Tales from the Morgue

Flag Goes Up Over Camp EP In Korea

July 5, 1968

It would surprise few Texans to see the Lone Star State flag flying over El Paso, but to Texans at Camp El Paso, Korea, one recent flag raising ceremony must have been a heart warming event.

On May 15 the 5-by-3 foot Texas flag, a gift from El Paso Chamber of Commerce, joined Old Glory, the Korean and United Nations command banners flying above the headquarters of A Battery, 4th Battalion, 44th Artillery.

Present at the flag raising ceremony were numerous Texans, among them El Pasoans Pfc. Raymond R. Herrera, 425 Gateway; M.Sgt. Hampton C. Gabler Jr., 10173 Rushing, and Second Lt. Donnie L. Pruitt, 2404 Gairlock.

The commanding officer of A Battery, First Lt. Michael L. Measels, of Austin, Tex., said that the gift of the Texas flag reflected the traditional friendliness of Texans and the goodwill of El Paso citizens for the 4th battalion.

Lt. Col. Richard A. Rein, commander of the 4th Battalion, was stationed at Ft. Bliss from 1958 to 1960, and replacements for the unit are most often Ft. Bliss trained missilemen.

Camp El Paso is nestled between a 1,300 foot peak and a narrow valley dotted with green terraced rice paddies. Chinchon, a typical Korean village, is located about a mile below the camp. The village boasts of only one night club and the name of the night spot is the Juarez Club.

The unit was activated as Nike-Ajax battery at Ft. Bliss in August, 1958, and a month later was converted into a Nike-Hercules battery. The six batteries comprising the 4th Battalion left Ft. Bliss in November, 1960, for deployment to Korea.

Villa’s Widow – Secrets In Her Eyes

June 12, 1977

By Tom Butler
El Paso Times

CIUDAD CHIHUAHUA, Mexico – She is in her 95th summer now, and a crippling pain has settled in her legs, but those old eyes are as lively and bright as when she was a young girl dancing.

There is a mischief there, and the merriment of mariachis, and a wisdom as mutely eloquent as the blue and red and silver Sacred Heart above the bed she might never leave again.

Dona Maria Luz Corral Viuda de Villa has secrets in her eyes and in the gold-flecked brown of them you can see the reflected forget-me-nots of revolutionary campfires.

It was in July 1923 that a firebrand bandit by the name of Francisco Villa, a hero of a revolution that altered history, was shot to death in the driver’s seat of a 1919 Dodge traveling through the dust of Hidalgo del Parral, Chihuahua.

He is nearly a saint now, canonized by war and the affection of the poor, and the only woman who ever got him to the altar has outlived the eight others he took to his bed in what passed in those days for wedlock.

Is there satisfaction in that for this proud woman who once moved alone to San Antonio rather than share Pancho’s Canutillo home with the other wives?

“I would have changed nothing,” she says in the joyful noise of a voice that has music in it still, the song the wind plays among the lonesome, naked hills.

“Six decades have not diminished her love,” wrote Jose Vasconcelos in his preface to Dona Luz’ 1948 memoir, Pancho Villa en la Intimidad. “He was everything in her life.”

“I am sitting in front of a window through which pour the tired rays of a passing winter. I am in front of the window; through its panes I can see the shoulder of a mountain called Santa Rosa.”

-Pancho Villa en la Intimidad

Dona Luz sits today, as well, before a window, this one opening onto the sun-caressed courtyard of the rambling home Pancho bequeathed to her at 3014 Calle Decima in Chihuahua City.

If she leans far forward from the side of the overstuffed bed to which she is confined now, she can see the plump, inedible bitter fruit hanging voluptuously from a spreading orange tree.

She does not have to lean forward at all to behold the curious faces of tourists who cluster outside the window, like puppets in a mad Punch and Judy, to stare at this monument of a woman and thrust in their scraps of paper for her spider’s-scrawl of an autograph.

A few of the more lobotomized push their way into the bedroom itself, chattering like magpies, cameras clicking and flashing, stealthy fingers exploring the private bric-a-brac of a lifetime.

It is a horrifying spectacle, this rude assault on a stately lady’s privacy, reminiscent of the blood-curdling scene in Zorba the Greek when the cackling crones of a Cretan village ransack the exiled matron’s room even as she lied dying, watching them in furious, terminal helplessness.

But Dona Luz seems not to object to the daily intrusions. The autographs flow at a rate of perhaps 5,000 a month, and the gracious smile accommodates every flashcube.

After all, her home is a museum with a five-peso (25-cent) admission fee, and this is how she makes her living. What can one say to a visitor who has paid for the privilege of poking about in the hallowed detritus of a legend?

***

“To pay homage to a woman who dedicates herself to the defense of her husband’s name, it is not necessary to be a revolutionary.”

- Nemesia Garcia Naranjo

On foot, by van and coach and private car, the tourist begin arriving before 9 a.m., their day structured around visits to Chihuahua’s most popular shrines the Casa Villa and the Cruz Blanca brewery.

From the street, the Villa home is large but unprepossessing. Its sand-colored façade flush with the elevated sidewalk, flanked by a presidio of hovels and something called The Rock Shop, 3014 Calle Decima more resembles an abandoned Honduran consulate than the Lourdes of the Mexican revolution.

Once inside, however, one steps back 60 years or more in an instant, to a rough-and-tumble time of internecine turmoil when Pancho Villa was, in the opinion of a contemporary historian, “surely one of the 10 most important men in the world.”

To the left is a small study-like room that serves as the museum office. It is furnished in dark, heavy period style, and its walls are plastered with yellowing photographs and copper-plate daguerreotypes, many of them of the rebel himself at war.

To the right, a shabby Louis XV salon that has seen better days is dominated by a wedding portrait of Pancho and Luz. She appears rather stern and substantial, as though having just caught a preview of perdition. In one corner is a small arsenal of Mausers, pistols and bandoliers of ammunition.

On another wall hangs a photograph of Villa and fellow rebel general Emiliano Zapata, taken shortly after they and their men captured Mexico City in July 1914. They are shown in the throne room of the presidential palace, each having just occupied the seat of power for 10 minutes to demonstrate that either could serve as president. Neither ever did.

Straight ahead, beyond the cracked title vestibule, is the sunny courtyard, overlooked on two sides by two-story residences where Villa’s 50 bodyguards lived during the turbulent post-revolutionary years when the bandit chieftain is said – by historians apparently dismissing the War of 1812 – to have become the only foreigner ever to wage war on the United States within its own boundaries.

Following Villa’s famous raid on Columbus, N.M., in 1916, President Woodrow Wilson sent an army unit under Brig. Gen. John J. Pershing to capture him. For months the two generals and their forces engaged in a bizarre military minuet across the barren ballroom of Chihuahua, but they never met in combat.

In a small stone shed in one corner of the courtyard, all but consumed now by the rust of neglect, is the open Dodge touring car in which Pancho Villa died, initially paralyzed by a bullet that passed through both arms, then felled forever by a fusillade of shots that wrecked his skull.

The bullet holes in the sides of the car are large enough to pass lime through.

But that is all history, musty and slightly soiled and perhaps not quite real to many of those who come here. To be sure, it is the old woman they have come to see. She is the link with it all …

***

It is a bright Sunday morning, alive with the buzz of dive-bombing insects and the clang of cathedral bells. Small boys are at play in the street as Alfredo Gonzalez, who operates a tourist agency out of the lobby of the Hotel Victoria, stops by to visit with his old friend, Dona Luz.

He pauses in the Louis XV salon to admire the famous photograph of Villa on horseback pounding across the Mexican desert. It is the one you sell in all history books and encyclopedias.

“He didn’t have any infantry, you know, just cavalry and artillery,” says Gonzalez. “On a horse he was a great general, but on foot he was just another Francisco.”

Gonzalez’ eyes dart around the room he has visited so many times, and he shakes his head sadly. “It is a crime what has happened here. People will steal anything, just pick it up and walk away with it, and there’s nothing she can do about it. I have no idea how much has been taken from here.”

Dona Luz’ face creases with pleasure as Gonzalez knocks and enters her bedroom, chasing out a gaggle of tourist with a machine-gun burst of angry Spanish. She is sitting up in bed and offers a cheek to be kissed.

“Have you been behaving yourself?” Gonzalez asks. The old lady giggles like a girl but does not answer. Gonzalez explains that she does not talk too much in front of strangers.

“Tell us about your fling with Lara,” he says, nodding toward a large framed photograph of Agustin Lara, the renowned composer, singer, orchestra leader and womanizer. Dona Luz giggles again and shakes her head, rolling her eyes mysteriously.

Informed that Dona Luz lives alone in the rambling house, reputed to contain more than 90- rooms, visitor wants to know who cares for her and prepares her food.

“Oh, I have no family of my own,” she replies, “but I have many families.”

Gonzalez explains: “She allows some widows and their children to live here. They are supposed to be widows of the revolution, but there are a lot of them in their 20s and 30s. She just can’t say no to anyone. She doesn’t charge them anything, but in return for their homes they look after her.”

Dona Luz, one learns, also supports an orphanage for 50 young girls on the other side of town. All this philanthropy seems to come out of her own pocketbook, although now that her late husband has been proclaimed an official Hero of Mexico she is presumably entitled to a pension.

Dona Luz’ relations with her government have been less than cordial since Mexico City turned down her proposal that the Calle Decima home be converted into a hotel under national patronage.

“I am just going to stay here until I die,” she declared. “Then they can have it to do with what they want. But not before.”

And that will be the end of something very rare. The faded photographs and the mementos and the rusting automobile, even the bitter oranges, will endure for a time, but the life will have gone out of the legend.

There will be no one left who remembers how it was …

No more young girls dancing.

Hilton’s Youthful Dreams Realized In Hotel System

November 6, 1930

FIRST HOTEL HE OPERATED HAD 5 ROOMS

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History of Today’s Big Organization Like Romance

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There were two trains a day – or a night, rather, for one arrived at 1 a.m., the other at 3 a.m. They didn’t pay much attention to the little town of San Antonio, N.M.; but, whenever they stopped, Connie N. Hilton was glad. It probably meant a customer for his little five-room adobe hotel.

C.N. was then a very young man – younger than most hotel keepers, for that was more than 30 years ago.

His father, A.H. Hilton, sturdy pioneer, had forged into the New Mexico country, and at San Antonio, had built the rambling adobe structure which he called the Hilton hotel. One end served as the family home. At the other end was a store, the Hilton Mercantile company. In the middle were the rooms which were the Hilton hotel.

Good for the store were brought in by mule.

Father Had System idea

To the pioneer Hilton and his wife was born the son, Connie, in San Antonio. The elder Hilton, failing to find the gold and silver which had lured him, adventuring, westward in the eighties, did find his niche in the scheme of things westerns as a hotel proprietor and merchant. The idea of owning more than one establishment under the same management – now a common thing all over the land – came to the older Hilton like an inspiration.

He saw the town of Socorro needing a merchant. He moved up there with the family.

But what to do with the hotel at San Antonio?

A.H. Hilton, the father, called in Connie.

“Son” he said, “you’re going to stay here. You are going to be a hotel man and run this hotel.”

That suited the boy.

Every dollar of profit he made was to be his. So, very early, he considered the problems of management, and he learned every angle of the business, for not only was he manager, he was “bell boy” – the “bell” consisting of a customer calling, “Hey!” he was porter, baggage man, superintendent of service, errand boy, Johnny-on-the-spot at the trains, wood cutter, cashier, auditor, purchasing agent and when dusty stages rolled up, doorman!

From Ground Up

He learned the business from the ground up – and the ground was adobe!

In his spare time, he went to school.

What dreams he dreamed! He would be a hotel man, nothing less.

Yet – sometimes – he wondered; sometimes when weighted down with heavy sample cases, he led some weary traveler at 3 a.m. to the equally little establishment which was the Hilton hotel, San Antonio, N.M.

But soon it was necessary that his hotel experience be left behind. His father was a man who appreciated the value of an education. At the proper time he decided the boy should enter St. Michael’s college in Santa Fe to complete his education.

Connie departed, to drop hotel activated for many years – but not to forget them. He had learned one great principle while still a boy:

Give the guest all you can for the least possible cost and the guest will not only come back but will speak well of you to others.

Many a traveling man of the day knew of that little hotel in San Antonio, N.M. run by a hustling kid.”

After completing the course at St. Michael’s college, Connie entered the New Mexico Military academy at Roswell, N.M. and graduated in the class of 1906. He returned to Socorro then to enter business with his father.

A.H. Hilton had by this time reaped the benefits of his vision and foresight. He had become a moderately wealthy man through his investments in mercantile establishment, land and livestock. At one time he was one of the largest buyers of mohair in the United States and he and Connie made trips throughout the whole of New Mexico trading for wool and mohair, pelts and hides.

Connie Starts Early

At the age of 21, Connie was elected a member of the legislature of New Mexico, the youngest man ever to serve as representative in the body.

He shunned politics, however, and though the Republican leaders of the state urged him toward a political career, he decided against it and devoted his entire time to development of his father’s business of which he was, both this time, the general manager.

He was engaged not only in livestock business, but also in banking, coal mining and zinc mining. While still a young man, he was head of several corporations and the acting director of business involving huge sums of money.

Then came the event that changed the lives of so many men – the war. At the first call to colors, Connie Hilton resigned all of his offices, turned over his work to his father and enlisted in the service. He entered the first officers training camp of Presidio, Calif., successfully passed the training there and was commissioned a lieutenant. It was there that he met Wm. R. Irwin, who is now vice president of the corporation, and formed with him a friendship that has lasted to this day.

After Presidio Connie was transferred to Jacksonville, Fla., and then to France, where he served until the signing of the armistice. It was a sad blow to Connie and to his future plans when his father died while he was in France and he returned after the war to find that prospects in New Mexico did not look to good.

His vision had broadened and after a few months at home, he turned toward Texas where the oil booms of 1919 were commencing.

Goes to Cisco

After looking over the different filed in the Texas oil belt, C.N. Hilton finally arrived in Cisco, Texas and there he re-entered the business which he had left some 20 years before.

The Mobeley hotel was doing a land office business. Men were paying any price for just a cot to sleep on; guest were being turned away by the dozens; the town was filled with oil prospectors and everything was booming. In the oil boom of 1919 he must have felt something like his father felt when he joined the gold prospectors of the late seventies.

At any rate, for some reason still unknown to C.N. Hilton, and for some reason which he attributes to fate, the owner of the Mobeley hotel wanted to sell out. Connie had just about decided to move on to another town, but his experience in business told him that here was a good chance for a safe and sane investment and he purchased the Mobeley hotel.

His early experience in the hotel stood him in good state; he had learned his lesson early in life and even to those boom days, his fairness to all and his desire to give everyone the best possible service at the least possible price made for him a reputation throughout the oil fields. So successful was he in his operation of the Mobeley that in 1920 he went to Fort Worth and purchased the Terminal hotel which was operated until 1921 and the Melba hotel.

Later in the year he acquired the Waldorf hotel, of Dallas in 1923 he made the last purchase of his earlier hotel operations when he purchased the Beaton hotel of Corsicana. All of these hotels were successfully operated by the Hilton Hotel company and later sold.

It was in 1923 that C.N. Hilton first developed the idea of the Minimax hotels. He had been making careful observations of hotel facilities throughout the southwest and Texas in particular. He became convinced that the idea he had in mind and which he wanted to sell to the public was something that the hotel world needed. A strictly firstclass chain of hotels; absolutely modern in every way comfortable to the last degree and offering to the public the maximum amount of service and satisfaction for the minimum cost.

With this idea firmly settled in his mind he began in 1924 the building of the first hotel of the Minimax chain, the Hilton hotel of Dallas. The Dallas Hilton was opened in August of 1925. It was successful from the first of operation; so successful in fact that soon C.N. began to continue his survey for another location for a Hilton hotel.

West Texas was booming, Hilton was impressed with the city of Abilene and after a careful study of the situation, that city was selected for the site of the second Hilton of the formulating system. The Hilton of Abilene, another modern hotel of 275 rooms was opened in September, 1927.

Waco Gets Third One

Waco, in the heart of central Texas, was selected as the next city in which a Hilton hotel should be built. The need of the city for modern hotel accommodations was strikingly evident. In July, 1926, the Waco Hilton with 200 rooms was opened another step toward the realization of Hilton’s dream.

In the meantime, Hilton was offered and accepted in March, 1926, a lease upon the Marchamn hotel of Wichita Falls. This is the only hotel in the Hilton chain which does not bear his name, but it is nevertheless Hilton operated, and important and successful unit in the “Minimax” system.

There was now a real system of hotels, not just an idea; not just a dream of accomplishment. Hilton was not content. His judgment and vision had already been vindicated in the successful operation of his group of hotels.

The acceptance of his idea by the public had eclipsed even his fondest dreams, but the was no stopping him, not time to rest on laurels won and in 1928 the building of the San Angelo, Hilton was begun. The San Angelo Hilton was the fifth and was opened only last may.

The Plainview Hilton hotel was the sixth of the Hilton system. It was made possible by the Hearty cooperation of the citizens of Plainview, who donated a bonus of $20,000 which was raised to insure the building there. It is a hotel of 100 rooms and like all Hiltons is modern throughout and well equipped.

Then the Lubbock Hilton, number seven, and now – this week – the greatest of them all, the 350-room El Paso Hilton.

Each successive unit enters the filed of competition just a little bit better equipped to serve the interest of the public. In the building of each hotel smoothing more is learned, something new is added by experience.

Well might the old Hilton hotel at San Antonio, N.M., contemplate with pardonable pride the new hotels which now bear its name; Hilton hotels, have come a long way from the adobe house by the Rio Grande, where the youthful Hilton dreamed and planned.

Council Proclaims Hilton Day
Conrad Hilton dies at 91

Conrad Hilton photo gallery  

New federal judge: Women can wear pants in courthouse

December 6, 1979

Women’s slacks have been in style for going on two decades, but they’re about to become the latest fashion at the federal courthouse.

The reason is simple: The “no pants” rule for women court employees and lawyers has been lifted by new federal Judge Harry Lee Hudspeth.

Hudspeth took over as presiding judge of the U.S. District Court in El Paso from Judge William Sessions last week. Sessions is moving to San Antonio to become chief judge of the Western District.

“I’m not sure if it was written local rule or just custom,” Hudspeth says of the dictum, “but I don’t plan to enforce it on any women in my courtroom.

“I personally am not offended by pantsuits,” the judge says, adding, “I don’t think that’s such a revolutionary attitude.”

As a matter of fact, his personal secretary always has worn pantsuits.

However, Hudspeth says he does believe in the local rule that requires male lawyers to wear coats and ties. But he says, “I’d be amenable to taking a second look” at that requirement for jurors, witnesses and spectators.

“It may be open to discussion among all the (Western District) judges,” he says.

Hudspeth says he’s not sure who nixed pants for women. Some courthouse workers say the rule came down from Chief Judge Adrian Spears, whom Sessions is to replace in February.

Spears enforced the policy on clerks and office employees who didn’t even enter the courtroom, the courthouse workers say. The district clerk manual, issued from San Antonio, includes this “policy of the court,” but it isn’t enforced In El Paso.

Normally women jurors and witnesses are not made to wear dresses, but reportedly when Spears came to El Paso, the were told to do so.

Hudspeth says the main point of a dress code is simply to ensure decorum and dignity in the court, and beyond that he’s not a stickler.

“We’re there to get justice, not for some subsidiary purpose,” he says.