From the Past to the Present
By Ruth Vise
Adrianna Alatorre and Ruth Vise.
A few months ago, Borderlands had three editors and a summer target
publication date. One after another, my editors disappeared, victims of
personal disasters, and we were left with one student editor and me. So
Adrianna Alatorre, returning to edit her third issue, and I have limped
along, doing everything that usually takes several people. Thanks,
Adrianna, for taking time from your first semester of nursing school at
UTEP to complete work on Borderlands. I am grateful to faculty editors
Joe Old and Lou Vest for reading and commenting on the stories in this
issue.
Over the years I have been blessed with talented, devoted students as
editors. This fall I had dinner with two former editors, both of whom
are now teachers in El Paso schools, and they still spoke with
enthusiasm and affection of working on this writing project. I remember
the first semester they sat in my class. After reading their first
essays, I knew they were special. They excelled in my English research
course and in all their other classes, obtaining their teaching degrees
at UTEP. They both now direct their own classrooms with ease and grace.
As we excitedly exchanged classroom experiences, I looked with such
pride and pleasure at the professionals they had become. And I see
Adrianna doing the same thing in the medical field.
This issue features three stories on border pioneering families that
were written by relatives, students who are two, three and more
generations removed. Several years ago as a student in my English 1302
class, Ken Kurita III researched the coming of Japanese families to El
Paso, and his paper provided the base for this topic. We are featuring
two stories on the Japanese in early El Paso that Ken’s research
inspired.
Evan Karam and Belinda Alvarez researched family members who dedicated
their lives to helping develop El Paso and Juarez in the early 20th
century and whose influence is still alive in our community:
Ted Karam
and Rómulo Escobar. What fun it was to find that student editor Adrianna Alatorre and Belinda Alvarez are related to Escobar and thus to each
other. The two students had not known one another before this
serendipitous discovery. It turns out that our editor’s grandmother
helped to transcribe the agricultural encyclopedia that brought
Adrianna’s uncle so much recognition.
Our featured articles are on Hillsboro, N. M., once a thriving gold
mining town, and Canutillo, Texas, a quiet but fiercely independent town
on the edge of El Paso. Today Hillsboro is home to only a couple hundred
residents. Canutillo, on the other hand, is growing in many ways, with
new home construction, a beautiful new high school and an outlet mall
just opened in October.
In addition, this past fall the Northwest Campus of El Paso Community
College, in partnership with Canutillo Independent School District,
broke ground on an early college high school to open in 2008. Entering
freshmen in this school will earn in four years not only their high
school diploma but two years of college credits from EPCC. This
accelerated academic concept is growing rapidly throughout the country,
and EPCC already has two early college high schools functioning at
Mission del Paso and Valle Verde campuses.
This issue is dedicated to Monica Wong and Joe Old, two EPCC
professionals and stalwart supporters of Borderlands throughout the
years. Without you two, producing Borderlands would be much more
difficult and not nearly as enjoyable. Thanks for your
encouragement and hard work, Monica and Joe!
Ruth E. Vise, Project Director and Faculty Editor
Adiranna. "From the Past to the Present." Borderlands 26
(2007-2008): 2.
Borderlands. EPCC Libraries.
<http://www.epcc.edu/nwlibrary/borderlands>Page last updated:
Adrianna Alatorre and Ruth Vise. Over the years I have been blessed with talented, devoted students as editors. This fall I had dinner with two former editors, both of whom are now teachers in El Paso schools, and they still spoke with enthusiasm and affection of working on this writing project. I remember the first semester they sat in my class. After reading their first essays, I knew they were special. They excelled in my English research course and in all their other classes, obtaining their teaching degrees at UTEP. They both now direct their own classrooms with ease and grace. As we excitedly exchanged classroom experiences, I looked with such pride and pleasure at the professionals they had become. And I see Adrianna doing the same thing in the medical field.
This issue features three stories on border pioneering families that were written by relatives, students who are two, three and more generations removed. Several years ago as a student in my English 1302 class, Ken Kurita III researched the coming of Japanese families to El Paso, and his paper provided the base for this topic. We are featuring two stories on the Japanese in early El Paso that Ken’s research inspired.
Evan Karam and Belinda Alvarez researched family members who dedicated their lives to helping develop El Paso and Juarez in the early 20th century and whose influence is still alive in our community: Ted Karam and Rómulo Escobar. What fun it was to find that student editor Adrianna Alatorre and Belinda Alvarez are related to Escobar and thus to each other. The two students had not known one another before this serendipitous discovery. It turns out that our editor’s grandmother helped to transcribe the agricultural encyclopedia that brought Adrianna’s uncle so much recognition.
Our featured articles are on Hillsboro, N. M., once a thriving gold mining town, and Canutillo, Texas, a quiet but fiercely independent town on the edge of El Paso. Today Hillsboro is home to only a couple hundred residents. Canutillo, on the other hand, is growing in many ways, with new home construction, a beautiful new high school and an outlet mall just opened in October.
In addition, this past fall the Northwest Campus of El Paso Community College, in partnership with Canutillo Independent School District, broke ground on an early college high school to open in 2008. Entering freshmen in this school will earn in four years not only their high school diploma but two years of college credits from EPCC. This accelerated academic concept is growing rapidly throughout the country, and EPCC already has two early college high schools functioning at Mission del Paso and Valle Verde campuses.
This issue is dedicated to Monica Wong and Joe Old, two EPCC professionals and stalwart supporters of Borderlands throughout the years. Without you two, producing Borderlands would be much more difficult and not nearly as enjoyable. Thanks for your encouragement and hard work, Monica and Joe!
Ruth E. Vise, Project Director and Faculty Editor
Adiranna. "From the Past to the Present." Borderlands 26
(2007-2008): 2.
Borderlands. EPCC Libraries.
<http://www.epcc.edu/nwlibrary/borderlands>Page last updated: