Viola & Joe: A Story of Love, Redemption, Art, and Legacies

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The trains still run through Belen, New Mexico, a sleepy little town about 25 minutes away from Albuquerque. In the evening, I sit outside my room in the courtyard of La Mirada, listening to the train whistle as a purple sunset falls over the mountains. I think of collisions that are all at once odd and beautiful.

I met with 65 year old Viola today. I sat in her living room, decorated with red velvet curtains, and a china cabinet full of dolls including a strange baby Jesus that has become something of a family joke since he’s wearing diapers but seems to have an adult head. Viola has two dogs: Rocky, a deaf and blind cocker spaniel, and Crazy Fernando, the jealous Shih Tzu. She also has two pet ducks, a yard full of weathered statues, and rooms filled with saints, photographs, and memories.

Viola has twinkling, mischievous eyes and a generous smile. I wonder what it was that drew her, as a teenage orphan, to Joe Sisneros, a man six years her senior. Joe and Viola married when she was 17, and he was 23. Despite the hardships of her life, including early abandonment by her father and the death of her mother at 16, Viola was a gregarious, outgoing girl. Joe was quiet and cerebral – more at home in the world of ideas than world of 9 to 5. At twelve years old, he invented his own touchtone telephone system. As a teen, he created jobs for himself until the Army recruited him for duty. The Army life wasn’t for Joe, though — he had a head full of ideas and inventions, and an entrepreneurial spirit.

At 17, Viola gave birth to her first daughter, Imelda, who was later followed by sisters Gina, and Carolyn. Joe began his own sheet metal company, and the family settled into middle-class life in the suburbs of Albuquerque.

Disaster came in the form of a cousin Joe hired to help manage his business. Joe wanted time to hone new ideas and work on inventions, so he hired his relative to manage finances. It was the first bad business idea Joe had ever had. Taxes and bills went unpaid as the cousin lined his pockets, but by the time Joe found out it was too late – he lost his business.

Spiraling into depression, Joe uprooted his family and moved to the desolate town of Abo Viejo, where his parents lived in an ancient house. Imelda was entering her freshman year of high school when Joe began drinking heavily. His wife and daughters no longer recognized him as the bright, inventive man they once knew. Although he had gone back to work, repairing heaters and air conditioners, Joe seemed to be walking in the foggy world between the living and the dead.

His family insisted that Joe go to treatment and he did, but it wasn’t until Viola threatened to pack her bags and leave him, that Joe took his recovery seriously. By then, he’d been drinking for eight years. They were dark years for Joe’s family – years that seemed somehow incomplete or lost. Imelda had graduated college and Gina and Carolyn married and had children of their own. Frustrated, Viola separated from Joe, and doted on her grandchildren. Then, as quickly as the dark days came, they left. Joe was sober and he and Viola fell in love for the second time.

The man she married began inventing again.

He bought a tract of land in Belen and built an RV park, then a restaurant. When that was accomplished, Joe began hauling bags of gypsum into Viola’s kitchen, which he cooked with other ingredients, over and over again. He poured the mixes into handmade wooden frames where they hardened into bricks that he hoped would prove stronger than adobe and more affordable than conventional brick. He started sending samples of his creations to the University of New Mexico so they could be tested for durability and strength. Joe’s creation ended up surpassing building requirements by 33% and proved to be 11 times stronger than adobe.

What nobody was expecting was what Joe did with his bricks. He started his own quarry, and about a year after building the restaurant, he had a new vision and almost immediately set to work building La Mirada Hotel.

But La Mirada is not just any hotel. It is Joe – his family, his history, his love of art and invention – in the form of a building. Besides the thousands of hand-poured bricks that make up the walls, there are Kokopelli and Don Quixote reliefs on the walls, along with figures of chivalry, angels, and saints. There’s a family crest that graces one wall, and statues of women and other figures, all made by Joe’s own hands.

La Mirada is Joe’s legacy – the last gift he gave to his family and the world before unexpectedly passing at the age of 63.

Joe’s three daughters run La Mirada now, and each has added their own artistic touches to the buildings. La Mirada, it seems, will grow with each new generation. It is not only a tribute, but a living legacy, one that was meant to evolve with each addition to the Sisneros family.

Viola lives in a house on the hill above La Mirada. I ask her about Joe. Was he romantic?

“Oh no. . .no. He never even said he loved me, but I know he did,” she says with a lilting Spanish accent. Viola’s daughters, though, remember a man who often had his hand on the small of their mother’s back, and who worked best when she was close by.

Our interview is suddenly interrupted by a loud shriek from another room. “VIOLA! VIOLA!”

“It’s Grandma Josefina,” Viola explains to me.
“Oh,” I say, “you take care of her? That must be hard for you.”
“It is, it is. . .”
“Does she have Alzheimer’s?” I ask.
“Oh yes, a little,” Viola nods.

A toothless old lady with smeared lipstick shuffles out of the bedroom, holding a rosary, scratching herself, and screaming wildly in Spanish — I don’t understand her, but the family, including two grandchildren, seem used to her antics. Laura, Imelda’s partner, takes Grandma to the bathroom. When Grandma returns, she dances a jig, sings a Spanish hymn, and talks about how much she used to love cowboys. Eventually, she returns to her room to take a nap, and the family apologizes profusely for her behavior. I have a hard time containing my laughter.

Just then, Viola’s youngest daughter Carolyn returns. “VIOLA!” she shrieks in a perfect imitation. I laugh, and she does it again. “People tell me I look a lot like Grandma,” she says. “Do you think so?” Yes, I say, I can see the resemblance. She waits for me, but I don’t catch on, not even after she tells me that she is Grandma. “You mean in spirit?” I say. Carolyn laughs, and the family joins in….and I finally get that I’ve just been punked. Big time.

I realize then that Viola is also leaving a legacy. The gregarious teenage girl who loved to laugh lives on, and is very much present in the mischievous, twinkling eyes of her three daughters.

Tagged as: Belen, La Mirada, New Mexico