DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, there's a school out here in Hidalgo County that carries a name, and to understand why that name matters, you've got to go back — back to a town that doesn't quite exist anymore, a town called Havana, sitting about two miles south of where we are right now. Between 1890 and 1944, the children of this corner of Texas — most of them living out on the ranches scattered across the brushland — made their way to a one-room schoolhouse in Havana.
One room. All those kids, all those grades, all that learning packed into four walls. Now, a lot of teachers came through that little schoolhouse over the years, but one of them left a mark that outlasted the building itself.
Her name was Nellie Leo Schunior, born in 1878. She came to teach in Havana in 1913, and she stayed through 1916. Three years.
And somewhere along the way, she made enough of an impression that people didn't forget her — not even after she was gone. She went on to become the first superintendent of Chapin schools, the town now known as Edinburg. First superintendent.
That's not a small thing. Nellie Leo Schunior died in 1920. And here's where the story takes a turn.
The Rio Grande, as it has a habit of doing, started flooding — persistent flooding, the kind that doesn't give up, the kind that eventually wins. The residents of Havana looked around at what the river kept taking, and they made a decision. They packed up their town and relocated to this area.
They gave it a new name — La Joya. And in 1926, they built themselves a new school. They could have named it anything.
They named it for Nellie Leo Schunior. A woman who taught there for three years, who had been gone for six, remembered well enough that her name went up on a new building in a new town. That's the kind of mark that doesn't wash away — not even when the Rio Grande does its worst.
What the marker says
This school's roots lie in the former town of Havana (2 mi. S), where between 1890 and 1944 area children, most of whom lived on nearby ranches, attended classes in a one-room schoolhouse. Nellie Leo Schunior (1878-1920), who later became the first superintendent of Chapin (now Edinburg) schools, taught in Havana from 1913 until 1916. Several years after her death, persistent flooding of the Rio Grande caused Havana residents to relocate their town to this area. They renamed the town La Joya, and built a new school in 1926 which they named in Schunior's honor. (1992)