Hispanic Heritage: Dwight Morrow Elementary School

AMARILLO, Texas (KAMR/KCIT) — As of today, the Barrio Neighborhood is 87% Hispanic, according to Barrio Neighborhood Planning Committee President Teresa Kenedy. And back in 1930, an elementary school was built to accommodate the Hispanic students of the Barrio Neighborhood.

“In the barrio neighborhood, there was one of four schools. There was Glenwood in 1921, Sanborn in 1922, Our Lady of Guadalupe was a parochial school in 1928 and then Dwight Morrow was built in 1930, and in this school, it served our Mexican kids and the Barrio neighborhood is where a lot of the Mexican people lived because they worked at the railroad and were brought in to work at the railroad,” said Kenedy.

From 1930 to 1965, Dwight Morrow Elementary School served only Hispanic students.

Betty Solis, whose career in education began at the school as a first-grade teacher taught there until its closing.

“When I went, it was already a nice building, a nice brick school. We had six classrooms—first grade through sixth grade. We didn’t have kindergarten back then…My husband even went to Dwight Morrow when he was a child and back then, it’s right in the middle of the barrio, they called it ‘The Mexican School,’ so when they told me I was going to ‘The Mexican School,’ that was fine because coming from Argentina, I was used to Spanish and speaking Spanish,” said Solis.

The school was named after Dwight Morrow, who according to the Encyclopedia Britannica was appointed by President Calvin Coolidge in 1927 as the ambassador to Mexico.

Dwight Morrow

Morrow was a lawyer by profession and had a reputation in corporation law. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, in 1911, he aided in drafting a workmen’s compensation law and later in 1917, prepared a report that led to prison reform in New Jersey. In 1914, he accepted a partnership with J.P. Morgan & Co.

When the United States entered World War I, Morrow traveled to Europe as an adviser to the Allied Maritime Transport Council in 1918. After WWI ended, he helped Cuba with financial troubles, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. Morrow would later serve as chairman of the Aircraft Board in 1925 under President Calvin Coolidge, where he helped formulate a national military and civil aviation policy before Coolidge appointed him ambassador to Mexico.

In 1930, Morrow was elected to the US Senate representing New Jersey but attended only one session of Congress before his death.

Additionally, Morrow’s daughter Anne would marry famed aviator Charles Lindbergh in 1929 and is the mother at the center of one of the most famous kidnapping cases in history, when according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, in March 1932, the Lindberghs’ 20-month-old son, Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr., was kidnapped from their home and murdered. The crime received constant media coverage from the moment it happened until April 1936, when the perpetrator, Bruno Richard Hauptmann was executed after being convicted of the kidnap-murder.

According to the history of Amarillo Independent School District 1950-2000 by William Henry, the 56th legislature of 1960 authorized preschool programs for non-English speaking children and the first class approved for Amarillo public schools was a summer program in 1960 at Dwight Morrow with Solis as the teacher and that program would continue through 1965.

Kenedy said this school served a need in the community for over 30 years.

“It allowed teachers, administrators, and so on to realize the need for serving these students with different services like English as a Second Language, that was very important and continues to be and so that school started that for our Mexican students and then they were able to move to Sanborn and Glenwood Elementary schools,” said Kenedy.

In 1965, Dwight Morrow Elementary School was closed.

“They built the expressway right through our community, which took away a lot of houses and a lot of our students, so our enrollment fell down to under 200, so that is why they had to close it,” said Solis.

According to the history of Amarillo Independent School District 1950-2000 by William Henry, it was estimated, that the district could save $16,000 by closing the school and splitting the estimated 196 students enrolled between Sanborn and Glenwood Elementary.

In October 1965, Dwight Morrow became the organizational headquarters of the Panhandle Education Service Organization (PESO). In 1972, the Amarillo ISD school board approved the sale of Dwight Morrow to the Region 16 Education Service Center for $96,000.

“Glenwood was a real good experience too. I know some people said, ‘Well, here comes Mrs. McQuirk and all the Mexicans,’ but we were all a smaller group going to Glenwood than those going to Sanborn…Glenwood was more Angelo, Sanborn was more mixed…I stayed at Glenwood than 42 years, so I guess I liked it,” said Solis.

The building that was once Dwight Morrow is now the Region 16 Education Service Center Head Start Cleveland Street Center.

“What I love about this school and now Region 16 Head Start is it was all about the kids, that is how they came together was to serve our kids and they continue to do that,” said Kenedy. “It’s just nice to know it’s still serving children who need, preschool is so important and we didn’t have preschool. We had first grade. It’s just nice to see it being used. We were proud of our building. We were proud of Dwight Morrow,” added Solis.

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