GOSHEN COUNTY – The Goshen County Chapter of the National Historical Society met for the chapter’s monthly meeting on Tuesday, March 25 in the Platte Valley Bank Community Room. 

The meeting was called to order by chapter president Marge Myers at 7 p.m. Myers had a few announcements for the club. Past president Mary Houser provided prayer and led the community in attendance in the Pledge of Allegiance before the speakers were introduced. 

“I’ve asked Paul and Margaret Puebla to do a history on the St. Joe’s Orphanage Children’s Home. They gave me their bio, so I am going to read them off really quick,” Myers said. “Paul was born in Cheyenne in 1938 and he’s the fourth of five children. He enlisted in the Air Force in 1957 and during ’58 and ’59, Paul’s assignment was in Turkey, where he monitored the Soviet Union electronic activities through electronic surveillance from several ground monitoring locations and from an aircraft as an electronics warfare specialist.” 

After a bit more detail on Paul’s life, Myers moved on to introducing Margaret. 

“Margaret, she is viewed by her peers as a role model. She managed to combine a career as an outstanding educator and devoted mother. She has taught all levels from preschool through graduate school. Similarly, she worked in the classroom as a curriculum coordinator, principal and school superintendent,” Myers said. “For 11 years, she was a member of the Fremont County Administrators Superintendent’s Association and served four years as president. Throughout her career, she successfully authored numerous proposals for education funding from the United States Department of Education and Labor at the local, regional and national levels.”

Taking the microphone, Paul began the presentation. 

“Our mother died in May of 1941 and our father promised that he would keep us together. Some relatives wanted my little sister and I but they didn’t want the other children because they were older,” Paul said. “So, he promised and he paid for us to be in the orphanage. He paid for us.”

Paul noted the average annual income according to the census report in 1940 was $940 a year and his father, after graduating from the Cheyenne Business College was making almost $1,800 a year.

“So, he could afford to pay for us to be in St. Joes. We went in July 31 because our sister Alice had to be two years old before they would accept her because back then, they would take care of a baby for six months and if you didn’t come back, it would be put up for adoption,” Paul said beginning his slide show presentation.

“This is Bishop Patrick McGovern. It was his dream to have an orphanage here because he found so many children who were needed here in Wyoming because this was during the mining period when fathers were killed pretty often in the mines and he found that there were only about 50 children who were orphans. They were either at the Cheyenne Dependent Children Home or the Episcopal small, small orphanage in Laramie. He got together a committee in 1925,” Paul explained. 

McGovern, an orphan himself, sent John McDonald to find a location in Wyoming for the orphanage. 

“He chose Torrington because he came here in 1920 as a bank examiner, federal bank examiner. He started the first bank here also. Father Bishop McGovern wanted to find a superintendent. He went to Ireland and interviewed this young priest, Father Francis Henry,” Paul explained. 

“He had a fund drive all over Wyoming and western Nebraska and northern Colorado, which is indicative of how the orphanage was run. It was run by donations, not any money from the government,” Paul said showing a photo of the orphanage’s opening day on September 1, 1930.

According to Paul, the main building of the home was the only building built at that time however there was a building directly behind the main building which was where the nuns washed clothing in the industrial laundry facility. 

“The other side was where Jess Miller, who graduated from Lingle in 1936, was a farmer. We farmed 40 acres of that,” Paul said. “In fact, that’s where I decided I didn’t want to be a farmer. Because at 10, I was bucking 75-pound bales and that was work. When I turned 11 and a half, I was up at 4 a.m. to go out and milk my two cows and then again at 4:30 p.m. when we got back from school.”

“One thing that was good about being a chore boy, the nuns were first generation German girls, expect for one sister,” Paul said asking Margaret to recall her name.

“Sister Jude,” Margaret said with a smile.

“Little tiny gal, but she had strong fingers when she grabbed your ear. That’s where I learned my first German, was from those German girls, but they were good bakers,” Paul said. “In fact, if you were a chore boy, you worked out at the barn, in the fields, you got two slices of bread for breakfast. Everybody got one so that was really fantastic.”

Paul continued on, noting each one of the bishops and nuns who touched his life and framed the orphanage. Paul noted Father Henry had the barn, which still stands today, built in 1934 and the children had 12 head of registered Holstein cattle to milk. Paul further explained the two-acre garden the boys of the orphanage tended to as well as the fruit orchard which no longer exist today. 

“I want to just welcome all of you to hear our talks. I do want to thank Marge [Myers] for inviting us to share out stories. I want to thank the members of the historic society that are here and all my dear friends and family that traveled to be here. What I will be talking about, and I was asked to talk about my experiences at St. Joe’s and how we grew up there. I just entitled this, ‘How I grew to be the person I am today,’” Margaret then began. “For 45 year’s, St. Joe’s was an orphanage. In the 70s, the Wyoming Department of Family Services started placing children into foster homes. The nuns began to have fewer children because of that to care for. Eventually, many of them had to leave and go back to the Mother House in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.”

According to Margaret, two nuns stayed behind and helped transition St. Joe’s into the treatment center it is today. 

“When we originally arrived at St. Joe’s, they separated us. We were a family of five. I was five years old and my brother was three and Alice was about one. We all got placed into the nursery. I was Peggy Puebla. All of the sudden, this girl comes and her name is Peggy Walker so they said, ‘You’re going to have to take your formal name,’ which is Margaret Joyce Puebla,” Margaret recalled.

Margaret noted she was unsure where her nickname “Peggy” came from until she recalled her parent’s Irish friends and godparents had probably nicknamed her. 

Margaret walked members of the audience through her life at the orphanage for the remainder of the evening until Paul spoke, reading the foreword for his book.

“It is the year 2007 and the shadows of my life are landed. The evening of my journey approaches and the twilight will soon be summoned by the night. For the reason, I must write my chapter of the story that was St. Joseph’s Orphanage in Torrington, Wyoming and how it has affected my entire life,” Paul read. “This book is not just one person’s story about growing up at St. Joseph’s. It is a story as seen and heard through the eyes and ears of a number of people. For some, it was a challenge or an adventure. For others, it was a period of suffering or sadness.”

“Very young children who entered the world of St. Joesph without having experienced the free and spontaneous play of siblings, cousins, or neighborhood children were spared the pain of knowing what was missing in St. Joseph’s. Older children did not always fare well at the orphanage. Boys and girls seldom played together, especially without supervision. Children six to 17 years of age who came with brothers and sisters would spend much of their first weeks sitting and watching their siblings across the playground or across the church at daily or Sunday mass,” Paul said. “Even the children’s dining rooms were segregated by gender.”

Paul noted there were over 100 children at the orphanage during World War II, living in the main building. 

“Children like me and others who were sent to St. Josephs at an early age accepted life at the orphanage in strife, for it was all we knew of the world around us. Life is a matter of choices and what we learn in our formative years becomes the engine that drives the rest of our lives. What we do with those choices becomes the yardstick by which our lives are measured,” Paul said. “The experience called St. Joseph’s Orphanage, the nuns, the priests and others who lived and worked there gave me all the tools I needed to have a wonderful life.”

The meeting was adjourned to reconvene next month on Tuesday, April 29 at 7 p.m. in the Platte Valley Bank Community Room. The event is free of charge to the public.