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As his father chanted next to a growing wildfire on Navajo Mountain, Albert Holiday watched from his post outside a coal mine 18 miles away.

He couldn't make out his father's figure from that distance, but it didn't matter. Albert Holiday knew what would happen: After a traditional song from the nation's medicine man, the rain would come. He fixed his eyes on the smoky horizon, waiting for the clouds to form. They did.

And then the fire was extinguished.

"He knew the prayers to it and the songs to it," Albert Holiday said, reflecting on the 1995 blaze.

His father, John Holiday, served as the Navajo Nation's medicine man for more than 85 years, beginning in 1928, to heal people with illnesses and respond to natural disasters. He died from a heart attack Thursday evening at age 100.

While working in a mine during his youth, John Holiday breathed in dust that would debilitate him and confine him to a wheelchair, but he continued to serve as the nation's doctor until days before his death.

"He was still doing it up until last week," his son said. "When somebody's sick, he used to go out there and do the chant and use herbs for people. In our tradition, we used that when the white man wasn't on this side of the earth."

John Holiday was born April 15, 1916, on the Navajo Nation, which lies among Utah, Arizona and New Mexico on a piece of land now talked about for a Bears Ears monument designation — which John Holiday supported.

At age 12, John Holiday learned from his grandfather, then 90 years old, the words to healing prayers and the steps to cultivate herbs.

He would replace him as medicine man.

John Holiday's grandfather used to tell him, "It doesn't matter if you're blind or there's something wrong with you," Albert Holiday recounted Saturday, "you're still going to heal your people, you're still going to pray for your people."

In World War II, John Holiday was drafted by the United States Army and flew to Salt Lake City for training. After three months, the military discharged him because he didn't speak English, Albert Holiday said. When John Holiday returned to the reservation, he worked as a uranium miner, railroad employee and rancher. His brother Samual later served as a Navajo code talker in Iwo Jima, Japan, and his brother Henry was in the Navy. John Holiday is survived by both, though preceded in death by other siblings and his parents.

"He blessed the warriors when they went to World War II with the songs, and they [would] go to war," Albert Holiday said. "They came back unharmed."

John Holiday married Lula in 1942 — they remained together until her death in November 2014. The couple had their first child, Albert, in 1945; they had 11 total, the youngest now 34 years old. Their home was filled with laughter, schoolwork and singing lessons, 71-year-old Albert Holiday recollected.

When he turned 67, John Holiday retired from manual labor and focused more on healing, a skill he would train 12 Navajo people to use after his death. Many people went to his home for help and herbs as he aged and became more immobile, but he traveled across the Navajo Nation at times, always wearing his favorite black flat-brim hat.

"People came to him every day at the reservation," Albert Holiday said. "He even helped the white man."

In 2013, John Holiday spoke at a gathering of firewood collectors at Cedar Mesa. It was the first time Gavin Noyes, who operates Utah Dine Bikeyah, a conservationist coalition focused on protecting Bears Ears, met the revered medicine man. The nearly 100 people at the event sat "enraptured" under the hot southern Utah sun for four hours, listening to John Holiday tell stories in Navajo, Noyes said.

The medicine man, Noyes said, had a presence that could not be imitated.

"When he speaks, the whole room just goes dead silent and everybody listens to all of his words," Noyes said.

John Holiday's funeral is scheduled for Tuesday at 10 a.m. at Monument Valley Cemetery on the reservation near San Juan County. His life will be celebrated with ceremonies, feasts and storytelling.

One of the tales to surely come up, Albert Holiday said, is the wildfire that his father halted with a simple prayer.

His son recalled: "I saw the rain."

ctanner@sltrib.com Twitter: @CourtneyLTanner