Aug 30

Aug 30 Remembering the Daughters Urrutia

Luz Fernández and Dr. Aureliano Urrutia had seven daughters. Eight, including the daughter that passed away in infancy. They also had four sons, and of course, we know quite a lot about them—we can match their various photographs to their names, we know their professions, and we know something about their personalities and quirks.

But the mother Luz and her daughters are a slightly different story. Luz passed away in her early 40s, and the daughters are not so easily identified throughout the years in family photos, and we don’t know as much about their personalities. It has been a challenge to get a sense of their lives, and to bring the memory of these women into the present.

The authority of the father, the patriarch, overshadowed all of his children to some extent, but it is also clear that he loved them, cared greatly for their well-being, provided for them, and wanted to include each and every one of them in his medical profession.

He also believed that his daughters understood, better than his sons, the challenges that his past circumstances had placed upon him. He sensed that they felt the pain of exile and living apart from their country of origin, Mexico. And, he allowed them the opportunity to free themselves of that past, if they wanted, which some of them did.

I’m gathering what information I can find about Luz and Aureliano’s daughters. And I’ve sorted through my collection of photographs, matching up the faces of different ages. Hopefully I’ve gotten them right, and if not, maybe there is someone out there who will correct me.

Refugio Urrutia Fernández, the eldest daughter

Refugio Urrutia Fernández, born in Mexico City in 1901, fourth child of 12, the eldest Urrutia daughter, was named after her paternal grandmother, Refugio Sandoval. Her graduation portrait is the prominent image of her in the family, portraying the first to graduate. The picture was taken around the time her mother passed away in 1921.

She arrived on the Texas coast with her parents in May 1914, and at the age of 13 was old enough to remember some of the details of the journey into exile: the interception of the family by American troops en route to Veracruz, the days-long stay in a hotel where their room was guarded by American soldiers, and the hospitality the family received as the only passengers aboard a military ship that took them to Galveston. “The captain even gave us his quarters,” she recalls.

She was a staunch supporter of her father in his exile, which was a great comfort to him. Upon the death of her sister Luz, in 1945, she completed the work Luz had begun in documenting the family history by assembling the collection into a family volume presented to their father upon commemorating his 50th year as a physician.

Refugio Urrutia, at right by counter, with brothers Adolfo (far right) and Aureliano Jr. (third from right), and other members of the pharmacy staff.

Professionally, Refugio served as head pharmacist at Farmacia Urrutia, the family’s pharmacy at the corner of Houston and Laredo Streets, from its opening in 1926 to 1968, a few years before it was demolished, along with the entire family medical facility, at the hands of San Antonio’s “urban renewal.” She was known as an expert in chemistry and worked alongside her father and brothers, who were also physicians, on a daily basis to prepare the compounds distributed to the patients of Clínica Urrutia. On the occasion of its demise, she said of the pharmacy that she had traveled Europe and had never seen another drug store as beautiful as that of her family.

In her personal life, Refugio had a number of tragedies, including an absent husband who died at age 28 when her children were very young; the death of her sister Luz, to whom she was very close, who passed away at the age of 42; and the death of her youngest son, Joseph, who passed away at age 17.

Refugio’s elder son, Alberto, attended Tulane University School of Medicine during overlapping years with my father, his cousin, and served as chief resident pathologist at San Antonio/Bexar County’s Robert B. Green Hospital in 1959.

A career pharmacist at the Farmacia until 1968, Refugio never remarried, became a U.S. citizen in 1951, and lived out her days in San Antonio’s Beacon Hill neighborhood until her death in 1982 at the age of 80.

Posted on August 30, 2020.