Santa Fe Living Treasures – Elder Stories

Amalia has warm memories of childhood summers spent in her grandfather's summer home in Tesuque, where the foundry Shidoni is now located. "They were some of the happiest days of my life," she says. "There was a chapel there but no priest in Tesuque. The trees are still there. Our friends were all from the pueblos."

When the influenza epidemic of 1918 struck, Amalia was teaching elementary school. She organized a soup kitchen so those who were well could cook and bring food to those who were sick. After teaching at Manderfield School for two years, she married Manuel Sanchez at Immaculate Conception in Albuquerque and traveled with her new husband, an engineer, to the Guggenheim mines outside Chihuahua. There she became bored with only her needlework to occupy her and went to work as a teacher's aide in the village school. The activities of Pancho Villa drove the Sanchezes home to Santa Fe, where Manuel studied law and opened his practice in 1924. They built a home on Garcia Street in 1922, where Amalia lived the rest of her life.

Please see Volume 1 for complete text.
Photo ©1997 by Joanne Rijmes