In 1988 Susan Carver had just turned 18, just gotten married and could not wait to leave Cortez.
Carver, 42, moved to Lemitar, N.M., with her husband, where most of his family lived.
Now, a decade later, Carver, after divorcing her husband, is back in Cortez with their five children.
Carver was just out of high school when she got married, prompting the two to move to the town, one mile north of Socorro.
I could not leave fast enough, she recalled. I was 18 and wanted to make my own decisions.
Three weeks after leaving Cortez for New Mexico, Carver wanted to come back.
Because she was only a little more than four hours away, Carver visited Cortez six to seven times a year.
I never thought I would miss Cortez, she said. I have no regrets about coming back to Cortez.
She is now the planning director for Montezuma County,
On that day in 1998 when she decided to return to Cortez, Carver fixed her breakfast for her then husband, like she had done hundreds of times, but when he left for work, she got her children together with some belongings and made the trip back to Cortez.
My relatives were in Cortez, so I came back to where I was familiar with, she said. Most of my family lived here.
She said Socorro does not compare to the city she grew up in. While the two cities are similar in size, they differ greatly.
She liked the canyon and being so close to the Rio Grande but disliked the dry climate of Central New Mexico.
The scenery, mountains and of course her family were some of the reasons she returned.
Returning to Cortez also gave Carver a sense of peace and also allowed her to return to school because she had relatives who could watch her children while she attended classes.
I knew I wanted to do more with my life, and I needed to be educated and have family that would help me with my children, she said.
Not everyone has the same opinions and feelings that she has about her hometown, Carver said.
She told her sons and daughters they should see for themselves what other places had to offer before deciding whether to return to their roots.
A few of her adult children have moved back to the area, mostly because they want to be closer to their mom.
After leaving Central New Mexico, Carver knew she had to find a job so she could support her five children. Welfare was not an option because she did not want to play the role of being a victim.
I wanted to be an example to (my kids), she said, and she soon landed a job at a Cortez law firm where she worked as a paralegal for eight years before the office closed.
Carver then found a job at Superior Interiors where she worked 18 months. A nice perk of the job was that she was allowed to take her youngest child with her to work. Carver, though, saw no future there.
I am a person who enjoys challenges and wants to be challenged, she said.
She moved into the assistant planning director position for the county. Seven months later she was named the new planning director.
Her past work as a paralegal where she specialized in probate cases and land development helped her prepare for her job with the county.
I wanted to pull my life back from the depths of the Earth, and Cortez offers everything, she said. You can live in this area and still be a productive person. People see the obstacles, while I see the opportunities.
Carver said her first child was born in Socorro, but her next three children were born in Cortez and her youngest was born in Durango. She said that she always tried to come back to Cortez to give birth in order to be close to her family.
Carver now has three daughters, ages 24, 22, and 21, and three sons, ages, 18, 15 and 7. She kiddingly referred to them as the Brady Bunch.
While Carver decided to return to her roots, she has no regrets about her decision to leave Cortez because it allowed her a chance to experience different cultures while broadening her perspectives and realizing what she had given up.
It made me miss Cortez even more, she said, and added she wanted her children to experience the small town where she grew up.
Carver believes that it was good for her children to learn about the Hispanic culture from their paternal grandparents and added they also raised sheep, goats and chickens while in New Mexico.
She also said another benefit to moving back is that the residents of Cortez are not shy about telling parents and guardians where they saw their kids on a particular day and they often wondered how she knew where they were at a certain time.
That type of atmosphere, she said, can almost always be attained in a small town.
Reach Michael Maresh at michaelm@cortezjournal.com
