Biography
“Ernesto Ramon Ulibarri: A Path Through Changing Times”
by Deborah Begel, May 2005
When he was growing up in the late 1930s and early 1940s in New Mexico’s Chama Valley, Ernesto’s father always told him, “Hijo, (son), you need to learn all about ranching because this life up here is never going to change.” Ernesto didn’t agree with his father, but didn’t say so.
His father was right about his son’s early days though. Ernesto spent his summer days and nights at Sheep Camp in high mountain pastures near the Colorado border. Sometimes, when he was alone overnight, he would tie a bucket to his tent and put hay inside it. That way he could listen to the horse chewing and keep his mind off scary night sounds.
Although Ernesto’s father, Alfredo Ulibarri, showed him how to feed the sheep and saddle the horses, fix a fence and cook some beans, ride a horse and look for strays, he never passed on his own ability to make furniture. “Neither of us ever thought of it,” Ernesto says.
Years later, Ernesto found himself taking up the craft and surpassing his father’s rather rustic talents. A builder of Spanish Colonial furniture, his mortiss and tenons fit tightly together, his rosettes light on a piece like a butterfly and his carving, well, that must be a blessing from the angels.
I the writer of this piece, and Ernesto’s wife, know that I am prejudiced. But I am not alone. Ernesto’s been featured in the Rio Grande Sun, quoted in the Albuquerque Journal and photographed by New Mexico Magazine. We’re hoping he’ll be included in a feature about Northern New Mexico Community College in El Rito, where Ernesto learned his trade and continues as a student.
His path to furniture was a long one. Ernesto decided to leave high school and the ranching life prescribed for him in 1955. He borrowed $75 from T.D. Burns III, owner of a vast sheep ranch and the store in Los Ojos and boarded the bus for Los Angeles. At first he lived with his sister, Lucy Tafoya. His first job was at Nachman Corporation where he helped make mattresses. He moved into his own apartment, bought a car and spent his evenings boxing at Olympic Auditorium.
In the fall of 1958, Ernesto came home to help his father harvest the hay. As soon as the bales were stacked in the barn, Ernesto joined the Army. He went through basic training at Fort Carson in Colorado, and later became a gunner in the 106 in Fort Lewis, Washington.
Perhaps the reader sees a pattern. Ernesto goes away, but he comes back, he goes away again, returns. He came home after the army in 1960 and married Margarita Fabiola Martinez in 1962. Their sons Duane and Rodney were born in 1963 and 1966 respectively. Ramona Ernestina came along in 1976.
In the early days of their marriage, Ernesto did odd jobs in construction. Then in 1964, the family moved to Salt Lake City, where Ernesto got a degree in meat-cutting. They returned to the Chama Valley in 1967.
Late that year Ernesto got a break career-wise. He met and started working for Peter Kewitt, first building the dam at El Vado Lake, then moving to Universal Construction to help build Lake Heron Dam.
The company kept him on until a seemingly ordinary day eighteen years later. Ernesto was operating a backhoe on a road building job in Albuquerque. When Ernesto climbed down to take a break, a man in a car cruised through the construction site and hit a barricade that rammed into Ernesto’s back
Two back surgeries later, doctors didn’t know if he’d walk again. He did though, gradually regaining some but not all of his former strength. He moved to Colorado without the family in 1983 and returned to the Chama Valley in 1987. More back and forth to Colorado, a job as a ranch-hand in Colorado, nights as a bouncer at the Silver Bar or Gigi’s in the Chama Valley. Very little income.
In 1994, life took a turn for the better. He began getting small checks for his disability. Dreams of stability returned. He rented an old adobe house in Ensenada in the Chama Valley and later took out a loan to buy a trailer for his lot in Tierra Amarilla.
About that time he met Deborah Begel, also a resident of Ensenada. She later became his wife. When they first started dating, she asked him, “What do you want to do with the rest of your life?”
His answer: “I don’t know.”
Later, she dragged him around an art tour in El Rito. When he saw the Spanish Colonial furniture workshop, his eyes opened wide and he smiled. “This is what I want to do!” he said. It was a grand moment.
That was in the fall of 1998. By late 1999, Deborah and Ernesto had bought a place ten miles from the school and Ernesto was building his first piece, a night stand. Next he copied an 18th century chair with an elegant curved legs. Then a trunk with cedar lining, his careful, steady hand carving flowers in a sea of soft waves. And so on, until it came time to share his dreams and his furniture. He calls his new business Ernesto’s Furniture: In the Spanish Colonial Tradition. His slogan reflects his love of quality: One at a time, one of a kind, one for a lifetime.
“I never thought I’d see a day like this,” he commented the other day. “But I surely do welcome it.”