Isela Swain

A Hundred Year Journey to the Land of Immigrants: 1899-1999 Isela Swain

Exiting the dusty train that hot afternoon in Torreon, he turned smiling offering his hand to his pregnant wife. He caught sight of his brothers and their wives leaving the train. His father holding his five-year old grandson with his mother looking tired came next. Only then, did he look over to the station. There was the hotel and a restaurant, at last. He was happy. They were there to begin a new life and business here, his brothers and he. He was to establish an English newspaper in the city of Torreon, the fabled metropolis to be and in which he eventually became a founding father. Before that could happen tragedy came to the family-he lost his wife and baby. Remarried years later and with a new business finally started, the terrifying Mexican Revolution hit the city with a tremendous force right on his only daughter's birthday. Deafening enemy cannonades from the surrounding hills of Torreon as well as the reek of rotting corpses around her-on her fifth birthday, April 12,1913-were something she never forgot and would forever associate with her birthdays. That era of her childhood hounded her until she forgot Torreon and her father.