Reds, Pinks and Pearly Whites

1955 - The Year the Communists Invaded My Teeth

It began with a notice in the newspaper. On February 10 1955, Walter Kegel, Santa Fe City Councilor and chairman of the City’s Sanitation Committee, announced a public meeting to discuss a proposal to fluoridate Santa Fe’s drinking water.

What no one knew at the time – except for Mrs. Reese P. (Loretta) Fullerton of Santa Fe, New Mexico -- was that the communists had been preparing for this moment since 1930, when American scientists first discovered that fluoride, when applied to the teeth in very low concentration, significantly reduced tooth decay.

As it turned out, this was the only beneficial effect of fluoride, an ion of fluorine formerly known as the aluminum industries leading waste product and pollutant. In high concentration, fluoride was the primary constituent in rat poison. Prolonged exposure to moderate levels of fluoride appeared to cause, in children, both thyroid damage – resulting in uncontrollable weight gain – and neurological damage, resulting in significantly reduced IQ scores.

Even more exotic uses were discovered for the miracle of fluoride. During World War II, Germans and Russians were reported to have used carefully controlled fluoride additives in the drinking water of prisoners of war to “reduce their ability to resist domination by slowly poisoning and narcotizing certain brain centers, rendering them stupid and docile.”

Mrs. Fullerton knew that farsighted Communist party leaders early realized the possibilities of using fluoride to render Americans fat, stupid and docile by simply adding a smidgen of fluoride into the tap water.

In post-war America, communist operatives apparently infiltrated the nation’s medical and scientific apparatus. Utilizing the National Health Institute, an unwitting tool of the communists, the party began a propaganda campaign, persuading the medical and dental establishments that adding fluoride to drinking water in nominally small amounts would reduce tooth decay in children. The campaign was remarkable successful. In 1945, eight test cities (six in America, two in Canada) quickly proved that adding fluoride to drinking water (less than one part per million) significantly reduced tooth decay. The successful test inspired a national health movement, which quickly turned into US health policy so that by 1955, fluoridation had spread to 93 cities across the nation. By the time the idea reached Santa Fe, the City of Hobbs had been drinking fluoridated water for two years.

So strong was the movement for fluoridation that, by 1955, there were only a scattered few who opposed public fluoridation. Some opposed it as mass medication; some saw it as an erosion of personal rights; and some believed it to be contrary to the will of God. And there were some who knew it to be a communist conspiracy.

On February 16, 1955, the City Sanitation Committee meeting took place. Over one hundred members of the local proletariat crowded into the council chambers, almost all in support of fluoridation. The listed speakers in favor of the proposal were Dr. Ralph Lopez, President-elect of the New Mexico Dental Association who also spoke on behalf of the local dental society and Dr. Bergere Kenney, President of both the Santa Fe and the New Mexico Medical Associations. A representative of the New Mexico State Department of Health appeared and pronounced fluoridation cheap, safe and beneficial. Other civic organizations appeared before the Sanitation Committee to urge public fluoridation – The League of Women Voters, the Maternal Health Center and the local PTA. Even the New Mexican posted an editorial in favor of fluoridating the “kiddies.” Not all of these groups were, in fact, agents of the communist party or even fellow travelers. Most, Mrs. Fullerton suspected, were merely dupes in the communist plan for global domination through public fluoridation.

Only four Santa Fe citizens spoke in opposition. Three were members of the I AM Organization, an eccentric local religious group who believed that fluoridation was against the will of the aforementioned God. The only other opponent was Loretta (Mrs. Reese P.) Fullerton.

Mrs. Fullerton had come early to the meeting and distributed “Americanism Bulletins.” These were crudely printed pamphlets, which contained alarming details of the communist conspiracy. Mrs. Fullerton claimed that public fluoridation was communist plot to “wipe out entire communities with greater effectiveness than the atomic bomb.” Mrs. Fullerton then pointed out that New York City – “the strongest Communist center in the United States” – had not yet adopted fluoridation. These were telling points, indeed, but years of propaganda had apparently blinded the American masses to the truth.

Mrs. Fullerton had given the Committee a four-page statement that she had signed as chairwoman of the Legislative Committee of the Santa Fe Woman’s Club and Library Association. When questioned, Mrs. Fullerton admitted the statement did not represent the opinion of the Club. Until that day, the Woman’s Club was apparently unaware of the statement. An officer of the Woman’s Club declared, “As far as the Woman’s Club is concerned in this matter, Mrs. Fullerton is speaking only for Mrs. Fullerton.”

After listening to 26 speakers over three hours, the Sanitation Committee took an informal poll of those in attendance and counted 109 in favor of fluoridation, 4 against and one undecided. The Committee then closed the discussion and, in view of the overwhelming support for the measure, forwarded a favorable recommendation on the proposal to the City Council.

Though it appeared that the communists had won the round, citizen opposition to fluoridation took to the media. A group called the Santa Fe Citizens for Pure Water Committee sponsored a half-page ad warning of the poisonous effects of fluoride. Quickly, an even larger pro-fluoridation ad touting “17 Facts about Fluoridation” was published by, among others, the Santa Fe Junior Chamber of Commerce (a possible communist front?) which urged Santa Fe citizens to “have faith in science.” Pro-fluoridation elements wrote letters to the editor and the New Mexican contributed an editorial, which said, in part:

We hope the City Council will not be sidetracked by the ridiculous claims made by opponents of the measure. The debate should center upon how to put the program into effect and how to pay for it, rather than whether to go ahead. Santa Fe needs and wants fluoridation; it is up to the City Council to figure out how to go about it.

On March 30, the Santa Fe City Council met in regular session and formally took up the ordinance on fluoridation. Those favoring public fluoridation were Dr. Ralph Lopez, speaking for the entire dental health establishment, Dr. David Striffler for the New Mexico Health Department and the lawyer Thomas B. Catron III. Speaking in opposition were Mrs. Nancy Lane, Alfred Fetteral, Reverend Oliver Money, Pastor of the Church of the Nazarene, and Mrs. Reese P. Fullerton.

The newspaper does not record what was said at the council session but the New Mexican reported that Mrs. Fullerton requested that the City Council conduct further study before acting. Apparently, her plea was ineffective. After three hours of speeches, the City Council voted 5 to 2 (with 1 abstaining) in favor of adding fluoride to the City’s drinking water. (Councilors in favor of fluoridation were George Berntsen, Leo Murphy, Walter Kegel, Frank Gomez and Willie Seligman; councilors opposed to fluoridation were Sam Pate and Lou Schifani; the abstaining councilor was Dionicio “Don” Ortiz).

Though the matter appeared to be settled, anti-fluoridation activists continued to agitate. So much so, that the City Council agreed to a further public discussion of on fluoridation when the contract for fluoridating the City’s water came up for vote, despite grumbling by Mayor H. Paul Huss that the ordinance had already been passed.

A clearly vexed New Mexican editor wrote:

In the two months since the council acted, Santa Fe has been victimized by a very small and very loud minority which has fought to incite a hysterical plebeian revolution against science. This small, loud minority doesn’t believe the City Council should consider the recommendations of the highest bodies of scientific research in the nation. ‘Listen to us,’ these people say, ‘we know what we’re talking about. Science is wrong . . .’ (May 23, 1955)

An astonishing 200 citizens appeared at the May 25 Council session to approve the fluoridation contract. Again, Doctors Ralph Lopez and Bergere Kenney appeared and forcefully spoke in favor of fluoridation, joined by representatives of the New Mexico Department of Health, the Parent Teachers Association and, curiously, the Santa Fe Junior Chamber of Commerce. Again the speakers were overwhelmingly in favor of fluoridation. Except one.

Mrs. Reese P. Fullerton stood before the Council and demanded to know if any physician present would prescribe fluorides for her children. When Dr. Brian Moynahan rose to answer that he would, he was “rebuffed” by Mrs. Fullerton who stated he would not be allowed to treat her children.

After 26 speakers, the City Council abruptly adjourned without taking any action on the fluoride question. Without fanfare and in accordance with ordinance, the City’s water department began to introduce fluoride additives to Santa Fe’s drinking water in late summer 1955.

In the end, the communists were victorious. But it may be of some comfort to Mrs. Fullerton, wherever she may be, that New York City began fluoridating its water in 1965, giving the communists a taste of their own medicine.

1954 - Rising Sun on the Alameda

I saw this interesting notice in a 1954 New Mexican newspaper in which the State Purchasing Department offered fifteen “Barracks Buildings” for sale. These “barracks buildings,” the advertisement went on to explain, could be inspected at the “former Jap Camp on West Alameda.” The casual racism in an official government notice was apparently unremarkable in those days.

The advertisement reminded me of Santa Fe’s part in a shameful episode of American history – the imprisonment of 110,000 persons of Japanese ancestry, most of them American citizens, during World War II. Three months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 which directed the War Department to evacuate all persons of Japanese ancestry, citizen or not, from the western coast of America (denominated as a “military area”) and relocate them in Assembly Centers or Relocation Centers somewhere in the nation’s interior.

They were not prisoners of war. Most were first generation Americans of Japanese descent, living ordinary lives in California, Oregon and Washington State as shopkeepers, accountants and doctors – until the War Relocation Authority rounded them up and put them in detention camps for the duration of the war. In the hectic days following the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, most government leaders quickly accepted the need to “relocate” these Japanese Americans as a wartime necessity.

I say most because a few dissented, including FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who went along with the plan anyway, and three Supreme Court Justices who saw it as legalized racism [see the dissenting opinion in Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944)]. Interestingly, FDR publicly declared his opinion at the time that Japanese “skull patterns” were less developed, accounting for the unusually aggressive nature of the Japanese. Decades later, in 1983, Congress established a Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians to study this matter. The Commission’s report, titled Personal Justice Denied, found no military necessity for the incarceration of Japanese Americans but found the policy was based on “race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership.” Congress then authorized payment of $20,000 to each of the internees and President Ronald Reagan issued a public apology.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. This story is about Santa Fe, which occupied a very special place in the history of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Here’s the short version. Just months after Pearl Harbor, in early 1942, the Department of Justice (not the War Department) bought 80 acres from the New Mexico State Penitentiary. The property, in northwestern Santa Fe next to the river, was an old CCC camp originally built in 1933. New housing was added for the incoming Japanese, basically wood and tarpaper barracks, surrounded by a sturdy fence.

The Santa Fe Camp was not a Relocation or Assembly Center; it was a Justice Department detention camp, specifically designed to house kibei, those Japanese Americans who had been educated in Japan or who had renounced American citizenship – those thought likeliest to cause trouble. Once completed, the Santa Fe Camp received and held 826 Japanese American men, all from California and all of whom were transferred out by the end of summer in 1942. These were quiet times. The internees were considered so docile that they were used by the City of Santa Fe to help groom the local golf course. In exchange, the internees were allowed to play golf on the course – a privilege only a few Santa Feans enjoyed. For the rest of 1942, the camp was home to several hundred German and Italian nationals who happened to be in the United States at the outbreak of the war. This group also included several South American Japanese, most from Peru.By the end of 1943, the Camp held about 2100 Japanese Americans, some of whom were considered troublemakers in other camps.

By 1944, internees across the nation began to chafe at their condition and began a series of protests, some of them quite violent. In March 1945, some internees at the Santa Fe Camp staged a noisy but otherwise civil protest when they were ordered to turn in sweatshirts decorated with rising sun motifs. The protest leaders were forcibly removed and the protest turned into a full-fledged riot. No one was injured but rocks were thrown and a few buildings were vandalized. Eventually, tear gas and clubs were used to quell the riot. Over 300 internees were put in stockade or simply removed from the Santa Fe Camp and transferred to even more restrictive camps. There were no more riots at the Santa Fe Camp for the duration of the war.

When the war against the Japanese was decisively ended in August 1945, the Santa Fe Camp was used as a holding and processing center for other camps and the Santa Fe Camp remained active until about May 1946 when the last of the internees was transferred out. Interestingly, most Santa Feans I’ve asked about those days of the Japanese Internment Camp recall very little about it and the local newspapers of the time rarely mentioned the camp. But there remains tangible evidence of Japanese presence in Santa Fe. Rosario cemetery has graves for two Japanese American men who died during internment. One named Sudo, the other Yoshikawa.

And, in 1999, despite protest from some Bataan Death March veterans, the City of Santa Fe authorized the installation of a bronze plaque, set in a large granite boulder at the Frank Ortiz City Park, to mark the site of the Santa Fe Detention Camp. The installation ceremony, in 2003, was attended by some former internees and the descendants of many others.

By the way, the barracks buildings were ultimately removed and the remainder of the 80 acres was cleared to build the Casa Solana subdivision, a neighborhood of pleasant, sturdy homes spread over the site of what was once Santa Fe’s notorious “Jap Camp.”

1952 - Jackpot Annie

I read this article in Reader’s Digest or maybe a Sunday supplement, about people who won a lottery and the dramatic ways that coming into serious money affected their lives. Some did well, but many squandered it all and a few met tragic ends. It made me think of Annie Baca and how her life turned out. I never knew Annie Baca. But I read about her once in an interesting story in the Santa Fe New Mexican from 1952 about a local family winning a huge jackpot in a national radio contest.

“Stop the Music” aired in Santa Fe on KTRC. It was one of many radio quiz shows on the air in the early fifties, like “Strike it Rich” and “You Bet Your Life” with Groucho Marx. On “Stop the Music,” Bert Parks, the host, called a random number somewhere in the U.S., and offered the listener a prize to name a song after hearing just a few bars played. The orchestra would play for ten seconds or so, then the announcer would shout, “Stop the Music!” and ask the listener to identify the song.

Now the right answer would win a small prize – a television set or a household appliance -- but it also earned a chance for an even bigger prize if the listener could identify the “Mystery Melody!”

This was no easy task. The Mystery Melody was always nearly impossible to identify, but the listener could learn the name of the Mystery Melody by listening to Walter Winchell on the radio. Winchell, still popular with his telegraph style of gossip and right wing political commentary. At some random time during the course of one of his broadcasts, Walter Winchell would announce the name of the upcoming Mystery Melody on “Stop the Music”.

And that brings me to the Baca family of Santa Fe. Mr. E. A. Baca, his wife and three girls lived in an adobe home on Urioste, a narrow street that runs north off Agua Fria down to Alto Street. Mr. Baca had worked for the railroad until an injury forced his retirement so he ran a little washing machine repair shop out of his garage. Mrs. Baca and one of her daughters were cooks at Jaffa’s restaurant, another daughter worked as a housekeeper for Mrs. Cunningham and the youngest, Annie Baca, 23, worked the counter at Taichert’s downtown.

One Sunday evening in 1952, Mrs. Baca answered the phone and promptly became confused when the voice said it was New York calling so Annie took the phone. It was “Stop the Music” calling and, over the national airwaves, Bert Parks asked Annie to identify a song.

Annie correctly identified the first song as “Cold, Cold Heart.” (The Tony Bennett version had been number one for six weeks in 1951 so it was an easy song.) That right answer qualified Annie to win the big jackpot if she could name the Mystery Melody.

Now, as luck would have it, Mr. Baca had been tuned to KTRC in his shop a few days earlier, listening to Walter Winchell, when he heard the name of the Mystery Melody and he wrote it down. So Mr. Baca promptly sent his daughter, Polly, out to the shop to fetch the note back to Annie on the phone. Annie read out the name “We All Have Troubles of our Own.” That was the correct name of the Mystery Melody and the Baca family won the big jackpot.

And what prizes! $16,000 cash, a brand new Kaiser automobile, a big television set, an automatic washer, a new kitchen range, a deep freeze filled with gourmet food, a spinet piano, a new living room suite, new wardrobes for two and a wristwatch for everyone. But wait, as they say on TV, there’s more! The family also won two French poodles along with a year’s supply of dog food, bottles of expensive perfume, cosmetics and the services of a personal maid for a whole year. And the biggest prize was a trip to Cannes, France for the entire family.

The paper carried a wonderful photograph of a jubilant Annie Baca hugging her equally pleased mother. Neighbors called to congratulate them and even Dan Taichert visited in person to wish Annie well, although he was a bit wistful that Annie might not come back to the five and dime store after winning all that cash. This was 1952, after all, when the median income for the average Santa Fe household was about $2900 a year.

Curiously, there was never another article about what happened to the Baca family or what they did with their prizes. Was there a shiny new Kaiser parked on Urioste Street? Did Mrs. Cunningham envy her housekeeper who now had a personal maid of her own? Did Annie Baca ever stroll down the French Riviera, dressed to kill, with twin poodles on a leash?

Whatever happened to Annie Baca, the girl from the five and dime? I never found out but I like to think that Annie lived out a Hollywood fairy tale, traveling to France, perhaps meeting and marrying a handsome young nobleman and settling into a villa on the Cote d’Azure. And that’s where she is today, gazing at the Mediterranean from the balcony of her villa, a very long way from Urioste Street in Santa Fe.

1953 - First Grade Class, Alvord Elementary School, Santa Fe, New Mexico

1966 - Tillie's Tale

I found an article in a 1966 Santa Fe New Mexican, a sizable article complete with photo, about Tillie Hawkins retiring from teaching in Santa Fe. The article did not divulge Tillie’s age, but it did say she began teaching at age 16. She was Miss Tillie Branch of Roy, New Mexico then. She began teaching in Santa Fe in 1942 at Alvord Elementary School where she spent the rest of her teaching career.

Mrs. Hawkins had degrees, both bachelors and masters, from the University of New Mexico. She was very active in the community as well, serving as president of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Auxiliary and the Disabled Veterans auxiliary. And she was an active member of the state and national education associations as well as the national Classroom Teachers Association.

The article went on to report that her husband, an accountant, died in 1959 and that Tillie had one daughter, Clara Belle, now Mrs. Timothy Taylor of Albuquerque.

The article gushed over Tillie Hawkins and made particular note of her “ebullient enthusiasm so endearing to primary students.” This gave me great pause because that same Tillie Hawkins was my first grade teacher and I was petrified of her.

In 1953, I entered the first grade at Alvord Elementary School. At the time, our family lived at the Sierra Vista Courts, a group of apartments and small houses grouped around a bare dirt “court” next to the railroad tracks, just about where Alarid Street reaches Cerrillos Road. I lived about two blocks from the school which was, and still is, at the corner of Alarid and Hickox.

First grade was my introduction to Mrs. Hawkins. I was very frightened by her. I have no good explanation for this. Maybe, I have a deep-seated fear of ebullient enthusiasm. I know I don’t find it particularly endearing.

Mrs. Hawkins always seemed to be looming over me, all black hair and gleaming teeth. I was so frightened of Mrs. Hawkins that I could barely talk in her presence. Apparently, I just made these squeaking sounds. So my first report card from Mrs. Hawkins came with a note to my parents, recommending that their son be examined for mental retardation. This was in the days before the rise of politically correct terms like, “developmentally delayed” or “mentally challenged.”

It’s funny, now that I think about it, but my puzzled parents were not laughing at the time. The one thing of which they were certain was that their beamish boy was not mentally retarded. After all, I had learned to read and write well before entering school.

But my parents acceded to Mrs. Hawkins suggestion and I was duly tested. The tests revealed I was not a moron at all, but actually quite advanced for my age. I do not know how Mrs. Hawkins reacted to this news because my parents promptly negotiated my transfer to another school and I never saw her again.

I finished the first grade at Salazar School where I did far better under the kind tutelage of Mrs. Theresa Campora, may God bless her. As it turned out, I managed to successfully finish the first grade, the rest of elementary school, then graduate from St. Michael’s High School, get a college degree, then a law degree. I even managed to carve out a successful career in the law profession, serving as a trial judge for many years.

For a long time, I resented Mrs. Hawkins and her hasty and mistaken diagnosis. I even felt a little sorry for myself as a kid tagged as retarded right out of the box. But, after reading the 1966 article, I realized my complaint against Mrs. Hawkins was rather weak in comparison to another of her victims – her own daughter.

You see, the article disclosed that Tillie Hawkins had named her child Clara Belle. This child went through life, until she married Mr. Tim Taylor of Albuquerque, as Clara Belle Hawkins. The poor kid.

Call me a moron, but she’s the one I feel sorry for.

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1957 - Stealing Home

Like almost every 10-year old boy in Santa Fe in the summer of 1957, I was crazy about baseball.

I’d play every day, all day, until the dark sent me home. Each night, I would faithfully oil my fielder’s mitt and bind it tightly with a baseball inside to achieve the perfect pocket. I wore my baseball hat with a slight dent on the crown just like my hero, Mickey Mantle. I followed the Yankees in the papers and I never missed a game on TV. I was so baseball crazy that I actually kept an official score book for each game I saw. I was a true believer.

You know, there’s an Abbott and Costello routine where Lou says he’s a ballplayer but Abbott doesn’t believe it and says so. Lou says, “I eat baseball, I live baseball – all night when I’m asleep I dream about baseball. Abbott asks, “Don’t you ever dream about girls?” Costello is shocked: “What? And miss my turn at bat!” Well, that’s what I felt about baseball.

But it was my fate to be a mediocre player, more enthusiastic than talented, and thus eligible only for the “minors” in Little League. The minor leagues teams were typically sponsored not by well-known Santa Fe businesses like Creamland Dairy or Santa Fe Motor Company but by lesser-known entities like the Eagles Club or St. Ann’s Parish Church.

To be in the minors meant only a hat and T-shirt for uniforms. To be in the minors meant that I rarely played on the beautiful grass fields on what is now Salvador Perez Park, equipped with dugouts and real fences, even stands for the fans. And concession booths and paved parking. To be in the minors meant I played on the dirt fields, with a wire backstop and spotty base lines chalked on the dust. I didn’t really mind. I was happy just to be on the team.

At the time, I lived on Acres Estates, well down Airport Road. The “estates” amounted to a strip of dirt road, thinly lined by homes of miscellaneous architecture but otherwise surrounded by vacant land. Today, it’s a street called Jemez Road, it’s paved and my old house has been turned into a motor scooter sales shop.

Back then the players always included me, my brother Gene, Ray Lovato, Joe Burton and his brother Jimmy, Ronnie Mascarenas, Jimmy and Tommy Poehler, sometimes Ralph Anstey, Johnny Sandoval and Jimmy Hall. We made a baseball field on a good flat spot in the field next to Cosme Lovato’s house. Johnny Sandoval’s older brother used a tractor to scrape out a diamond for us. The bases were potato sacks filled with sand, which, after a while, became just potato sacks. But it worked just fine.

Before I go further, I feel obliged to introduce the history portion of today’s post. Hang on because it somehow ties in. Here’s the history:

In 1883, a prison was built near Santa Fe, intentionally far away from the town. But by the 1950’s, the City had grown and “The Pen” was surrounded by houses and shopping centers. Roughly, it occupied the northeast corner of the intersection of Cordova Road and St. Francis Drive, where the Joseph Montoya Building now stands. Over the years, Santa Feans had been subjected to only occasional scares over escaped prisoners and other trouble at the penitentiary but it all changed in 1952.

In 1952, prison guard named Filemon Ortiz was mysteriously murdered in a cellblock with 78 inmates all locked safely behind bars. Ortiz was the first guard to be killed in the pen’s 69-year history. After a bit of rigorous interrogation by police chief A. B. Martinez, two inmates confessed to killing Ortiz in a failed escape attempt, Homer Lee Gossett, a lifer for murder, and Donald Maynard, in jail for escape.

While the Ortiz murder was still being investigated, an uprising took place at the Pen. A dozen State Penitentiary inmates surprised a guard, held him at knifepoint, and armed themselves with rifles and shotguns from the guard’s office. The inmates took over Cell Block Two and seized eight prison guards as hostages. Within an hour, 150 law enforcement officers surrounded the State Penitentiary and the siege began.

Inmate Claudis “Sonny Boy” Williamson, described by the newspaper as the Negro ringleader, demanded a car and the gates of the penitentiary to be opened. Sounds more like a comedy act than a plan, if you ask me. One car, twelve inmates – it would have been interesting to see that.

After 18 tense hours of negotiation with prison officials, the siege ended in a bargain. The hostages were released, shaken but unhurt. The inmates then surrendered on the promise they wouldn’t be put in the “hole.” The “hole” was a bare concrete cell under the prison next to the boilers. Apparently, inmates found it uncomfortable.

For nearly two days, the City had lived in fear and with some cause. A dozen desperate men, armed with rifles and shotguns, in the middle of the city. Interestingly, the inmates never used their weapons at all. One inmate caught some buckshot from a guard’s shotgun early in the action. And a New Mexico state trooper was accidentally shot by a Santa Fe City police officer. The injury was not serious but, damn, that had to be embarrassing.

The ensuing investigation into the uprising turned up corruption among prison officials and guards and credible allegations of sex perversions, wide open gambling and marijuana smoking among the convicts. Heads rolled, among them Warden Joseph Tondre who resigned rather than be fired.

Hardly had Santa Fe calmed down from the siege at the penitentiary when two convicts working at the State Pen’s dairy barn simply walked away from the grounds. Lloyd Wardwell, con artist, and Homer Glass, thief, found their way into Santa Fe where they cashed a worthless check, cheekily giving the prison warden as a reference. They then visited four bars, bought some new clothes and checked into La Fonda Hotel where they were finally apprehended, sitting comfortably in their suite, sipping fine bourbon. It was 23-year old Richard Montoya, a rookie on the city police force who got the tip and he, along with patrolman Felix Lujan and Hotel Detective Earl Fordham, made the arrests. It was not difficult; the two escapees were too drunk to resist or even make any coherent statements. The newspaper reported that Lloyd Wardwell managed to say “I’m a G-d- chump and I feel like one.”

1952 was a tough year for the State Penitentiary: murder, riot, corruption and a suite at La Fonda Hotel. The State Legislature met in 1953 and the decision was made to close down the old prison and build a new, modern prison about 15 miles south of town. This took some time and by 1957, only the outer walls of the old prison still stood, though badly crumbling. The large outer grounds of the Penitentiary had been cleared and the City of Santa was given permission to install badly needed Little League baseball fields.

These “prison” fields were the same dirt fields I played on as a “minor” in 1957. I spent many a summer day in the shadow of the old Penitentiary playing baseball or watching baseball. Idling between games one day, a few of us began exploring the prison walls and spotted a way in. As the smallest boy in the group, I was hoisted onto Joe Burton’s shoulders just high enough for me to scramble to the top of the wall. From my vantage point I could see the razed foundations of several buildings, some piles of lumber or debris and little else.

But directly below me, I recognized the familiar outline of a baseball diamond, long abandoned and shorn of bases and backstop. But there, still in its rightful place, was a home plate, a genuine official baseball home plate. I could almost swear it was glowing in the dusk.

When I reported the find, the same idea leapt into each of our baseball-fevered brains – we had to have that home plate. For the next game, we smuggled a length of rope and some miscellaneous tools into the equipment bag. We gathered at the break in the wall and I was once again hoisted onto the wall and, armed with a handful of tools, I shinnied down the rope to the prison baseball field.

Removing home plate was a bit of a puzzle. After digging around the plate, I found a thick metal pin protruding from the bottom of the plate, a pin which fit into a hollow anchor set into the ground with a bit of concrete. The pin and sleeve were held together with a thoroughly rusted cotter pin. After banging on the cotter pin for a while without success, I discovered the concrete crumbled with just a few hammer blows and within minutes, the plate was free.

I tied the plate to the rope and gave the rope three sharp tugs, the signal to haul away and home plate quickly disappeared over the wall. It seemed a very long while before the rope reappeared and I had a lengthy opportunity to ponder the high surrounding walls. So this is what it was like to be in prison, I remember thinking. When the rope came within reach, I climbed up as quickly as I could and escaped from the old Penitentiary.

The next day, our new home plate was ceremoniously installed in our own neighborhood baseball field and it became a point of pride that our field, shabby as it was, sported an official major league home plate.

Our family moved to Sombrio Street in 1959 and I never went back to our old field and I have no idea whatever happened to our prized home plate. My Little League career was not particularly noteworthy and I ended it where I started it – in the minors. But Ray Lovato, Joe Burton and my brother Gene – made the majors on their first try and were named all-stars three years in a row. I like to think that the penitentiary home plate had something to do with it.

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