Ramah's Backs & Hands

As principal of the only school in little (pop. 275) Ramah, N. Mex. Leslie Clawson, 43, had reason to be worried. He had 125 pupils for a schoolhouse built to hold 60. Worse still, there were about 120 Navajo children in the region whom he could not accommodate at all. What the town needed was a new $100,000 high school, but unfortunately, the county treasury had only $5,500 to spare.

When Principal Clawson put the problem squarely up to Ramah at an emergency parents' meeting, some strange things began to happen. Mrs. Jennie Johnson, the school janitor, rose to her feet. "I have two children still in school," said she, "and I hereby volunteer my back and my hands for at least 300 hours of labor for that school." With that, 50 Ramah fathers promptly signed up too--for a total of 15,000 hours.

Since that day a year ago, Ramah has thought of little but its new school, and the fever has spread far beyond the town. An Albuquerque steel firm heard of the project and had its engineers draw up free plans, then gave Clawson special prices on the steel girders he would need. Another firm donated a crane, and another a cement mixer. Workers at an ordnance depot 60 miles away began showing up at night to help out.

Meanwhile, Ramah fathers cut the yellow pine on their own land, got cut rates at a nearby sawmill, then hauled the finished boards back on their own trucks. Students gave up their vacations, spent the summer hammering boards and laying cinder blocks. To raise extra money, Ramah mothers baked cakes, gave teas and organized barn dances.

As the months passed, the school slowly began to rise. By summer the excavation was complete; by fall the foundation was down; by spring all the walls were up. Finally came the time to place the girders for the roof, and once again Principal Clawson began to worry. "With only a two-foot carpenter's level to work with," says he, "I was afraid that when we got the girders up, we would find the walls a foot out of line." In that case, Ramah would have had to start almost from the beginning.

But one by one the girders did go up, and each one fitted perfectly. Last week, as the last one was put in place, Ramah knew at last that its new school would be ready for its pupils by fall.

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