Fort Stanton Kids
The families of Fort Stanton, New Mexico
During its years as a Marine Hospital Service and Public Health Service hospital, the children of the families stationed at Fort Stanton enjoyed a unique way of life. With 27,000 acres of ranch land and a sparkling river as their playground, merchant seamen from all over the globe from whom to learn about the outside world, horses to ride, and parents who gave them freedom to roam.
THEN
[Fort Stanton family photos taken between early 1920s and mid 1950s]
![Fort Stanton School, [maybe] 1943](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c33e04ca2772ce1d314d0c6/1577561630853-89DC7DYX8SM7QW7P0LYE/FortStantonSchool%2Cmaybe+1943.jpg)
Now
[Fort Stanton family photos taken at reunions held between 2003 and 2010.]
Their Stories
Former Fort Stanton kids, Claire Boyd Fluharty and Danna Kusianovich Henderson gathered their stories of a way of life long past for authors Lynda A. Sanchez and James McBride to preserve in books now available for purchase in our online shop and in the Fort Stanton Museum.
Jim McBride has documented the history of the German internment camp that occupied a portion of Fort Stanton during World War II in a fourth book, while Lynda Sanchez's book documents Fort Stanton's history from prehistoric days to the present and features contemporary photography by David Tremblay.
The Children of Fort Stanton, second edition, is a collection of memories of thirty-seven children who grew up at the Public Health Service tuberculosis hospital for merchant seamen in isolated Lincoln County, New Mexico. The time covered in these recollections is from the 1920s to 1953, when the hospital was turned over to the State of New Mexico.
Each of the individual stories tells of their personal experiences and quite often gives insight into the many facets of Fort Stanton life. Quite often a different way of telling some experience or event while growing up at the hospital gives us special insights and new perspectives on life there. There may be some secrets revealed by playmates which will amuse the others and readers in general as the stories are read.
Two of the children deserve credit for collecting these stories and providing the majority of the photos. Danna Kusianovich Henderson and Claire Boyd Fluharty have been the driving force for this book. The reader must remember many of the children are looking back as far as seventy years ago so there will be inconsistencies in many of the stories.
This self-published book by James J. McBride, 2009, has 212 pages and over 348 photos.