Explore Local History: Santa Fe Living Treasures

Honored October 2006

Donna Quasthoff was born in 1924 in Chicago, one of the most architecturally stimulating cities on Earth. She acquired a first-rate education in art and architecture, first at the Chicago Institute of Art, then with advanced studies in Paris. For a time she taught and practiced her craft in New York. But then, as she likes to say, she had the good sense to move to New Mexico while still young. New Mexico and Santa Fe have benefited from her decision ever since.

A few of Donna's accomplishments after her arrival in 1954 include: the bronze statue of Fray Angélico Chávez outside the state history library that bears his name; the imposing...

Honored October 2006

In his youth, Manuel B. Ortiz never participated in Boy Scouting. In fact, he remained unacquainted with it until February 1999, nine months before his retirement from the accounting and auditing section of the New Mexico Department of Transportation. Only then, in order to help provide a father figure for two young sons of a woman friend, did he become involved in Scouting. Yet by now, just seven years later, he has been given the Silver Beaver Award, the highest honor that the Boy Scouts of America can bestow.

Along the way, Manny (as he prefers to be called by everyone, including the boys with whom he works), has led more than 40 of his young char...

Honored November 2004

When their first son, Budge, was born to Marjorie and Henry Muth, they were as thrilled as any other parents. Not until a second son came did they see that there was a sharp difference between the learning capability of the boys. They had Budge tested. The diagnosis: “developmentally disabled.”

There were no public educational opportunities for the retarded in the late 1940s, so Marjorie and her husband enrolled Budge in a private school. To pay for it, she did something she had vowed not to do: She became a teacher. “I'll never teach!” she had said upon graduating from Rockford College in Illinois and Kansas University, with...

Honored November 2004

“A favorite daughter of the Agua Fria community.” That phrase is essential to the tribute paid by friends and neighbors to Melinda Romero Pike. As much or more than anything else, this small and distinct township on Santa Fe’s western edge has shaped the person she is—and few people have ever given back more.

An amateur historian, she has diligently learned the story of Agua Fria, and spoken and written about it many times. She has fought to preserve the unique identity of Agua Fria, where she has lived all her life. She has traced her own family’s history back through six generations, and has kept alive the legacy of h...

Honored October 2004

As a young girl taking elementary classes at the San Juan Day School on her native pueblo, Geronima Cruz so dreaded being shipped off to the Santa Fe Indian School that she purposely tried to flunk. Her ruse failed, however, and she was taken in a horse-drawn wagon to SFIS in 1927, at the age of 12. Her premonitions proved true: The students were not allowed to speak their own languages, and Geronima was miserable. She even tried to run away and return home, but was sent back to SFIS. But then something wonderful happened: The school got a new administration with an enlightened outlook. When Geronima graduated in 1935, she was class valedictorian and had doz...