DUANE
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Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Picture the Rio Grande Valley, 1915, and the common school district of Pharr and San Juan is breaking ground on something new. A schoolhouse.
Nothing fancy about the beginning of it, but beginnings rarely are. Construction got underway that year, and by the time the 1916 to 1917 school year rolled around, those doors swung open for the first time. One hundred and forty-three students walked through them, twelve teachers waiting on the other side, and nine young men and women made up that very first graduating class.
Nine. You could fit them all on one porch, but somebody had to go first. Then 1919 arrives, and two things happen.
The district gets a new name, Pharr-San Juan Independent School District, and the town of Alamo is founded that same year. Alamo students start coming to the school, contributing to it, growing up inside its walls. But here's the part that makes you pause.
Alamo's name didn't get added officially until 1959. Forty years of showing up before the sign caught up with the story. By 1961, the building had become Jefferson Junior High, and the years kept turning.
In 1979, it was renamed once more. Memorial Junior High. Named in honor of all Pharr-San Juan-Alamo veterans.
All of them. That's the kind of name a building has to earn, and by then, this one had been earnin' it for a long time.
What the marker says
The common school district of Pharr and San Juan began construction of this school in 1915. First used for the 1916-1917 school year, its enrollment was 143, with twelve teachers and a graduating class of nine. The name was changed in 1919 to Pharr-San Juan Independent School District. Although the town of Alamo was also founded that year and contributed students to the school, the Alamo name was not officially added until 1959. In 1961 this became Jefferson Junior High. It was named Memorial Junior High in 1979 in honor of all Pharr-San Juan-Alamo veterans. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986.