I was the youngest of eight children, so I think my dad was running out of names when I came along and named me Major.

Your family is a very important part of your life. One should never ignore them.

     BIOGRAPHY

 

The lad who would become Major Leonard Mitchell was born on March 28, 1945, the last of eight children in the family of Clarence Madison and Zula Alberta Mitchell.  His home for the first eleven years of his life was Brawley, California, a small farming and cattle community situated in the Imperial Valley.  It is here, amid the annual Cattle Call, rodeo and old west festivals, where he would soon discover a love for cowboys and all things western.  It was not unusual for the youngster to meet a working cowboy in boots and spurs during their daily activities.

 

Respect for native American culture was learned from his mother, who was one quarter Cherokee.

 

“She had dark hair that touched the floor when she sat in a chair to brush it in the morning.  Then, she would carefully braid and pile it back and forth across her head.  Mama also had the most beautiful olive complexion with high prominent cheek bones, giving her the true look of an Indian.”

 

The family lived not too far from the Seeley Naval Air Station, where his father was employed as a painter.  Many of the servicemen attended Sunday morning worship at the same tiny Baptist church as the family.  Major suspects their main interest in the church came from the rather large membership of teenage girls.  Regardless of their reason, it was not unusual to have a houseful of sailors eating dinner at their table.  Eventually, all four of his sisters married sailors.  He would sit in rapture, listening to the harrowing tales of sea battles his brother in laws and their shipmates brought into the home.

 

Tragedy struck with the death of their father, Clarence, on the thirteenth of December, 1952.  Several years of financial difficulty followed as the family struggled to make ends meet.  Relief came as the older siblings began graduating from high school and entering the work force.  Their mother never remarried, although she had received several offers.  “When you’ve had the best, then why settle for second-best,” she once said, when asked about her reasons.  She lived a widow until her eventual death on the twenty-second of June, 1967.

 

The Mitchell household had a modest collection of books, mostly poetry and a collection of Zane Grey novels their father loved to read.  Major spent countless hours listening, as two of his sisters, Dallas Rebecca and Nora Ethel, read poetry aloud.  It didn’t take long until he was reading the Zane Grey collection and developing his own passion for books.  It was a short walk to the local library, where a whole world adventure began developing with books like Treasure Island and Shane.

 

Although Major had spent many an hour, and countless reams of paper, creating his own comic books (mostly westerns) as a child, it wasn’t until he entered college that he began to think of writing as a serious pastime.  He remembers being held after class on his second day in English 1-B, and listening with fear as professor Hillhouse cautioned several others that they were not prepared for her class and should transfer out.  She then proceeded to encourage Major and one other student, to enroll in a creative writing class, as they had a true talent with words.   Since that day, he has enrolled in several classes and writing organizations that have helped develop in him the talent you will find in his two published novels and his children’s picture book.  He currently has several other books in the publishing process at the moment this is being written.  We are confident that, after reading his historical novels, The Doña, Mokelumne Gold and Poverty Flat, and his children’s books, Charlie Shepherd and The Witch On Oak Street, you will also become a member of his ever growing fan base.