[
I prepared this as a Sunday newspaper column but breaking stories took precedence. The photographs were shot on Sunday, 23 August at the celebration held by the Friends of the Taylor Monument.]
My friend J. Paul is 95.
He is surrounded by children, grandchildren, and
great-grandchildren – and on the table a photograph of his
beautiful wife, in younger days. He sowed love and concern in their
childhoods and is still reaping love and respect.
Another old friend of mine is 74. He idolizes J. Paul, who
taught him as a schoolboy. At a book-signing party a few years ago,
in the Mesilla Plaza, I watched generations of former pupils come up
to shake Paul's hand. Amazingly, he recognized them.
J. Paul is a gentleman. He is smart, funny, and sweet-natured;
but when he stands up for what he believes, he has a spine of steel.
As he finished a very full career in education, someone talked him
into running for the State Legislature. He resisted initially, then
ran, and spent nearly two decades speaking the truth as he saw it so
clearly that members of both parties called him “The Conscience of
the Legislature.”
Now, as Paul speaks, the Organs are visible through the window
behind him. I remember listening when he spoke briefly at an outdoor
press conference of Hispanic leaders calling for support for the
Monument proposal. The nearby Robledos Mountains, part of the
proposed monument, were named for an ancestor of J. Paul's. Tonight
a state official reads a tribute birthday letter to Paul signed by
Mr. and Mrs. Obama.
Paul was brought up in the country, south of here. After WWII,
he and Mary bought an old house in Mesilla. Mesilla was nothing
fancy then, just a village. J. Paul was working for NMSU. Anglo
co-workers visited the house and warned him that his children would
be brought up among Mexicans. Paul politely pointed out that he had
been brought up in just such an environment.
The mariachi who sings “Happy Birthday” mentions singing also
for Lupe Benavidez's 95
th birthday. She is the matriarch
of the family that owns Chope's. I recall photographing one of her
birthdays. I was eating supper, and one of her daughters drafted me.
I was delighted to serve.
Some folks have a quality of time and culture I respect.
Their generations intertwine like vines, growing thick and strong
with the decades. They did not arrive last year from Michigan.
The room is full of Paul's family and friends. Many are my
friends too. I photograph a man in
his seventies, kissing his infant
granddaughter, and see the 28-year-old professor he was in 1969 who
held his fiction-writing class out in the Corbett Center lobby
because classrooms were too dull. I greet a retired judge whom I
have not seen for forty years by apologizing for what I wrote about
him in the newspaper back then. (He reminds me that trial lawyers
develop thick skins.)
Watching the genuine joy and affection with which Paul greets all
these people from so many moments in his long life, I remember his
reunion at that book-signing with a schoolmate who now lived in
Hatch. They hadn't seen each other in years. With neither able to
drive, they might not get to talk again soon – or ever. I do not
see him tonight, and wonder whether they will meet again.
Paul combines love of history with openness to new ideas;
Catholic faith with progressive politics; and the wisdom of age with
youth-like joy.
Paul's beautiful house in Mesilla is a state monument that will
teach generations of children and tourists something of what life was
like in a vanished time and place.
One of Paul's daughters said that what mattered most in that
house was “the love that abided there.” I see it in Paul's eyes.
-30-
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| J. Paul contemplates J. Paul |
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| Mark contemplates his granddaughter |
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| J. Paul and Cynthia Garrett, with J. Paul |
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| Images of a loving couple |
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| Honors: a letter from the Obamas -- and the bust. |
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| Someone's gonna get a piece of cake -- |
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| -- and someone has other refreshments in mind. |
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| Looks like a serious discussion |
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| He clearly had fun. |
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| He didn't get any cake. |
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| And he damned sure didn't! |
