Martha, Bebe & Sissy, Ft. Davis
We welcome LareDOS! It is good to have this unique and outstanding voice speaking again.
Much has occurred in the last two years to change everyone’s life. Our lives changed when our sister Martha died after a brief time of illness. When a loss is unexpected, time becomes one of the only ways to come to grips with the loss. We three sisters were very close all of our lives, and we experienced together much of what made up the foundations of our lives.
Our parents, Grandma, and Aunt Mary gave us history, prehistory, art, nature, animals wild and domestic, and even the know-how to work with our hands. We can swing a hammer, raise a cow or chicken and handle a paintbrush on a canvas or clay on a throwing wheel.
Martha was our leader in every endeavor and spurred us on to produce better and better results. She would not accept half-done or poorly constructed.
She had a million ideas. She loved discovering something new.
In our young days we were fortunate to live where we explored huge fossils, geodes, wildlife of all sizes, birds, plants, soils (with dirt storms boiling up over the mountains and catching us before we could race our horses home) and history from original settlers who were still alive. Our parents were interested in the old days in West Texas and sought out the settlers’ life stories. We were present to hear those stories and got the point that they were very important.
Our own family kept its history intact and the Maverick Ranch-Fromme Farm was a huge part of it.
We three and several of Martha’s friends with horses made up a pack of riders who ranged through town and along the creek for miles. Martha’s horse, Pat, was a pink sorrel roping horse and also a top barrel racer. Martha could do anything with Pat. Sissy’s horse, Lee, was a beautiful retired ranch horse about ten feet tall with a short temper when provoked. He bit Martha one day just for riding a bit too close. Bebe’s horse, Sam Apache, was also an ex-ranch horse and calmer.
One summer Papa bought an old buggy and a friend’s father loaned us his small mule named Pavo to pull it. Martha was the first to drive with Papa teaching how to hold the reins and maneuver. We learned to know where our wheels were at all times which probably helped when learning to drive a car.
When we moved into San Antonio life changed radically. We had to learn to maneuver in a city and how to find our ways in a huge school. Martha immediately did well scholastically and found art classes very rewarding. She won a contest to design the cover of the school telephone directory – a couple of bucking mules. She always drew horses and there are many sketchbooks filled with them showing her progress through a lifetime. When she doodled, she drew horses.
In college Martha excelled in painting because she was interested in color and all its facets. She discovered jewelry making in her junior year and that is where she spent the rest of her college time. She was a very fine jeweler. She had such skill with her hands and with delicate finger work could fashion small detailed pieces. She continued to study new techniques and take workshops with visiting jewelers to the end of her life.
After graduation from the University of Texas with a BFA, Martha taught potential dropout students in junior high in the San Antonio School District. She saw how art affected the lives of her students, and with a few art teacher friends she began Saturday Morning Discovery in the late 1960s. District teachers were encouraged to bring their most at risk students, and community craftsmen and artists set up tables with supplies for the students to work. The response was immediate and tremendous. Teachers reported their students were changed people, feeling they had a stake in something at last.
When Martha became director of the Southwest Craft Center, she moved Saturday Morning Discovery to the Southwest Craft Center campus. It was a sight to see the students ranging all over the yard working on their projects. The program continues to this day.
Martha was the first director of the Southwest Craft Center which began in the old Ursuline Academy in downtown San Antonio. She organized and ran the classes, hired excellent craftsmen to teach, and brought in nationally-known craftsmen to give workshops.
She received her MFA from University of Texas San Antonio where her concentration was painting. She was a teaching assistant her last year.
In 1983 Martha moved to Laredo to take the art professorship at Laredo Junior College, later renamed Laredo Community College. At that time she was the only full time art professor. By the time she stepped down as chairman, the department had grown to include many full time and adjunct professors. She was very proud of Laredo Community College Department of Art, and she loved her students most of all.
Martha was deeply interested in Laredo’s history and the history of the Borderlands, and early on she discovered the Webb County Heritage Foundation. She spent some of her most cherished time working with that organization. She helped start the Villa De San Agustin de Laredo Chapter of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas and was a member of the Pan American Round Table chapter in Laredo. Her friends were dear to her and included students, fellow faculty members and those of her organizations. Laredo provided her endless interests.
Laredo is a special place for us thanks to Martha who paved the way, made the best friends of her life there and included us in her many interests.
