By Pat Veltri For several decades, from 1971 to 2010, Ratonians were the recipients of a delightful homemade Christmas card, in the form of an animated display featuring Santa and his reindeer traveling across the sky over a small town with snow-covered homes and businesses, – a virtual winter wonderland.…
Posts published in “Veltri’s Vault”
By Pat Veltri Sad and lonely, deserted and abandoned, and mostly empty it has stood alongside the railroad tracks in Las Vegas, New Mexico for decades – a reversion to when train travel opened up tourism in the Southwest. The La Castaneda Hotel, situated along the former Atchison, Topeka,…
By Pat Veltri Store displays up in October, Christmas lights and decorations up in mid November, Black Friday, excessive consumer spending to purchase gifts and decorations, commercials for toys and electronic gizmos, stress and financial pressure – are all part of the rituals surrounding Christmas these days. Compared to…
By Pat Veltri A young man is on his knees, sobbing hysterically, screaming for his mother. The time is World War II, the place is somewhere in the Pacific on the aircraft carrier USS Essex. World War II veteran, John F. “Johnny” Bacca of Raton is telling the…
By Pat Veltri It was dubbed “Our Indian” by some of Columbian Elementary School’s students. For over six decades school children passed by it on a daily basis, custodians removed it occasionally and set it on the floor while painting the wall behind it, sometimes a curious student…
In Fond Memory of Harriett (Hattie) Sloan August 28, 1919 – February 12, 2016 By Pat Veltri Picture it. War-torn England. 1943. Allied troops were preparing for the invasion of Europe, temporarily causing a lull in the combat zone. Four turbo-charged engines roaring in the English skies signaled the…
By Pat Veltri Along with its abundance of flora and fauna, and its varied opportunities for outdoor recreation, Sugarite Canyon State Park, eight miles northeast of Raton, features a historic early twentieth century coal mining camp. Many visible remains of the once thriving coal camp can still be…
By Pat Veltri “It will remain a sacred display without commercialism.” That’s a recorded proviso in the archives of the Lions Club, a service organization that has partnered with the city of Raton for almost seventy years in the yearly setting up of the City of Bethlehem, a…
By Pat Veltri During a 1989 reunion of the 490th Bomb Group, in Reno, Nevada, Ratonian Albert (Al) Manfredi and his wife Tiny connected with several former crew members of the B-17 aircraft that he was assigned to during World War II. “What was left of our bomb crew…
By Pat Veltri Hundreds of white iron crosses, marking the graves of men who died in the mines, fill the Dawson Cemetery. The crosses, most of them bearing death dates of 1913 and 1923, are the only tangible reminders of the coal camp town of Dawson, New Mexico. …