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NACO, Ariz. — The last time Lee Schepper took a walk through her old house here in 1957, it looked a lot different.
Schepper, who was then a young Army wife with two small children, lived in one of the old adobe buildings that long ago had served as an officer’s quarters in Camp Naco.
“I know this was the house,” Schepper said recently as she stepped carefully through the old building on the south side of Newell Street.
“It’s too bad they let these places go,” said Schepper, a West End Sierra Vista resident since 1961.
 Lee Schepper walks through her former home in Camp Naco on March 26. Her family resided here from 1956 to 1957. (Ted Morris•Herald/Review) |
Turn back the clock to 1956. She was 26 years old with two little boys. Her husband, Schep Schepper, couldn’t get housing on Fort Huachuca, but he had a connection to get a rental in one of the historic Army buildings from the Newell family.
They called it Newell’s Camp.
“That’s what it was, because Mrs. Newell lived there,” said Schepper, who will turn 78 this month.
The family showed up one Sunday in 1956 to look at the house for rent. Mrs. Newell, who lived across West Newell Street in an old enlisted-men’s barracks that would later serve as the small community’s hospital, was surprised to see the couple’s 5 1/2-year-old and 13-month-old.
“She took one look at them and said, ‘I didn’t know you have kids,’ ” Schepper said. “And I said, ‘Do you want me to drown them?’ ”
“I come from a big Irish family,” said Schepper, whose maiden name was Jordan and whose mother’s maiden name was Mitchell. “We say just about what we think.”
What Schepper probably didn’t realize at the time was that the Newells also were Irish immigrants, strong-willed people who had bought up land in Naco, Ariz., around 1900.
Mrs. Newell continued her stern line with the young wife.
“This lawn had better look the same when you leave here as it does now,” Mrs. Newell said.
“And I said, ‘Mrs. Newell, where I come from, this is called a yard,” Schepper replied. “ ‘There isn’t a blade of grass out here. And I’m sure that we will improve it while we’re here.’ ”
Recently, Schepper walked around the ruins of her old Camp Naco home and reflected back many years, vividly remembering Mrs. Newell’s character.
“She ended up being the best friend in the world,” Schepper said. “I used to go to her house for tea.”
Schepper’s husband, Schep Schepper, an Army veteran of World War II and the Korean War, died in May 1982. In the mid-1950s, during this particular Fort Huachuca assignment, he was away on Army business Monday through Friday, working with radio signals in the field, somewhere up on Montezuma Pass in the Huachuca Mountains halfway between Naco and the post.
“And I lived right there on the border by myself,” Schepper said, noting that she had no fear, except for wild cats that would occasionally frighten her into dropping a load of fresh laundry on the lawn.
In those days, immigration was not the issue that it is today.
“That was nothing then,” she said. “Never thought about it.”
As she approached her old home, near the still-standing water tower that she remembered, she looked for signs of her homemaking efforts. For example, there was the turquoise-colored paint that she daubed on a white background using the sponge technique. They had painted the floors gray.
“Wouldn’t it be hilarious if my Venetian blinds were still in the window?” Schepper said, chuckling as she approached what was once a screened-in front porch.
She gasped as she entered the living room of the abandoned structure and spied the graffiti and other signs of decay and neglect.“Good Lord!” she cried. “What have they done in here?”
The rooms brought back memories.
There was her sons’ bedroom.
The dust- and debris-covered wooden floors creaked as she gingerly stepped through the house and out to the backyard.
Mrs. Newell’s lawn was in utter shambles — covered with weeds, trash and an assortment of junk.
“Mrs. Newell, look at this mess!” Schepper called out to the wind. “I never left a mess.”
She thought for a second, then let out a hearty laugh at the absurdity of the moment. “Oh she would have a fit!” Schepper said.
In 1956, Schepper enrolled her older son, Don, in Naco Elementary School. Many Mexican mothers brought their children over to the U.S. side to go to school there.
“And they were on their honor, the Mexican kids, not to speak Spanish,” Schepper said. “That was the rule of the school yard, but I don’t know what happened, but my son learned Spanish. He had to learn it. He was the only gringo in the school.”
Later, Don would excel in Spanish as a junior and senior at Buena High School, “because he had learned the basics here.”
Don currently lives in Oak Harbor, Wash., and is retired from the Navy. The younger son, David, lives in Avondale and has worked for the Arizona Department of Transportation for many years.
A third son was born after the Naco days. Chip is disabled and lives at home under mom’s care. He is a graduate of the New Mexico Military Institute, Roswell, N.M., and has a ton of other achievements under his belt.
The family lost a fourth son, Dennis Mitchell Schepper, born and died on Oct. 23, 1961. He was buried in San Jose District, near the old Naco home. In 1975, the family disinterred Dennis and reburied him in the Old Post Cemetery on Fort Huachuca, with his father.
Herald/Review City Editor Ted Morris can be reached at 515-4614 or by e-mail at cityeditor@svherald.com.
A Blight wrote on Apr 8, 2008 7:48 PM: