Part III - Emma Hamsher - Thoroughly Modern Twentieth Century Teacher

In the Summer of 1918, when Emma returned two weeks early to the New Mexico Institute for the Blind to do her field work, she decided she would begin her first trip in an area where there were sufficiently good roads. She took the train to Albuquerque, rented a car, and with the help of medical professionals, clergy, teachers, and just talking to people, she discovered several blind children in the area.

Perhaps one of the saddest cases Emma experienced was a family consisting of a father, mother, a toddler around two years old, and a two-month old baby. The family was living in a box car on an unused siding in the desert. The box car was filthy and had a horrible odor of excrement, body odor, and rotted scraps.

Both of the parents had sores around their mouths and the father’s lesions also covered his hands and arms. The toddler was also developing symptoms. Emma had studied syphilis as a cause of blindness and seen pictures of the abscesses and was sure these were the same. The children both still had sight but had not been treated with the cure of the times - an arsenic extraction, and they were too young for the school for the blind where they could receive medical care. They needed help but the best she could do was report the case when she returned to Albuquerque.

Emma spent the night in Albuquerque, not getting much sleep from worrying if it was possible to become infected from being around the family. She went to a doctor and explained her concerns. He was an understanding elderly doctor and they discussed that Emma had not touched the sores and was unlikely to have contracted the disease. He said, “Little girl, if you are a good little girl, you won't have to worry.” His “scientific” advice did not completely alleviate her fears. She kept seeing that poor family in her mind for a long time.

Heading west to Gallup, Emma passed many villages and pueblos on her route. Her best sources of information in these small towns were the itinerant priests. Walking around Laguna and about to head to a different town, she came up on four little boys shooting marbles in the dust. Speaking in Spanish, she told them she used to play marbles with her brothers. One of the boys asked if she wanted to play. Each boy passed her a few marbles, and the one who invited her gave her a shooter. She folded her skirt under her knees and joined them in the dust.

After a while, she asked them if they knew of any ciegos or ciegas close by. They put their heads together, conferred with each other quietly and decided they did. They took her to a little adobe house; behind the casita was a strange structure which looked like a large dog house. The boys told her to open the hatch and they scampered off. There appeared a site that Emma could not fathom: a blind teenage boy - a ciego - with very long hair and the beginnings of facial hair was inside the crate. His face appeared green.

Emma said hello and asked his name. He told her. She didn't have time to ask any more questions because a raging fury, the mother, ran from the house screaming at her in Spanish so rapidly she couldn’t understand her. Her husband appeared and Emma managed to get through to them that she wanted to help the boy.

She said she was representing the State of New Mexico and had the authority to see that their boy was in school. Emma told them she would be back at a certain date to pick up all the blind children in the area and that she expected them to have the boy at the train depot at that time.

The mother had not wanted anyone to know she had a blind child. She hid him in his little hut all day and brought him into the house at night. She thought God was punishing her for being sinful by giving her a blind child so she hid this from her family and community. Apparently everyone did know, but went along with her ruse.

On the appointed day, Emma started in Santa Fe and picked up the children at their designated stations. One of the students was a young teenage boy who had worked in a lumber camp. He had been struck on the head by a falling limb which caused him to lose most of his sight. Prior to the accident, the lumberjack had been in boxing matches; he was big and very strong. The young man was anxious to learn Braille so he could read again and to learn skills which would help him be able to earn a living. He was excited to begin school in Alamogordo.

Emma wondered if the teenage boy who had been kept hidden in his hutch would be at the station. The father and his son appeared just in time. As Emma and the boy were getting on the train, the engine blew the whistle. The poor boy had never heard a whistle and panicked. He ran over Emma trying to escape the train but her new charge, the blinded lumberjack, picked him up, threw him over his shoulder and, with his free arm, maneuvered the car steps.

The lumberjack sat with the boy the whole way to El Paso and helped him change cars to Alamogordo. He took care of him and sat with the formerly caged boy the whole way to Alamogordo where they became fast friends. Emma thanked her lucky stars for his help.

The young man who had lived his life secluded except for evenings with his mother and father began to realize there were many things, nice things, that he had known nothing about. His hair was cut, he was shaved, he spent a great deal of time in the sunshine, and he was well fed. By Christmas time he was thriving and he and the lumberjack had learned the craft of making brooms and chairs. This was a turning point for both the young men; knowing there was something they could do to earn money was a great lift to their egos.

The fall of 1918, as most people remember, was the year of the Spanish Flu. The Institute for the Blind was situated a mile and a half from Alamogordo and though they had read and heard the horrors of this flu, the virus had not yet reached them.

One Sunday afternoon, Emma was called from dinner to go to the Superintendent’s office; her thought was, ‘Now what have I done’? The school doctor was with Mr. Pratt. They informed her that Mrs. Pratt was very ill after a trip to El Paso and had the symptoms of the flu. They had tried to find a nurse who could take care of her, but there were not enough nurses in the state to take care of all those afflicted. Emma said she would stay nights with Mrs. Pratt to dispense a certain medicine she needed on the hour every hour. She recovered but was weak for weeks afterward.

By the time Mrs. Pratt was better, the children were becoming ill, one after the other. There were still no nurses to be had though they had put out newspaper ads in the southern half of the state. Many of the teachers secluded themselves for fear of catching the flu. The kitchen staff saw that everyone was fed, but even they eventually became ill.

A partially-sighted young man from Illinois School for the Blind had joined them that year as a house parent and he volunteered to help Emma. Each morning she saw each sick person, charted their temperatures, intake, and elimination before the doctor arrived.

The volunteer carried trays and ran errands if something was needed and was particularly helpful with the boys. Emma learned that she did not know the words for “elimination" in Spanish. Her new student was just learning English and they got nowhere, growing more confused. The volunteer suggested to her, “Ask him if he stood up or sat down!” Problem solved.

When all the sick beds were empty and the children were back in the classrooms, Emma finally caught the Spanish flu. She was so sick she thought she would die. It took her a month to get over the symptoms. Over 675,000 died in the United States during the 1918 epidemic, but not one was lost at the NM Institute for the Blind.

Christmas was now not far away. Letters to Santa were written, a humongous pine tree was cut, and a holiday menu was planned. Several days before Christmas, two wooden boxes arrived by express from Emma’s mother. The boxes contained six cakes, white fruit, dark fruit, palmetto, chocolate fudge, coconuts, dozens of spice cookies, all sorts of homemade Christmas candies, nuts galore, and toys made of hard candy on sticks which could be bitten or licked. There was enough for the teachers, staff, and children to have tea parties almost every afternoon until the holiday ended.

During the 1918 Spring semester, the social dancing parties continued. The students and staff made the trip to the White Sands and came back by full moon which rose from behind the Sacramento Mountains and lighted the desert like daytime. On weekends they had lots of picnics at interesting and educational spots and dug and searched for fossils and collected quite a few. The basin and range of southern New Mexico had once lain at the bottom of the Permian Sea and fossils from marine life were treasures there for the finding.

Millions of years later after the sea receded, giant fauna would tromp across this area - mammoths, dire wolves, mastodons, sloths, camels, and some species of rodents that were as big as a cow. Siberian tribes hunted and followed these animals over the Bering Strait more than 20,000 years ago. Native storytellers told origin myths about the creatures whose fossilized bones and teeth they found in stream beds or buried in the strata of mountains or earth.

One of the most exciting happenings for the students was when a local farmer gifted the school with two burros, Punch (a gelding Jack) and Judy (a Jenny). The two were tame and friendly creatures who seemed to enjoy the children as much as the children enjoyed them.

The farmer told the children that the cross on the burros’ backs, which ran horizontally across the front shoulders, and vertically down their spines, were there because a burro carried Mary into Bethlehem to give birth to baby Jesus, and 33 years later, Jesus rode a burro into Jerusalem to face the Romans. The farmer said God blessed the burros by giving them a cross on their backs to show they were devoted creatures. The children ‘aaahhhed’ at the man’s story.

A gymnastic and dance exhibition was being choreographed and produced for the end of the school year. The dancers and gymnasts worked like little Trojans. Costumes were sewn and a program was written and printed. About this time in New Mexico, oil company men were in the state buying up land for oil production. One of the oilmen attended the school’s exhibition, was delighted with it, and quit claim deeded 1/40 of a section (16 acres) each, one to Mr. Pratt and one to Emma. The two educators had fun for a while counting the millions they were going to make. Their acreage didn’t pan out; it was too far outside the boundaries of the oil-rich Permian Basin.

School ended and once more Field Secretary Emma Hamsher was preparing to take the children home to their parents. The parents were all at their assigned stations to pick up their children except for the Santa Fe station. Here, Emma was left with 6-year-old Cepriano Chavez whose parents did not show up to fetch him. Fortunately, Emma had been to his home once and remembered where he lived. They walked the crooked, winding, 400 year old roads to his house.

The neighbors said his parents had moved but no one knew where. Emma went to the courthouse to have a look at the names of registered voters. There were several hundred people named Chavez on the register. About two hours later, she located a Señora Chavez who knew Cipriano - it was his grandmother. His abuela didn't know where his parents had gone, but like most grandmothers, she loved the little boy and was happy to take him.

This time Emma decided to remain in the field until she had taken census of the blind children in the state, county by county. She had not received a letter from her fiance in quite some time and blamed it on the war; and she did not feel her former homesickness to get back to Pennsylvania, so she began her summer child-find adventure.

Emma spent the night in Santa Fe and left the next morning, determined to find blind children who needed to be in school. She planned to start in the north and work her way down the state. Her first stop was Raton, a mining town near the Colorado border. The train into Raton arrived at dusk and she felt fortunate to find a small hotel just across the road. She registered and was shown to a room. She had some food sent up, wrote some letters, and having had a couple of exhausting days, went to bed early to be in good shape for the next day.

The next morning after breakfast she used the hotel telephone to call the Miner’s Hospital and was referred to the Chief of Staff. He suggested she come to the hospital to discuss the condition of several of the children whom he thought might be candidates for the school.

They began their tour of the grounds and suddenly the Chief of Staff was staring at her rather strangely. He asked, “When did you arrive in Raton?” She told him right before sunset yesterday. Then he asked, “Where did you stay?” She told him. His reply was, “Oh my God!”

He immediately called one of the hospital employees over, explained the situation, and sent him immediately to the hotel to pay her bill and bring her belongings to the hospital where she was billeted for the next two nights without charge. Apparently, she had spent the night in a house of ill repute! When she had entered the lobby the day before, she thought nothing of the fancifully- dressed pretty girls sitting lazily around the front room.

She seemed to recall a lot of moving around in the hallway that night, and someone had knocked on her locked door. She had paid no attention to the knock, thinking the visitor had the wrong room and she was too exhausted to get out of bed to respond. She poked her temple and said, “ How could I have been so foolish! I’m not that naive. I must have had other things on my mind.”

A few days later she was looking for a little town that was horse riding distance from a narrow gauge railroad. She began in Española. The conductor told her about a recently built resort at Ojo Caliente. It was about ten miles from the tracks to the spa but the owner had a telephone booth next to the tracks where, if you called him, he would pick you up to take you to the spa.

The conductor stopped the train at the phone booth, unloaded Emma and her baggage, called the spa, got back on the train, and away he went. After the train left, there was complete silence. Emma sat on a ledge feeling abandoned for what seemed an endless amount of time. Finally she heard a putt-putt off in the distance, gradually getting closer.

She was picked up and taken to the spa. The little hotel was delightful, well laid out, with all the conveniences - lovely furniture, good beds and excellent food. The staff was small but helpful. The hotel faced a small mesa, at the bottom of which several mineral springs bubbled up. There were three guests while Emma was there, a group of adventurous women from Colorado.

After dinner, Emma asked if the owner knew of anyone who might rent her a horse. She was lucky because the owner’s wife, for whom he had recently bought a beautiful horse, had left him and her filly behind. He offered Emma the horse saying the sweet little mare needed exercise and he would appreciate her riding her - she’d be doing him a favor. So she did and off she went!

Emma followed an arroyo where she had been told there might be a young blind boy. There were few adobe houses scattered about, but the one she was looking for was plastered with white stucco which made it easy to find. She was invited inside and marveled at a conical adobe fireplace from floor to ceiling curved into one corner.

There was a nicho several feet above the firebox filled with three carved wooden saints painted in bright colors. There was also a shelf attached to an adobe wall that looked as if it had grown out of the plaster. The shelf displayed saints with swords, saints with wings, saints with sheep and crosses and children, and several Virgin Marys. Emma commented on how beautiful the saints were and the woman said her husband was a santero, he carved saints.

The mother had a child with limited vision but he was too young for school. They conversed for several hours. Emma looked the child over, gave suggestions, and told the mother she would return next year for a visit. As she was leaving, the mother offered her one of the little saints. She chose one of Joseph holding baby Jesus. The mother told her that was the perfect saint for her; Joseph was the saint that protected children.

As Emma left, she noticed a man sitting in the shade on a stump, working over another large, flat stump that served as his table. Wood shavings surrounded his work area. He was shirtless and had his back to her. He jumped up, leaving his saintly work in progress behind him, and headed toward a little nearby shed. As he walked through the sunshine, Emma noticed that his back was crisscrossed with welts and scars. His back looked like the photographs of the backs of slaves she had seen who had been beaten with whips.

Her host at Ojo Caliente later explained that this was a Penitente family. They were a secret religious sect that had rituals of flogging themselves to punish themselves for their sins. Another day she was riding in the arroyo and saw a cross on the top of a hill. She stopped when she noticed about ten men climbing the hill, each with a switch of some sort hitting the back of the person in front of him. Emma turned her horse around and went a different direction where she later discovered a family with seven deaf and speechless children. She would give the information about the family to the school for the deaf in Santa Fe.

Emma enjoyed returning from a long dusty ride to bathe in the mineral baths at Ojo Caliente. She wondered why anyone would name a place “Hot Eye” but she supposed there were strange town names in Pennsylvania, too - Peach Bottom, Mars, Panic, and Hazard, to name a few. She left her tiny Hot Eye spa with regret and traveled to El Rito, a little town about 20 miles away with one small hotel that served excellent meals.

While in El Rito, she heard about a family with nine totally blind children aged 18 to 6. She visited the family and saw that the children were dressed in rags. Their eyes looked bright, shiny and healthy but without an optic nerve in sight. The locals gossiped that the reason for the children’s blindness was an epileptic mother and an alcoholic father. Emma didn’t know if that was the cause.

Before the advent of penicillin in the 1940s, the leading cause of blindness was from parents who were infected with venereal diseases. Another cause was trachoma, an infectious eye disease particularly prevalent among Native populations in the Southwest; lack of clean water and poverty contributed to its spread. Meningitis, measles, smallpox, and a host of syndromes also affected the possibility of blindness. Cataracts, fetal alcohol syndrome, work accidents, inbreeding, and premature birth round out the list of potential causes.

The family of blind children in El Rito were all very lively and enthusiastic. Emma learned that the well worn, outgrown frayed clothing they were wearing was all they had to wear. She did not want to take the children to school in such raggedy circumstances. There was a large building in the village which was empty. Emma sought out the owner and asked if the building was ever used for dancing. He said it was but they hadn’t held a dance for a long time. He said she could use the building if she wanted.

Ten Cents a Dance fundraisers were popular at the time. Emma, with the help of the locals got the word out to all the ranches and their cowboys and to surrounding farms and villages. There wasn't a Victrola in town, but there was an out-of-tune piano in the building and a local woman who could play it by ear. The oldest blind boy, Tom, had a fiddle and could fiddle by ear. Another brother, Manuel, could play the drum, and the orchestra got together to practice. Emma sang and whistled some new dance tunes for two days which the small pieced-together band learned quickly.

The Saturday night for the dime dance arrived and cowboys, girls in newly sewn frocks, and families from all around came. Not one man nor boy attempted to get on the dance floor without dropping his dime in the pail before choosing a dance partner. The music wasn’t perfect but the rhythm was superb.

Two sons of Helen Hunt Jackson, an activist for Natives and the famous author of “Ramona,” had checked into the hotel. One son was a Denver lawyer and the younger son was a Rhodes Scholar just back from England. They were researching Spanish land grants in the area and at dinner one night, Emma invited them to the dance. They came and helped work the dance and made generous donations.

The community earned enough money to dress each one of the nine children and provided them with what they needed to head off to school. When the time came to pick them up, people in El Rito escorted them to their train station. They were all nice children and turned out to be good students.

From El Rito, Emma went to Española where she visited a couple she was fond of. Tony had gone to Carlisle Indian School where he had studied law. Emma was from Cumberland Valley, very near Carlisle, Pennsylvania and had met Tony at a sporting match. Her friend had recently married an Osage woman who owned a Franklin car which was grandiose, making their house look small. She owned a few oil wells on the Osage reservation in Oklahoma and their beautiful adobe home in Española exhibited her wealth through her treasures.

The floors were covered with Navajo rugs; she displayed Pueblo pottery on her shelves and in her nichos, and her blankets and silver jewelry were extravagant. In one corner, there was a life-size statue of the Virgin Mary made by the santero with the blind son that Emma had visited.

Tony took Emma to his pueblo in Taos so she could check for blind children. She needed to get permission to visit the Pueblo from a very old gentleman. She asked if there were blind children and the elder was insulted that she would think that there was a blind person in his Pueblo. He told Tony to take her in to see for herself.

She marveled at the five story adobe “apartment” complex with wooden ladders leaning against each level. The horno ovens, looking like mud beehives, held freshly baking bread which was shared with her. Shy, shiny- eyed children with straight jet-black hair giggled behind their mother’s skirts peeping at the funny looking stranger. Men wrapped in colorful blankets stood or sat on the buildings’ ledges and watched this strange Anglo woman poking around their village which had been here before Columbus, Spanish Conquistadors, Jamestown, or the Pilgrims ever wandered in.

Tony was going to stay in Taos for a few days and arranged a car for Emma to return to Santa Fe to catch the train for Alamogordo. She had been away almost a month and needed to get back to school to report in. Her driver arrived at the pueblo gate and she felt there was something “strange” about him. Whenever they stopped the car to move to the edge of the road to let another car pass going in the opposite direction, he disappeared, bending over in the front seat. Emma suspected he had a bottle.

It was a very worrisome trip to Santa Fe. At one point there was a small stream that the driver went through slowly instead of gaining momentum to rush down one creek bank and up the other. When they had just about reached the other side, the car started to sink. Emma climbed from the back seat to the top of the car, down to the hood, and slogged to the bank of the stream. The driver packed rocks, twigs, branches, everything he could find under the car and finally got the vehicle out. By this time, she could not stop glaring at him as he sobered up from the gravity of the situation.

She brusquely told the driver she’d missed her train and needed to find a hotel near the station. Then the worst part of her travails began. She fell asleep quickly in her hotel room, but woke up soon after when she began feeling little pin pricks all over her. At first, she thought it was just exhaustion and nervousness. She turned on the lights and saw hundreds of little apple seed-shaped brown bedbugs on the ceilings, on the walls, on the bed and on herself. She shook out her clothes, dressed, and went to the lobby where they told her she was welcome to sleep in one of the chairs.

Emma left for Alamogordo the next morning and Mr. Pratt met her at the train station that evening. “How was your trip?” he inquired.

Emma replied, “Wonderful! I enjoyed every minute!”

To be continued…

Taos, South Pueblo