Carmelita H. was born May 16, 1923, in Topeka, Kansas. Her parents, Jose and Juana, had immigrated from Mexico City in 1916 to work on the railroad when millions of American men left their jobs for the armed services.
Living accommodations in Topeka were segregated, and Carmen’s growing family shared a house with another Mexican couple. However, the immigrants worked hard and Jose’s job provided perks – Carmen and her family traveled around the country gratis on the railroad. The family visited Pike’s Peak in the West and Carmen took her first steps on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1924.
The Mexican immigrants quite literally built a community in Topeka, where priests from Spain helped foster the residents’ Roman Catholic faith. The men first constructed a church, gathering after work to saw and hammer until dark. The Sisters of Charity then agreed to teach if the men also built a school. So once more, they picked up their tools and constructed a school and community hall.
Life for Carmen’s family was improving – it was even good. But while Juana was pregnant with the couple’s seventh child, Jose contracted pneumonia and died within days. Carmen was just seven. Juana redoubled her efforts for the family during the Depression, working odd jobs, raising chickens in the backyard, and cooking tirelessly for her children. Juana even fended off a marriage proposal/family merger from a widower with six children of his own! Joe, just a teenager, acted as surrogate father and encouraged the younger children to contribute to the family’s well-being when possible, and always work hard in school.
Carmen heeded Joe’s counsel, attending parochial school and later Hayden High School in Topeka. In 1941, with the advent of World War II and nurses in high demand, Carmen won a scholarship to St. Mary’s University nursing school in Leavenworth, Kansas. After one year, Carmen did her practical training at St. Francis Hospital in Topeka. Graduation, attended by her proud mother and siblings, took place at St. Mary’s in 1943.
Carmen was eager to join the war effort as a nurse. However, with two brothers already fighting in Europe, Juana persuaded her daughter to remain stateside. So, Carmen worked for the city health department until the war ended, and then left to accept a scholarship at Catholic University in Washington, DC. There, she earned her master’s degree in public health nursing. But more importantly, Carmen met and fell in love with a fellow student, former G.I., Louis H.
Lou, just starting a job with the US Department of State in Washington, traveled with Carmen to Topeka to be married on April 11, 1953. The newlyweds settled in Rockville, MD. Over the next seven years, they had four children: Richard, Robert, James and Anne. Once the kids all started grade school, Carmen returned to work as a public health nurse in Montgomery County. She enjoyed working with the local Spanish-speaking community in Silver Spring and Takoma Park, but her favorite job was working as a high school nurse at Walt Whitman and Rockville high schools.
After retirement in 1983 at the age of 60, Carmen and Louis participated and volunteered in multiple programs and activities at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Rockville, the Rosensteel Knights of Columbus in Wheaton, and the Holiday Park Senior Center in Silver Spring. Carmen and Louis also enjoyed traveling with family and friends, including trips and cruises to Europe, Spain, Alaska, California and Mexico.
After 59 years of marriage, Louis passed away at home on September 14, 2012; Carmen has lamented living without her “prince” ever since. Early in 2014, she slipped outside her Rockville home of more than 50 years and broke her coccyx in multiple places. Carmen spent months in painful rehabilitation, but, demonstrating the flinty resolve developed throughout her lifetime, recovered. Later that year, she moved to Kensington Park Senior Living, where she has enjoyed herself and made many wonderful friends. In May, Carmen celebrated her 100th birthday at KP with family and friends.
Carmen is most proud of her role as a wife to Louis and the mother of her four children, who have given her 10 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren! She likes to point out that each of her and Louis’ four children went away for their educations and all returned “home,” where they regularly visit and still celebrate as a family. May Carmen’s next hundred years be as fruitful and fulfilling as the first hundred!