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Barbara Mallery has been named a Living Treasure not so much for what she has done (although she has done a great deal), but for who she is. Words from her many letters of nomination say it best:

Barby is so interested in each being that she gives each and every one of us her undivided attention. She is selfless like a saint! She has not an ounce of prejudice in her bones, and has compassion for all. She is always there, helping, helping, helping.

Barb's service to the Santa Fe community, her wonderful positive outlook on life, and her warmth, kindness and infectious smile all lend...

Sunday, October 1, 2006
by Richard McCord • Santa Fe Living Treasures

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...

Sunday, October 1, 2006
by Richard McCord • Santa Fe Living Treasures

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...

Sunday, October 1, 2006
by Richard McCord • Santa Fe Living Treasures

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...

Monday, November 1, 2004
by Richard McCord • Santa Fe Living Treasures

“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,...

Monday, November 1, 2004
by Richard McCord • Santa Fe Living Treasures

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....

Friday, October 1, 2004
by Richard McCord • Santa Fe Living Treasures

“I guess I get bored easily,” Rabbi Leonard Helman shrugs, by way of explaining his myriad interests and achievements. In addition to his theological calling, he has been a lawyer, a physiology teacher, a championship contract-bridge player, a masterful dancer who performs in public, a public-utilities expert, and always a humanitarian.

As a young man he taught himself to love opera, by listening to hundreds of hours of music. He assiduously reads The New York Times, to stay current with the news.

And 30 years ago, in 1974, he found the perfect position for himself, as the rabbi for...

Saturday, May 1, 2004
by Richard McCord • Santa Fe Living Treasures

It probably is no exaggeration to say that the face of Santa Fe would be different if Sara Melton was not here. A resident now for more than three decades, she has poured into the city more fierce love and unyielding architectural and historical integrity than perhaps any other Santa Fean. Her name is a synonym for the preservation of the structures, styles, areas, laws and organizations that make and keep Santa Fe unique.

A real-estate agent by profession, she became fascinated with the graceful, flat-roofed Pueblo and Territorial houses and other buildings that were erected long ago,...

Saturday, May 1, 2004
by Richard McCord • Santa Fe Living Treasures

Not every New Mexican has a rare fossil named for her, but Mary Gavin does. Not every New Mexican made a new museum happen, but Mary Gavin did—and saw it become the most-visited museum in the state system. Not every “coed” was both an active pilot and captain of the women's polo team in college. Not one person, before Mary Gavin, was ever designated a Trustee Emerita by a New Mexico governor.

These are just some of the ways that Mary Gavin, now a Living Treasure, is unique. She first came to New Mexico (which was not yet a state when she was born almost 90 years ago, in 1951, with her...

Wednesday, October 1, 2003
by Richard McCord • Santa Fe Living Treasures

The spacious building in which today's Living Treasures ceremony is being celebrated is home to one of this community's most enduring, most effective, most generous, most visionary, most far-reaching and most significant civic-minded organizations: the Santa Fe Woman's Club. Normally this organization does its endless good work quietly and modestly, behind the scenes. Yet today it must take a turn in the spotlight—for today the Santa Fe Woman's Club officially is declared a Santa Fe Living Treasure.

From the day of its founding—July 9, 1892—the organization has been dedicated to...

Wednesday, October 1, 2003
by Richard McCord • Santa Fe Living Treasures