CHANCE PURCHASE OF OLD BOOKS REVEALS TREASURE TROVE

By Juan Montoya

People who know me know I'm a bibliophile.

No, that's not a mania or disease. It's someone who loves books. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, there is no known cure.

And this prevents me from passing by a store – anything from Barnes and Noble to local thrift shops – where I spot books for sale.

Just recently, as I was doing something else, I noticed a segundita tucked away between two stores and wandered in while I awaited service from an adjoining business.  

I looked through the clothes and household knickknacks and spotted a small bookshelf near a rear corner and started looking through some old books. What I found fired my imagination.

One of them was an English primer with a 1928 copyright. Quaint as that was – and almost 100 years old – it was the writing on its inside cover that piqued my curiosity. Written in ink by someone with beautiful penmanship, was the name Nell Rutledge. If you have lived in Brownsville any length of time, it triggers a recognition of the pasillito where the Rutledges, Martin and Hilda, established their burger joint between two existing buildings.

Even more poignant was the writing, or attempted writing, by someone who was trying to copy the elegant writing with small success. Perhaps little Nell trying to emulate her teacher's graceful cursive writing? Being no genealogist, I really couldn't tell whether this was Martin's daughter or perhaps his sister. I have put out feelers with people who grew up with the Rutledges to see just who Nell was. Could it be perhaps she was the offspring of a different Rutledge clan? 

I purchased the book from the thrift shop owner for 50 cents and hope to find any of her existing relatives so they can have it as a keepsake of their (I presume now-dead) ancestor.

I then picked up another used book, this one a textbook on school finance, and saw some loose leaf notebook papers tucked in its pages. The papers turned out to be a quiz taken in 1959 for a school finance class. Boring stuff, yes. But it was the name of the quiz taker which caught my attention.

Would you believe A.L. Oliveira? Yes, the future Dr. Arnulfo L. Oliveira, the former President of Texas Southmost College who served as its president from 1971 to 1977, and for whom the board of the Brownsville Independent School District named Oliveira Middle School. The book was titled Public School Finance and apparently was used for graduate study since it is for a course numbered Education 513. 

There, in a  tiny second-hand store, I was holding a book that the future president of TSC whose student union building is named after him, used to prepare himself for a future as an educator and then president of the community college after he attained his Masters and Education Ph.D. He was just 50 when he died, a huge loss to this community.

The quiz, which Oliveira took in his own handwriting (elegant, too) was given on March 14, 1959 and consisted of three essay questions dealing with:

1. the "phenomenal increase" in school costs during the first half of the 20th Century, 

2. the author's views of independence of finance and control, and 

3. the "ultimate test of fiscal problems in individual school systems."

Oliveira, despite his reputation as a highly-competent school administrator, at the time he took the quiz, got a "B".

When I reached out to TSC board members, they took an immediate interest in acquiring the textbook to showcase it as an example to current TSC student on who Arnulfo "Nuco" Oliveira – for whom the student union at the school they attend was named – really was. 

The woman also charged me 50 cents for the tome. 

As we said in the headline, sometimes there is a treasure trove of local history to be found in some old forgotten books.

(Coming soon: Books related to Victor and David Oliveira, and the late City of Brownsville commissioner and city manager Jesse Sloss.)