of this trauma he was always a man of limited words. My thoughts are with you.

Gretchen Johnson

July 28, 2021

I was very saddened to read of Calvins death years later as we had lost contact. I hope he was at peace. He was a patient and kind friend.

Paul Willsea

July 27, 2021

Thank you Calvin for sharing your language and culture.

Gretchen Christman-Johnson

April 12, 2019

Calvin was a kind and brilliant man who was a a deep thinker and a patient teacher of the Lakota language. He was my friend whom I lost touch with as life took me far away from California. He was the great grandson of Chief Red Cloud who was a contemporary of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. .May he be riding out across the sweet grassed prairies of his ancestors and may his spirit life be more comforting than this realm ever provides.

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