Background
The Sisters of Loretto had previously established several schools in Las Cruces and El Paso. [3] [4] In the early 1920s, Mother M. Praxedes Carty of the Sisters of Loretto came to El Paso to establish a new school. [5] On March 20, 1922, she purchased 19 acres of land in the Austin Terrace area, which was considered a bad place to put the school. [6] [7] The area was open desert on a hilltop and was accessible by streetcar. [8] For the time period, it was considered to be a long distance from the downtown area. [6] Because of the location, people were unsure if parents would send their children to the school. [8] People began to call the project "Praxedes' Folly." [8]
The building was designed by Trost & Trost. [9] Gustavus A. Trost was friends with Mother Praxedes and may have done most of the primary architectural drawings. [10] The buildings were "designed to face Mexico" in a welcoming gesture for all people to join the community. [4] They were built using stuccoed brick and red Spanish tile on the roof. [9] The first building was started in the fall of 1922. [11] The cornerstone for the chapel was laid down on March 20, 1924. [7] The entire campus was not complete until the 1930s. [9] However, the first school building was ready in 1923. Loretto Academy in El Paso opened on September 11, 1923 with 186 students, of which 20 lived at the school as boarders. [7] In 1928, the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools admitted Loretto as a member. [12]
The boarding school closed in 1975. [13] Students from Ciudad Juarez also attend the school. [4] As of the early 1990s the school had over 900 students. [14]
After 22 years, in 2022, Sister Mary E. "Buffy" Boesen stepped down as president of Loretto. [15] Loretto alumna, Nicole Ortega Cobb, became the next president of the school in June 2022. [15]
KVIA-TV is a television station in El Paso, Texas, United States, affiliated with ABC and The CW. Owned by the News-Press & Gazette Company, the station maintains studios on Rio Bravo Street in northwest El Paso and a transmitter atop the Franklin Mountains within the El Paso city limits.
KCOS, branded on-air as PBS El Paso, is a PBS member television station in El Paso, Texas, United States, owned by Texas Tech University. The station's offices are located on Viscount Boulevard in east El Paso, and its transmitter is located atop the Franklin Mountains on the El Paso city limits. Its nominal main studio is located at Texas Tech-owned KTTZ-TV in Lubbock.
Trost & Trost Architects & Engineers, often known as Trost & Trost, was an architectural firm based in El Paso, Texas. The firm's chief designer was Henry Charles Trost, who was born in Toledo, Ohio, in 1860. Trost moved from Chicago to Tucson, Arizona in 1899 and to El Paso in 1903. He partnered with Robert Rust to form Trost & Rust. Rust died in 1905 and later that year Trost formed the firm of Trost & Trost with his twin brother Gustavus Adolphus Trost, also an architect, who had joined the firm as a structural engineer. Between 1903 and Henry Trost's death on September 19, 1933, the firm designed hundreds of buildings in the El Paso area and in other Southwestern cities, including Albuquerque, Phoenix, Tucson, and San Angelo.
The Sisters of Loretto or the Loretto Community is a Catholic religious institute that strives "to bring the healing Spirit of God into our world." Founded in the United States in 1812 and based in the rural community of Nerinx, Kentucky, the organization has communities in 16 US states and in Bolivia, Chile, China, Ghana, Pakistan, and Peru.
The Diocese of El Paso is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or diocese, of the Catholic Church in the El Paso Valley in Texas in the United States. It is a suffragan see of the metropolitan Archdiocese of San Antonio.
Jay J. Armes is an American private investigator and actor. He is known for his prosthetic hands and a line of children's action figures based on his image.
El Paso High School is the oldest operating high school in El Paso, Texas, and is part of the El Paso Independent School District. It serves the west-central section of the city, roughly south and west of the Franklin Mountains and north of Interstate 10 to the vicinity of Executive Center Boulevard. It is fed by Wiggs Middle School, into which the three elementary schools in its feeder pattern, Lamar, Mesita, and Vilas, graduate.
María Guillermina (Guille) Valdes Villalva was a Chicana scholar and activist born in El Paso, Texas. She was considered an "authority" and "pioneer" on researching United States-Mexico border issues and had a "lifelong commitment to social justice."
The El Paso Women's Hall of Fame honors and recognizes the accomplishments of El Paso women. It is sponsored by the El Paso Commission for Women and was established in 1985. The first inductees were honored in 1990.
Jacqueline Grennan Wexler, commonly known as Sister J, was an American Catholic religious sister who rose to prominence when she, as President of Webster College, strove to convince the Holy See allow the transferral of the college's ownership to a lay board of trustees. Webster College became the first Catholic university to legally split from the Catholic Church. She later left her religious order, the Sisters of Loretto, and was President of Hunter College in New York City from 1970 to 1980. She went on to serve as President of the National Conference of Christians and Jews from 1982 to 1990.
Joan H. Quarm was an American educator, theater director, and actor. She was a major figure in El Paso theater productions from the late 1950s until the 2000s. She was responsible for creating two theater companies in El Paso, including the first bilingual theater company in the city. Quarm also worked as a professor at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) and as a theater critic.
The International Museum of Art is a museum in El Paso, Texas housed in a historic residence designed by Henry C. Trost. The home was the W.W. Turney residence built for state legislator, lawyer, and rancher William Ward Turney in 1908. The International Museum of Art shares history with the El Paso Museum of Art, which occupied the Turney building until 1998. After it moved into its new building, the International Museum of Art reopened in 1999.
Catherine "Kitty" Burnett Kistenmacher was an American artists from El Paso, Texas in the late 20th century and the early 21st century. Kistenmacher was involved in the creation of the International Museum of Art. She is a 2007 inductee into the El Paso Women's Hall of Fame.
Lucy Scarbrough was an American pianist, conductor and educator. She taught at El Paso Community College (EPCC), and founded the El Paso Chopin Piano Festival in El Paso, Texas.
Mother Mary Praxedes Carty was an Irish American educator and member of the Roman Catholic order of the Sisters of Loretto. Mother Praxedes worked throughout the Southwestern and Western areas of the United States building and improving churches and schools. She is known for updating the constitution for the order of the Sisters of Loretto, helping to build the school now known as Webster University and for founding the Loretto Academy in El Paso, Texas.
Belen Borrego Robles is a former national president of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and served as the group's first national woman president. She has many years experience working for the United States Government in positions relating to immigration and customs.
M. Sue Kurita is an American judge. Kurita graduated from Loretto Academy in 1972. She holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) and a master's degree in counseling from Webster University. During Kurita's first year at Texas Tech University School of Law, she was diagnosed with cancer before Spring Break. Kurita, who was raising her daughter on her own, underwent cancer treatments and the school provided support so she could finish her assignments on time. Kurita graduated law school in 1985. She passed the Texas bar in 1986. In 1998, she was appointed the Judge of the El Paso County Court at Law, No. 6.
Alzina Orndorff DeGroff was an American businesswoman who was involved in civic causes in El Paso, Texas, and West Texas.
Lilliana M. Owens, S.L. was an American historian, writer, educator and Catholic nun. She was known for her historical writing and her Catholic comic books.
