Bill Aragon

A TRUE FRIEND & NEIGHBOR

Honored October, 1986

Bill Aragon

Bill Aragon graduated from high school in the mining town of Silverton, Colorado in 1925. There were five girls and two boys in his graduating class. Unbeknownst to the two boys, the district named them as rival candidates for West Point. When Bill found out, he took himself out of the running.

"It would take an extra bunch of money I didn't have," he recalled. And his big family, with two ailing sisters, needed him. With typical good will, he raised money to send his classmate to the Academy.

Solidarity or simply friendship, he'd call it, has always been his guiding principle, a beacon to his neighbors on Santa Fe's west side. He came through town for the first time in 1931, after several years in the Colorado mines. He was on his way to Arizona, when he ran into the foreman of the Terrero mine (above Pecos) in a Santa Fe restaurant and was offered a job. "Great news! We'd made Santa Fe," was his reaction.