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And There Was Light
WHEN AFTER A YEAR'S SUSPENSION of school activities, the Juarez Stake Academy opened its doors again in September 1913, instead of eighteen faculty members and an approximate enrollment of three hundred students, there were but three teachers for high school work and three for the elementary grades. Instead of the four buildings formerly occupied, both high school and elementary students were accommodated comfortably in the Academy. Ray Oberhansley, an agricultural teacher of pre-Exodus days was principal with Ernest Hatch and Nelle Spilsbury as aides. A relatively full course was possible for the elementary grades. Only minimum essentials could be included in the high school curriculum.
In spite of hectic revolutionary conditions and hard times that followed the school never once closed its doors but kept going, often when hostile bands of armed men were in town. Shining through the struggle was a reincarnation of the spirit of the early settlers and the same hope of providing learning for their children. To the principal they looked for the same broad leadership and the school continued as the cultural center of the town. Ray Oberhansley, I. Daniel Stewart, Farley G. Eskelson and Joseph S. Fish were the young men who with courage and persistence directed school affairs during ten years of revolution.
During the tenure of Ray Oberhansley Colonia Juarez passed through its most dangerous experiences, the first of which happened the first week of school when General Maximo Castillo paid a visit. The general and his staff were met in the entrance hall, and affably escorted up the stairs to seats on the rostrum where they enjoyed an impromptu program given by the students.
As Professor Oberhansley bowed the general and his retinue out, he made a bid for protection of the building as an educational shrine so that he could go forward in an educational program that included in its benefits Mexicans, Americans, and Japanese. With a bow Castillo responded, "As long as schools such as this can be maintained in spite of existing conditions, the destiny of Mexico is assured." Turning to his men, he instructed them that on this visit or any others that might follow this school building was to be protected, and the people operating it molested as little as possible. And so the building stood undisturbed throughout the hectic years of revolutionary warfare.
Experiences of a more violent nature were to follow. Oberhansley was arrested by Manuel Gutierrez and held until ransomed by his father-in-law, E. L. Taylor, who was the coveted victim. He was undertaker as well as mourner when George Redd, a brother-in-law, died from loss of blood and shock following a ruthless shooting by a renegade thief. He experienced dangers that threatened the town when John Hatch, in self-defense, caused the death of Guadalupe Treviso, and a maddened native populace sought to avenge an imaginary wrong. He suffered the same spasm of anguish that racked all when Castillo's orders resulted in the death by suffocation and burning of fifty-five helpless men, women and children, although not colonists, in the Cumbre Tunnel disaster. He was apprehensive when natives, who in pre-Exodus days had been friends and neighbors, such as Camilo Acosta and son Florencio, were arrested and executed and he contrived clever defenses against blame should enemies try to saddle responsibility onto the colonists. He was alarmed, then amused by the battle waged in and near town at daybreak when Carranzistas put to flight Manuel Gutierrez only to make of him a more wily nuisance.