Southside's link with Spain

Fourteen young women spent their junior year of college in Madrid in 1963-64. Now, as senior ladies, many of them have  gotten together four  times in Cluster Springs in the last 25 years.

Eight  of “Las Chicas,” as they call themselves, met in March at classmate Pickett Craddock’s home, Oak Grove Bed and Breakfast.

A highlight of the women’s visit is a regular trip to Paco’s Spanish tapas restaurant in South Boston. Before opening his establishment in 2024, Paco Arrocha catered several of their dinners. Now they dine at his restaurant at least twice on each visit, conversing with him and his staff in the language they learned 62 years ago.

This time Arrocha found a video with scenes from 1960s Spain on YouTube and posted them on the restaurant’s TV screen.

“I think he is excited to have us there because we speak Spanish and of our experiences in Spain,” says Sara Jane Hartman of New York.  “It is so wonderful to feel so genuinely welcomed, and the food is genuinely Spanish.”

One of the Chicas is Meredith Carter Patterson, who grew up with Craddock in Halifax County. She lives now in Burlington,N.C.

““ When we get together it is so special becausenobody else understand how wonderful that year was for us,” she says. “As American students, we were given special treatment by wonderful teachers.”

 

Both Patterson  and Craddock attended Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Va., where the program was led by their teacher Dorothy Mulberry. This teacher also visited Oak Grove at one of their reunions.

How did Craddock get involved in the program? “I majored in Spanish just so I could go to Spain,” she says.

The 14 young women  stayed at residents’ homes, learning about Spanish culture from professors and picking up the language too. Julie Rawson of Vancouver, Wash., still communicates with one family that hosted her all those years ago.

Several became Spanish teachers. Craddock did not, but the Spanish was useful in arranging an adoption from Honduras and conversing with a foster child from Guatemala and one foster child’s parents.

I attended most breakfasts and one dinner with the group myself, and I played the piano while they sang  an old Spanish song that had no sheet music.

I did enjoy some of our conversations, but I don’t have the appetite for talking that they have. I marvel at how they can all converse  for hours on end for several days. I suspect that the bond they formed over this novel experience was a very strong one.

Viva las chicas!