Ambassador Ortiz: Lessons from a Life of Service

17: Home to Stay: More Lessons to Learn

After the trip to the USSR, we began our move to New Mexico for the final time. We always knew Santa Fe would be our final destination , so we put our house in Washington up for sale. Although comparable in price with others on the market, our house languished for several months without a sale. Dolores recalled a tradition among the devout of burying an image of St. Joseph in the yard to induce a sale. My only comment was, “Whatever you do, don’t let anybody know you did such a silly thing!” To my astonishment, no sooner had St. Joseph taken up residence in the back garden than the house sold at what was to us an astonishing price. (An image of St. Joseph now greets guests from over the entrance to our new house.) We had paid $, for the Washington house and had rented it for many years to pay the kids’ tuition bills. By the time we sold it, it had appreciated dramatically and we realized a handsome profit. The tax laws allowed us to invest the money in another principal residence. The upshot was that we were able to build our dream house in Santa Fe using the gains we made on our modest initial investment. In June , Dolores and I returned to Santa Fe. After nearly  years of moving from one end of the world to the other, we finally came home to roost. It was a wonderful feeling. And now that we’ve  17 Home to Stay: More Lessons to Learn been here  years, I realize that my time in New Mexico has exceeded by far our stay at any of my foreign service posts, including Washington, D.C. In Santa Fe we rented a temporary house while we began building our dream house. We had been imagining this house for decades, collecting various items from all the countries where we lived with which to embellish it. I had a floor plan handy so over the years I made revisions that occurred to me. I took great care with the final construction plans. The house plan works very well; our home gracefully handles heavy use. An English magazine featured it as an American style that Europeans should know about. Maybe I missed my calling. I think I’d make a good architect. I found that my perspective on Santa Fe and the United States had changed somewhat after decades overseas. In my absence, Santa Fe had become a very sophisticated town. World-class, creative people call Santa Fe home. It had always attracted interesting people, but in recent years there has been a quantum leap. We certainly didn’t feel we were returning to an intellectual or cultural backwater. I wanted to be active during my retirement in Santa Fe. I had many projects in mind, and knew that the skill I learned in my various postings could prove useful. Even before our return I began to focus on a problem of great concern to me: the situation at the Palace of the Governors history museum. In previous visits to the museum, which is the repository of New Mexico’s historic patrimony, I asked to be shown the collections because I knew they contained remarkable artifacts , some of which my family had donated. I understood that the old building lacked the space to exhibit them all, but assumed the artifacts were in safe storage somewhere. But I wanted to be sure. When I was shown the dank basements and fire-prone bays where collections were stored, I was horrified and outraged. In fact, I flew into a monumental rage. The conditions were absolutely shocking— so bad that the historic patrimony of New Mexico, our New Mexico, could have vanished in a flash. Overhead dangled loose electrical wires whose purpose nobody knew, alongside steam pipes that could have burst at any time, ruining countless artifacts. Sewer back-ups, heavy  HOME TO STAY rain, and feckless toilets had all caused flooding. I found the situation not only incredible, but also totally unacceptable. It was not difficult to find others who shared my indignation. We formed a group called Los Compadres del Palacio, Friends of the Palace, to urgently remedy this appalling situation. The calamitous conditions at the state’s history museum had existed for at least  years, but the imminent threat of losing thousands of irreplaceable artifacts constituting the core...