Sometimes you stumble across extraordinary story

Sometimes, quite by accident, you stumble across a most extraordinary life story.

That happened to me this week.

The folks at Portales High School were looking to complete a list of former superintendents and were missing part of the name of one of the first people to hold down that job.

They knew a “Mr. Skinner” had been the third superintendent of the school, occupying the post from 1904-1906. They had first names — or at least initials — for all of the others who held that position over the years, but not his.

I can never pass up a mystery, so I started with documents already on my bookshelf.

I was certain I’d find the answer in an unassuming little booklet called “Education Personalities,” that was published (by published, I mean photocopied and stapled together) in 1976 by the Roosevelt County Retired Educators Association.

Alas, that was not to be. In the list of PHS superintendents that started in 1900, the third name was “---- Skinner.”

Other printed resources were even less helpful. I kept hitting dead ends.

Finally, I turned to the faded microfilmed pages of the Portales Times, an early weekly newspaper that has copies going back to February of 1903. It’s always a hit and miss hunt (but never a dull one) since parts of the scans are completely illegible.

It was there — thanks to sheer good luck — I hit the first jackpot.

Tucked between items that included “Some good wagons for sale or trade. Call on Slover the blacksmith” and “J.B. Priddy and H.B. Ryther went to the country Wednesday morning, presumably on a bear hunt,” was the answer.

In the Jan. 6, 1906, edition a small front-page item read, “Prof. I.P. Skinner, superintendent of our schools, returned Monday from Duncan, Indian Territory, at which place he spent the holidays.”

Knowing his term had expired in 1906, I scrolled slowly forward and hit a second jackpot with a story from May 26, 1906.

A grand farewell party (“the largest gathering in the history of Portales”) had been held in his honor at the courthouse, and he’d been dubbed “the best educator in the Pecos Valley.”

The article spoke in glowing terms of the accomplishments made under Skinner’s leadership, lamenting that he would “not be an applicant for another year yet if he could be prevailed upon to be, he would be chosen unanimously.

“The people of Portales realize that he is too strong a man to be confined in our little city,” the story continued, “and that his talents eminently fit him for a high place in the greater institutions of learning in this broad land.”

Having Skinner’s initials led to another fruitful connection, a page for him on the website, Findagrave.com, which bills itself as the “world’s largest gravesite collection.”

Better yet, it revealed his full name – Isham Pittman Skinner.

In the third jackpot of this search, the page also included a positively effervescent account of Skinner’s life that was published in the Athens, Texas, Review on Feb. 13, 1913, following his death at the age of 55.

After he left Portales, according to the story, Skinner spent a brief time with an ailing family member in Duncan, and then moved to Athens where he was a beloved superintendent at the time of his passing.

“Prof. Skinner was a man of modest and retiring disposition, but a man of profound learning and studious habits,” the account reads. “By his proficiency as a teacher he had endeared himself to the children and the citizenship of Athens. His death is a great loss to the schools and community.”

The article described his funeral in detail noting that “the grave was covered with a profusion of rare flowers sent by friends of the deceased and family” and had been reached by “the largest procession ever seen in the city, notwithstanding the weather was very gloomy and continually threatened rain.”

Most memorably, for a man who spent his entire career as an educator, was this: “The school children formed in a circle around his grave during the burial service and their unrestrained grief was very effecting.”

Isham Pittman Skinner, it sounds like Portales was fortunate to have you here more than a century ago. May you be remembered — including your first name — as someone who made a difference in this world.

Betty Williamson loves treasure hunting in the archives. Reach her at:

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