THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
Oral History Office
SUBJECT: Fashing, Texas
INTERVIEW WITH: Robert H. Thonhoff (1 Tape)
DATE: 18 August 1995
PLACE: Institute Of Texan Cultures
INTERVIEWER: Mary Grace Ketner
T: The time will come for Texas to be annexed to the Union. This will promote immigration, and Texas will be able to sell the land it has kept. The moment cannot be far away.
K: Okay. That will give us several chances.
T: All right.
K: Now, I'd like for you tell me the story you told about Fashing. And if you wouldn't mind starting by saying your whole name into the microphone. And then I may ask you some other questions to get the facts down when we finish.
T: All right.
K: Okay. And you can hold the microphone or do whatever you want.
T: Okay.
K: We don't have to worry about sound quality.
T: My name is Robert Thonhoff. From 1956 to 1988 I was the teaching school principal of Fashing Elementary School in the little German community of Fashing, about fifty miles T: south of San Antonio, in eastern Atascosa County.
In the mid-1960s, the Karnes City Independent School District, of which Fashing was an outlying rural elementary school; Karnes City was under investigation for alleged discrimination in the school system. And a team of civil rights investigators were sent to Karnes City to go ahead and investigate the allegations. The superintendent had notified me that our school, along with all the others, might be visited by a team from the commission out of Washington. And one day - it must have been in February, I'm recalling the year 1966 or 1967, during the recess period the school children were not...unable to go outside and play because it had rained. So I had thought that this would be a good time to get ready for our annual spring program called "Der Fashing Best Fest," "Vi haben wirdie beste von alles" - Where We Have the Best of Everything. And to teach the children how to sing the little German nonsense song called "Der Schnitzel Bank." So on this particular day I had the whole school come to my room - and there were only about fifty students - and allowed the other two teachers to go to their classrooms and do the things they had to do, while I taught the schoolchildren the "Schnitzel Bank" song. So the weather was not too good outside. We closed the door and I got up in front of the class and proceeded to sing and explain "Der Schnitzel Bank" song, and while I was singing...[sings words in German]... why, a knock came on the door. And I interrupted the song T: and opened the door, and there stood the superintendent with three Civil Rights Commissioners. And they were introduced to me; I was introduced to them, and they said that, THONHOFF 2
"Please continue, we would just like to look around the school while you do the things you have to do." So I continued with the song and teaching the children, I continued...[sings - words in German]...and they would reply ...[sings - words in German]... And we went through all the five or six verses. And in the meantime, the three investigators went to the various rooms. And one of the teachers in the room adjoining mine, who taught fourth, fifth and sixth, was a substitute teacher that day. Her name was Mrs. Leora Carpenter. And one of the investigators went into her room and looked around the bulletin board to see if everything was okay. And then he went up to her and asked her, says, "Tell me, do they still speak German in this school?" And she said, "Well, I really don't know about right now, but a number of years ago, when I used to teach full-time here," says, "most of the Germans kids that would come to this school could not speak English. They could not speak anything but German." And she told me this a few days later, but, anyway, the commissioners spent an hour or so at the school, and then they went away. And didn't hear anything until several weeks later when the school superintendent told me over the telephone that, said, T: "Well, the investigation has been completed and the charges have been dropped." To which, I chided him, says, "Yes, it was because of what happened at Fashing!" [laughter]
K: I want to know, let me ask my questions in here, too. Do you mind if I leave the microphone on and just chat with you?
T: No, no, that'd be fine.
K: I...you've said that you all used to say the pledge of allegiance every morning in English, German and Spanish. Can you remember how to say it in German and Spanish?
T: Oh. I think I can, although I've been retired for seven years, but every morning in my room, why, we would start off the day by reciting the pledge in English, Spanish and German. And then we would sing songs in various languages - some German, some Spanish, "Alloutte," whatever we could pick up. And the children dearly loved it. But anyway, we'd start off and say, "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stand8s, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." And then immediately - go on ...[recites pledge in German]...and then in Spanish say...I have to think a minute; I have to think on that!
K: Would it be, "Yo promote"? or something like that?
T: No, [recites some Spanish] I've got to think; I forgot T: it in Spanish.
K: I've never heard of anyone doing the pledge in any K: other language.
T: Oh, yeah. And my first grade teacher she started me on this, because she did a...gosh, my mind is blank now. I thought I could do it, but it...
K: That's okay.
T: ...I'm sorry.THONHOFF 3
K: Oh, no: that's all right.
T: I'll be here and if I think about it, I'll come back.
K: All right. That'd be neat.
T: I've got a mental block right now.
K: Can you tell me about some...maybe a memorable teacher that you worked with or a memorable student, or family?
T: Well, one of the most memorable ones was Mrs. Mildred Lotaweig. Mildred Hemby Lotaweig, who taught first, second and third grade at my school for twenty-five years. We were together twenty-five years. And the other teacher, Mrs. Eloise May, taught nearly twenty-five years. We really knew and understood one another. But Mrs. Lotaweig was fluent, of course, in English and Spanish and German. And she could even talk some Swedish, because she had a lot of experience. And she had taught at a little school - of Cadillac - in a Swedish community of Karnes County, only about ten miles from where Fashing was. And back in the '30s and '40s, the T: main sport, and entertainment, was playing baseball for most kids. They had their Sunday baseball leagues and so forth. But anyway, Mrs. Lotaweig taught at Cadillac for a number of years and among her more distinguished students was little Cliff Gustafson and his brother, Marvin Gustafson. And Mrs. Lotaweig would teach children how to play baseball from the first grade up. Well, these Gustafson children were already pretty good in baseball because their Uncle Louie Gustafson, down in Karnes County, taught them how to play baseball. But she kind of perfected them there in the first, second and third g6rades, and she told me that when those little Swedish kids would come to school they were barefooted - just like most of the other kids of that day and age - but when they played baseball, it was for blood! [laughter] They were serious! And so Cliff, little Cliff, grew up to be the head baseball coach at the University of Texas at Austin, winning a many a national title. And his brother, Marvin, who also went to schools for a period of time at Cadillac, grew up to be the renowned baseball coach and athletic director, I think, of the Northside Independent School District, and now has a stadium named after him. But Mrs. Lotaweig had always played...started off kids playing baseball - the real baseball - in the first grade.
K: Was that like, her educational philosophy that...?
T: Well, Mrs. Lotaweig went back in the...she was over past fifty years of age, and she went back to school to get her degree. And she went up to...at Southwest Texas State Teachers College - now Southwest Texas State University and she said she would take these teaching courses, and it was all she could do to hold her tongue while these educational professors told them, "You should never give a first grader a real wooden baseball bat or a real baseball. It is dangerous!" And it was all she could do to hold her tongue, because she knew that that wasn't so! [laughter]
K: Were the Gustafsons there as a Swedish family? Or were there other Swedish...?THONHOFF 4
T: Oh, no. It was a Swedish community.
K: Oh, you all were a multi-cultural community before your time, weren't you?
T: Oh, yes. We had the English, Scot, Irish, the German. The oldest Polish settlement in America is at Panna Maria.
K: Oh, that's true. That's right.
T: There's a Czech settlement at Hobson; a Swedish settlement at Cadillac in southwestern Karnes County; and we have Australians who settled in Karnes County.
K: Well, no wonder [she] wanted you to... [laughter]
T: Oh, we had a wonderful blending of the cultures. But there's still a lively Swede settlement in southwestern Karnes County. The school of Cadillac has long been gone, T: but the Swedish community remains and they go to church at the E...[inaudible] Lutheran Church, that is still active. They have substitute pastors and, up until a few years ago, some of the congregation started the Good Shepard Lutheran Church in Kenedy. And until, maybe, oh, ten years or so ago, they would have an annual smorgasbord, which I dearly loved to attend!
K: Tell me a little bit about the school in Fashing. Who started it? Did it start out as a rural school?
T: Oh, the...
K: A one-room school house on a ranch or something?
T: Yes. Fashing itself started in...in extreme eastern Atascosa County. It used to be a part of the five thousand acre Hickock Ranch. And two real estate developers - Louis ...oh, gosh, I can't think of their names there. One was Louis Steran, and another one, bought the ranch and had it subdivided into hundred and sixty acre plots, and they advertised for settlers to come there and take up farming. And a number of farmers from up around Bracken, near New Braunfels, Converse came; some people from Halletsville came. And the...Louis Steran even had a little town to be called Hickock City - named after Hickock Ranch - plotted, with a place for a church and a store and streets and roads and alleys and so forth. But Hickock City never did take off. A store was built, and they...before long, enough T: settlers were there to come. The pioneer German family of the O.F.C. Heinke Family - the largest family in the settlement; they had quite a number of children - built a school, a one-room school, about the year 1916, which they called Hickock School. By 1917 or '18, enough families had come, why, the school had to be enlarged, to go from a one-teacher school to go to a two-teacher school. And the school teacher had to come out all the way from Karnes City on a motorcycle.
K: [laughter]
T: But he...they divided, they enlarged the school by putting up a wagon sheet inside and making a two-room school. And Mrs. Emily Bowden Kunkle was the second teacher in the expansion phase. And the storekeeper there at Fashing petitioned for the name...for a post office to be named Hickock. But the post THONHOFF 5
office turned down that name because of its similarity to Hitchcock, Texas, and so he said, "Well, find another name for this school." And so the postmaster submitted the name of Hindenburg. Why I don't know. But, this was in 1917, 1918, and World War I at that time was well underway, and one of the main German generals was General Paul Von Hindenburg, and there was a very great anti-German sentiment at this time. And so, the name Hindenburg was also turned down and the post office department sent back and said, "Choose another name." And T: Albert Schrader, the storekeeper, said, "Well," - and his wife gave me this story - said, "Well, there must be something in the store that we can name this place after." And he found a can of "Fashion Brand" tobacco. F-a-s-h-i-o-n. Now, if you look downstairs in the little general store section, you'll see a can of "Fashion Brand" tobacco in the store here at the Institute of Texan Cultures.
K: [laughter]
T: But anyway, he submitted the name 'Fashion - F-a-s-h-i-o-n'. Sent it off to Washington, D.C., but when it came back, for some reason, unbeknownst to anyone, the name was changed to F-a-s-h-i-n-g - Fashing...
K: [laughter]
T: ...which, to my way of thinking, is a misspelling of the German celebration of Fasching - this is the German equivalent of the French Mardi Gras, the last week's blast before Lent - F-a-s-c-h-i-n-g. But somebody in Washington, D.C., knew of the German background of this community and the problems that it had with arriving at a name; they knew about the German celebration of Fasching, but they didn't know how to spell it!
K: [laughter]
T: So, it came back Fashing, and it's been Fashing ever since. And the name of Hickock School was changed to Fashing School. And then the original single wooden
T: building was outgrown, because many German settlers had come, had moved in about 1918, 1919, 1920, '21. And a new school - wooden school - was built in about 1921 to replace the old Hickock School. And that school was in place until 1952 - '53, when that old school - wooden school - was replaced by a modern, brick building school. And that's the one that I got to teach in. For thirty-two wonderful years, I was a teaching school principal. Fashing School had grades one to eight. And generally, most of the time, one teacher had grades one, two, three; another one had four, five, six; and I had grades seven and eight. And Fashing was the goose that laid the golden egg for the Karnes City Independent School District, because uranium and oil and gas were discovered about 1956, '57, '58. Our school became very wealthy, had a lot of money, but very few kids - because of the drought, the families disbursed. Karnes City, on the other hand, had a lot of students and very little money. For our school to continue to exist, why, annexation was peaceably arranged between Fashing and Karnes City, and we became a member of the Karnes City Independent School District THONHOFF 6
through consolidation - not, it wasn't annexation; it was consolidation.
K: Yeah.
T: There was a vote on both sides. And our school was the golden egg...was the goose that laid the golden egg for
T: Karnes City. And it enabled our school to exist, probably, nearly thirty years after that, until 1988, when we just ran out of kids. And my wife and I retired. She had been a teacher's aide - my wife, Victoria Balser Thonhoff, retired. And I retired in 1988. She'd been a teacher's aide for twenty-two years, and I had taught there for thirty-two years. We raised our three children. And I had the privilege and pleasure of teaching my own three children for...in their seventh and eighth grade. And they've grown up to be good children and adults and parents, and they have given us five wonderful grandchildren.
K: Now, how did you get to Fashing, Mr. Thonohoff? You weren't born there, right?
T: No.
K: You moved there. You tell me when you need to leave.
T: All right. My...I was a young man that came down from Colorado to join the Army Air Corp, and it changed to United States Air Force. And I was stationed in San Antonio three years. And during those three years, why, I was able to get a year and a half college. And I knew what I wanted to be - a teacher. And in the meantime I had met the young girl from Coy City, Texas - just seven miles from Fashing - who I courted and eventually married in 1951. And I got my teaching degree from St. Mary's University in 1953. And my first job was at the Jourdanton Independence School District T: as teacher, coach, bus driver. But...and we had been married in 1951, but on our way from Jourdanton to Coy City to visit her parents, we went through this beautiful little community. And that beautiful little school of Fashing, where we both dreamed of teaching some day and living, working, raising our family. So I put in my application, knowing full well that a vacancy didn't exist, but should one open I'd be interested in hearing of it. And in 1956, I was due to become the elementary principal at Jourdanton, but Felix Henke, the president of the school board - three-man school board - came by to see me one day and said the principal had resigned and that I could have the job if I wanted it. And there was no doubt in my mind what we wanted. And so, I resigned as the principal at Jourdanton and went to Fashing with two of our children - we had another one there at Fashing - and taught thirty-two wonderful years there.
K: Certainly no regrets.
T: No regrets.
K: Oh, that was terrific.
T: Thirty-two years in the same classroom.
K: How did you meet your wife?
T: Oh, goodness! I was a young man in the military, the United States Air Force, and it was in...matter-of-fact, it was August THONHOFF 7
13, 1949. I went with two friends of mine up to T: the Kendall County Fair in Boerne, looking for something interesting to do. And I was a young man – 21, wasn't yet twenty years old - not old enough to drink beer! Legally! But anyway, I was leaning up against this tree at the Kendall County Fair listening to the Boerne Village Band, just enjoying their music. And I looked over at this ...the ladies' powder-room, and I saw this nice looking girl who was kind of wiping off her shoes with a handkerchief. And her eyes caught my eyes, and I kind of smiled and embarrassed her, but when she got up she had to walk right by me.
K: [laughter]
T: And I said something that embarrassed her, and I just followed her!
K: [laughter]
T: And she was with her parents who'd come up there for the fair and to visit an uncle - Uncle Bruno Balser - who at that time was the Kendall County Judge. But anyway, I kind of followed her through the carnival concession, and before long struck up a little conversation and asked them if they were going to - she was with her mom and daddy and another girlfriend or two - asked them if they were going to the dance that night, and she indicated they would, so we made arrangements to go to the dance too. And they had a little dance place at the Kendall County Fairgrounds, just full of T: people. And we three GIs sat there with our feet on some seats below us, and they were the only places in the...only vacant seats in the whole place.
K: [laughter]
T: And when they came by, they had to sit down by us. And after awhile, I...well, I'd say, I probably had the courage, but she had the courage to accept, I asked for a dance and got out there and learned her name. She told me a big lie; she told me her name was Marie - Victoria Marie Antoinette Balser.
K: [laughter]
T: But...and I asked her what her phone number was. And she made the mistake - giving it to me very fast - Lindel 44665.
K: [laughter]
T: And I remembered it! And so after it was all over, a couple of weeks later, why, I gave her a call. And it continued a courtship that resulted in marriage about a year and a half later. And we've been married forty-four years now.
K: Are you that good with remembering phone numbers, usually, or...?
T: Not usually.
K: [laughter]
T: No. That's one I remembered!
K: Why did she give you a false name? Did she not... wasn't sure if she wanted you to call her?
T: Well, that was really her name; she just added the name Antoinette into it.
K: Oh, okay. [laughter]THONHOFF 8
T: It was really her name. And she's over here in the library right now. We've discovered, the last half-dozen years ago, that she descends from really...from some very great German pioneers, who, on her father's side, they were on the first wagon train into Fredericksburg. They were involved with the founding of the San Antonio Express, the publication of the Der Texas F...[inaudible] Press...
K: Oh, now is that the Bals...[inaudible]...name?
T: The Balser - who married with Schutze, Schutze. And then the settlement of Comfort and Civil War and the Battle of the Nueces - the terrible massacre up there. And Louis Schutze, one of her great-uncles was murdered by Confederates. And then, on her mother's side, goes back to Industry, Texas, which is the oldest permanent German settlement in Texas. And bankers...well, on one side we find that one of her forebearers was Victor - Dr. Victor Witte - who was one of the founders of the L...[inaudible] Settlement, there in Washington County, and who later moved to S...[inaudible], near Industry. And who built the house, which is being restored by the Texas-German Society, T: as they call it, "Das House," today, as an example of what a wealthy German immigrant lived in. And so, I really married into a great family.
K: [laughter]
T: I was lucky!
K: And we welcome Coloradans very nicely, don't we?
T: Yes.
K: I wonder if - the tape is getting towards the end - but would you spell...I want you to spell your name for me, and Victoria's - the family name and...
T: All right. My name is Robert Henry Thonhoff. Last name is T-h-o-n-h-o-f-f. My wife's name is Victoria Balser Thonhoff. Her name - Balser, maiden name, Balser, B-a-l-s-e-r. Let me go...her name is Victoria Marie Balser Thonhoff. She was named after both her grandmothers - Victoria Balser and Marie Duerr, who married into the Schultze family.
K: Yes. Is that...I have some Deere relatives.
T: D-u-e-r-r.
K: Oh, no, no. Mine are D-e-e-r-e.
T: Uh-huh.
K: This is Mary Grace Ketner, interviewing Robert Thonhoff, on August 21, 1995, at my office here at the Institute of Texan Cultures. And he just remembered the Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish!
T: [Recites in Spanish]...
K: All right! Thank you very much for being our guest.
END OF TAPE 1, SIDE 1, ABOUT .. MINUTES.
SIDE 2 - BLANK. THONHOFF 9