Today is the Federal Memorial Day 2024, the designated federal holiday to honor those who died in defense of our nation. We should honor those who died and honor those who were left behind by the death of a loved one. Example: if you are driving in Las Cruces near Picacho Hills there’s Quesenberry Lane. For most people it is just a place name, but it is more than that. As to Quesenberry Lane, it honors two soldiers from Las Cruces who died for our country though their deaths were 25 years apart. On Madrid Avenue, just east of Solano Drive in Las Cruces there is a Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 3242 which is named in honor of Captain Joe Quesenberry who was the first New Mexico Aggie to die in World War One. Joe Quesenberry, who died in 1918, had a brother George Robinson Quesenberry who had a son, Second Lieutenant James Slaughter Quesenberry, who died in World War Two. The Quesenberry family gave two young men in the defense of our nation. For the Quesenberry family Memorial Day has a real meaning. I will also talk today about Jesse Mechem who died in 1943 in WWII and his nephew Jesse Mechem who died in Vietnam. All four men left family to grieve.

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In Southern New Mexico, up on the Sacramento Mountains Southeastern slope is a small town or rather a hamlet called Weed, New Mexico. Founded in 1884, I think of it when I catch reruns of the television series Gunsmoke. Weed today has less than a hundred people. And there isn’t a monument to Gunsmoke, the twenty-year television series starring James Arness as Marshal Matt Dillion but there is in a connection to the small hamlet of Weed, New Mexico. It is Glenn Strange who played Sam, the Bartender on Gunsmoke and was born in Weed, New Mexico in 1899 when it was a territory rather than a state.

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I want to talk today about Fabián García. I think of him usually with a mouthful of Hatch Valley Green or Red Chile. He is often given the title, The founder of New Mexico Commercial Food Production. While we think of him for his work on Chiles Peppers, he was instrumental in the research on Pecans, Onions, Alfalfa, and Cotton. Importantly, he was a very good researchers along with being a kind and gentle scientist who inspired generations of Horticultural Scientists all over the world. Talk about being born at the right time and the right place. That was Fabián García. It was a special synchronicity that brought Fabián García and his leadership in scientific horticulture research to Southern New Mexico just as the Rio Grande Project produced Elephant Butte Reservoir so that farmers of this area had abundant water for their commercial growing fields along with the at the same time building of the railroads and surface roads so that Southern New Mexico produce could be shipped all over the United States. The agricultural potential of Southern New Mexico was realized by these three areas coming together.

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