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Abe Peña's  "From the Past" newspaper column

All material used with the kind permission of the author, given to me personally.

Published Thursday, January 22, 2009 5:06 PM MST

" Lady of the Ice Caves

By Abe Peña
Abe Peña is a local author and historian whose award winning books 'Memories of Cibola' and 'Villages and Villagers' are available at bookstores throughout New Mexico.

She had flaming red hair. She was the kind and friendly Lady of the Ice Caves and Bandera Crater in the Zuni Mountains. She was the author of Fire and Ice. Poetry was in her blood.

When she died at age 81, her family used one of her lines as her epitaph, “So Beloved, so permeated with good will, and so unworthy.”

Her name was Cora Mary Phelan Candelaria (1921-2003), but everyone knew her as Reddy, a nickname she picked up in her youth in Arizona. She was born in the small community of Young and raised in Globe. She then attended Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, leaving in 1943 to work for the government in Washington, D.C. during World War II.

I first met Reddy at the Ice Caves in 1949, where she offered me a cup of coffee. I had stopped to visit with her husband David Candelaria, who had recently taken over the management of the Ice Caves in the Zuni Mountains, and we were summering a herd of sheep on Oso Ridge nearby.

David was not there, but Reddy and their daughter Janet were, and she offered me coffee and visited while waiting for David. She told me how she loved the mountain. “Don't you think the tall Ponderosas are majestic?” she asked, pointing to the gentle hill east of the house. Their log house served not only as their residence, but also housed the office of their fledgling business offering trail walks to the historic Ice Caves and the crater nearby.

David was the son of Manuel Candelaria and Prudencia Mirabal Candelaria, whose backgrounds went back to sheep ranching. Manuel hailed from the Candelarias who were large sheep ranchers in the Concho and Holbrook country in Arizona. His wife Prudencia was the daughter of the well known empire builders in livestock and land, Silvestre Mirabal and Lorencita Mirabal, from San Rafael.

Although David came from a sheep ranching background and inherited ranching properties, his primary interest was always in tourism and promotion of the Ice Caves and Bandera Crater. Reddy, his lifetime partner, was a great promoter in her own right and was the essence and spirit of the enterprise, “The Lady of the Ice Caves.”

She told me they met at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff where they were attending school. David said “I liked her from the day I saw her. She was full of spirit and cute as a button. World War II was on and I volunteered for the Naval Air Corps. While in pilot training, the doctors found problems with my ears, so I had to give up pilot training and enlisted in the Navy.”

“We dated and were planning marriage, but, with the war going on, we postponed our plans a couple of times, but finally were married by a Justice of the Peace in the great city of Chicago, Illinois.”

In 1946, when the war was over, they moved to the Ice Caves, where they took over the management of the business.

David said, “During the war, Cecil Moore, who had a homestead nearby, leased the Ice Caves and started improving the trails and started collecting a fee of 50 cents from visitors who stopped to see the caves and the crater.” He added that Moore “also got a liquor license and had a saloon and they say the dances got pretty wild.”

“My mother” he continued, “inherited the property and, in the distribution to the heirs, I asked for and got the Ice Caves and the Crater and some grazing land.”

The Candelarias raised three beautiful daughters, Janet, Debbie, and Betsy, at the Ice Caves, and all three have been involved in the growing business at one time or another. Janet's daughter Laurie (Lora) is married to Jeff Alford, and he manages the business that has grown through the years and continues to grow under Jeff's management.

Jeff told me “I have many pleasant memories of my mother-in-law. She was a great story teller and had a tremendous sense of humor. She was very special and everyone that knew her simply loved her. We all miss her a lot.”

She left three daughters and their spouses and nine grandchildren and great grandchildren. Everyone was special to her, and she was very special to each one of them. The Zuni Mountains are a better place because she came this way..

Among her many poems is the following:

“I have to stand high

on a hill,

For it's then I truly see,

As the world unfolds

below my feet

It doesn't start and

end with me.”

And, finally, there is the last poem Reddy wrote, on Jan. 7, 2001:

The Onset

“Here in this zone

of silence,

In the sterile white of

this room,

Impersonal as a

cotton swab,

I feel my identity slipping

And a fear of freezing

Envelops me in a

tomb existence. "