"I met him [my husband] at Menau School in Albuquerque. [His name was] Leo Pando. He was already in the service, in the air force, when I met him. [We had been dating] a very short time. Once that man decided, he decided really quickly. He hardly just met me and decided that I was the one. That’s what he used to say. So it was a big rush. He was in the service and he was not going to waste any time. Leo was that type of a person. He made a decision and he decided yesterday! He had to have it. That was his thing. [We married in] ’44. He proposed to me over the telephone. He had to go back to, see he was stationed in Clovis and I was at Menau. So he proposed to me over the phone. I remember exactly the circumstances. They were funny. (Laughs) I no longer had my parents so he wrote to my brother Albert to be polite. Of course I was older than Albert but he still wrote to him and told him.

I married in Albuquerque. It was [like this]; he had a forty-eight hour pass. He had to conform to those hours. It was during vacation in July and I was in Morenci with my family on vacation from UNM so I came to Albuquerque with my two brothers, Juan and Alberto. It was done, all arranged in forty-two, forty-eight hours, the dress, the flowers, everything. I went to a store in Albuquerque and there were two wedding dresses. Remember this was the war. There were two wedding dresses and I looked at them. I said, “This is the one I want.” “Do you want to try the other one?” “No, this one!” It fit and I still have it.

Leo and me on our wedding day.

His surrogate parents came to the wedding. He had a lady and her husband that took him in when he was little boy. Their last name was Sosa. They were stationed there [in New Mexico]. He was a petty officer, the father. They came from Clovis and took care of the food. They did everything.

We were married right on campus in Menau. The auditorium was always transformed into a little chapel with an altar during services. The superintendent of Menau at that time was an ordained minister so he performed the ceremony. I had bridesmaids. I’ll show you a picture of the wedding. No, she [my sister] couldn’t come. She was in Los Angeles and couldn’t get reservations. It was during the war, couldn’t come. She could have flown but it was very hard to do that during that time. During the war the soldiers had priority to travel you see.

[My husband was not shipped out,] he was stationed in Clovis. It was in the air base. I went back to Clovis with him. When we got to Clovis, the town was full of soldiers, the hotel full. There was no room for us, like Jesus. He called on the telephone to several places in Clovis and he couldn’t find a place for us to go. Finally he called a friend that he knew, a Mr. and Mrs. Armijo. He knew them through the USO and he called them. She said, “There’s a little place that I think would have a room for you. But it’s very far from where you’re standing right there in the main hotel in Clovis. Call there and maybe they’ll have a room.” And they did. They had a little room. It was a garage, [a] double garage, [a] pretty good size garage. They had made it into two bedrooms. We took a taxi and they took us there and we stayed there.

What Leo learned when he got to Clovis was that the air base all the soldiers were being punished, I don’t remember the reason, not enough hours in the air. So Leo had to report to the air base right now and be confined to the air base for a week. He left me there in that little old room to stay there by myself. [On] the other side there were a bunch of drunks, singing, and singing and carrying on. I was so scared I didn’t know what to do, very scared. I told the owners and he said, “ They will not bother you and if they do, let me know immediately.” No, they didn’t bother me, not at all but I stayed there by myself a whole week! When he came back from there, he called Mrs. Armijo that he knew from the USO and she said, “I have a bedroom. You can come and live here until you find a place to stay.” And we did. We moved to her house that had a bedroom. At least it was a family because Leo had to go back and forth to the base every day. She had an apartment and rooms for rent and as soon as one of them was vacated, she rented it to us. We lived there a whole year.

The following year Eva was born in forty-five. Priscilla and her twin brother were born in forty-seven. [His name is] Leo, Leo Armijo. [They were born] in Santa Fe. We had moved to Santa Fe when Leo was discharged. He was discharged in November of forty-four. The war ended in Europe. He was always here in the U.S.

[My life after my children were born was] very normal, washing diapers every single day of your life. (Laughs) I had three babies, Eva was only two years old, you see, then the twins. Priscilla was a very sickly baby. She was an RH baby. [The other twin had it] very moderate, he was able to work it out by himself but Priscilla had to have a transfusion twenty-four hours after her birth. Amazing [because before that time] they would die.

Yes, [I had appliances] in my married life. [I had a washer], it was a common machine that this lady provided for the renters. We just took turns, assigned certain days.

By ourselves? No such thing [as my husband and I spending time together]! (Laughs) We had babies. Before Eva was born we went to church and to the movies and to eat. After Eva was born, movies was out of the question because we had no baby sitters in Clovis. Then when we moved to Santa Fe, yes, we had had. His mother, Mrs. Sosa baby sat for us.

Leo, my husband, was a very wonderful man. He treated me like a queen. I can say that with all my heart. He’d come home from the office and help me with whatever I needed to do. He would help me with the baby and everything. He was a very wonderful husband. He worked at the State Land Office for thirty-five years. In the latter part of his job there, he was one of the directors.

[We handled disagreements with each other by] talking, conversing. Of course, we did have differences of many areas. We would go to look for a car and see if we liked it, if we agreed, the color. (Laughs) That is it, that is all I know about a car!

I have many dear friends in Santa Fe to this day. Our church is a beautiful church in Santa Fe. I still belong to that church. I had very close [women] friends that I still do and still call and still talk to them and stay with them. [We stayed in Santa Fe] until '94.

I expected them [my children] to be very good citizens and I still do. I wanted them all educated to the very best of their abilities. We had three kids in college at the same time. We did.

I had hard pregnancies, yes I did, fast deliveries. Yes, [I had prenatal and maternity care] there in Santa Fe. "