BY NORMAN ROZEFF
It was in 2008 that the society received a whole host of Stuart Place artifacts from the Weslaco Museum. They had been mistakenly donated to this museum in the belief that they related to W. E. Stewart, a founder of Weslaco.
The society then placed a number of these Stuart family items on permanent loan to the Stuart Place Elementary School where they are on display in the main entrance lobby.
These include one brass desk plate inscribed “Mr. Stuart”; an 8 1/2 x 10 ½ inch glass frame holding the photograph of O. E. (Otis Edmond) Stuart; a 12 ½ x 15 inch glass frame holding the photograph of Robert Terry Stuart; three report cards from the 1920s; A twelve inch tall silver-plated loving cup donated by Stuart Place for first place exhibit winners in the Valley Mid-Winter Fair; an eleven inch over sized glass goblet inscribed “O. E. Stuart”; and two photos of early elementary school classes.
The Centennial Committee began to form and operate in 2008. In September 2008 the society received permission from it to conduct a centennial City Flag Design Contest open to both school students and the public. Assisting in the judging would be the Harlingen Art Forum. The winning flag design was submitted by Troy Zurovic of San Benito.
The Centennial programs as a whole were a rousing success. Especially interesting was a program held at the Harlingen Municipal Auditorium when a time capsule that had been buried in front of City Hall during the diamond anniversary of the city in 1960 was opened by Mayor Chris Boswell. It had been ceremoniously delivered by the Harlingen Police Department as suspense built from a video feed shown to the audience.
The culmination of many events that had taken place was the arrival of a giant steam locomotive belonging to the Union Pacific Railroad. The huge engine was a feast for camera bugs, and town’s people were thrilled to clamor aboard the attached antique passenger cars. A number of camera people positioned themselves near the 1905 Arroyo Colorado Railroad Bridge in order to get photos of an historic train crossing an historic bridge.
The Heritage Festival was conducted on 5/21-28/ 2010 at the museum. The theme was the Harlingen Centennial. Society members offered considerable input to the drafting of Eileen Mattei’s definitive centennial book, At the Crossroads: Harlingen’s First 100 Years, 1910-2010. This book is still available for purchase at the Harlingen Arts and Heritage Museum store.
In 2009 the society and the Harlingen Library received one of 3000 national awards from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. It was Connecting to Collections Bookshelf, a core set of conservation books, DVDs, and online resources.
This resource material would aid staff and volunteers in preserving aging paper, especially newsprint, material in the Library Archives.
With each passing year the society shrank in membership and community participation.
The reasons for this were several. First was the realization that the initial membership was largely older people. These were often first generation Harlingenites whose parents had come to early Harlingen to initiate businesses, farming, and service professions.
Both Anglo and Hispanic, they had been born in the 1920s and early 1930s and were now aging and dying. The demographics of Harlingen overwhelmingly consisted now of upward mobile middle-aged Hispanic. They were concerned with making a living and raising their families. In short they were family-orientated.
In this period of their lives, they had neither the time nor the inclination to delve into their ancestral history whether that of Harlingen or Mexico.
In its last years the society was essentially defunct and by 2013 had no paid members. In June 2013 a group of its former leaders met to discuss the fate of the society. They each paid $20 to re-initiate their membership and then elected officers. These were Mary Torres, president; Norman Rozeff, vice-president; Lynn Murphy, treasurer; and Art Cohan, secretary. Acting according to the society’s by-laws the officers then unanimously voted to dissolve the society.
The officers then voted that the funds remaining in a bank account were to be evenly split and donated to the Friends of the Library and to the Rio Grande Valley Museum Association (the docents of the Harlingen Arts and Heritage Museum). Each then received a check for $1,907.53.
As the population of Harlingen ages, perhaps a new historical society will once again be initiated. Signs of this happening are encouraging as attested to the dynamic nature of the Rio Grande Valley Hispanic Genealogy Association.
The My Harlingen website is another source of continuing Harlingen history information as is the ongoing weekly Rio Living history series in the Sunday Valley Morning Star.
The Harlingen Arts and Heritage Museum is currently renovating its history building that will then concentrate solely on Harlingen history rather than that of the Valley as a whole. This certainly will spark interest in the history of our fair city.
