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“She cycled all the time and we tried breeding her several times, but she was never able to carry a foal for 11 months,” said Macaron.
Yulla Yulla was born in 1995, three years after Frank moved from Raton to Los Lunas.
Frank was born on Aug. 8, 1939, the youngest of George and Galia Macaron’s three kids. His sister Shirley was two years older; his brother
adults by then--stayed behind in Brazil, where Frank’s grandmother had grown up.
Six months after the family settled in New Mexico, the grandfather died of pneumonia. That left Rashida Nejar alone with all those kids to raise.
“They were poor,” says Frank. So poor that his grandmother and her daughters would go
Frank’s parents met in Springer. His dad and Uncle Joe ran a grocery store until his dad was drafted into the service. When he returned, he decided to move his family to Raton. His dad, says Frank, wanted to open his own grocery store and didn’t want to compete with Uncle Joe’s in Springer.
George and Galia rented a building on
Yulla Yulla after winning an allowance where she set a New Track Record.
George Jr. was seven years older than Frank.
His parents and grandparents immigrated
to New Mexico from Lebanon. Frank says some Lebanese families had immigrated to southern Colorado and later moved south into New Mexico.
It was a time when families were often large and times tough.
Frank’s mom was one of 17 kids born to his grandparents, Elias and Rashida Nejar. Sixteen of the 17 were girls. When Elias and Rashida arrived in the U.S., they brought with them 14 of the kids, 13 girls and the lone boy, Abe. The three oldest children--apparently
out to the railroad tracks with sacks and gather for fuel some of the coal that fell off the railroad cars on their way out of town.
Rashida and her girls would also clean houses after the girls got home from school. In time, with help from one of her brothers, Rashida Nejar opened a small grocery store in Raton.
No amount of poverty or pitfalls kept Rashida from doing the best she could for her kids.
“They all went to school,” says Shirley Macaron. “Two of them (Sadie and Ilda) worked their way through college (at New Mexico Highlands) and became teachers. The others married and worked with their husband in businesses, mostly grocery stores.”
Shirley too became a teacher. She
earned Bachelor and Master’s degrees from Highlands and spent 31 years teaching in the Espanola Valley.
Frank with the awards he has won over the years.
the east side of Raton and opened their store on the same street where three other grocery stores--two of them owned by Lebanese families--were already located.
“They were all within a block of each other,” says Frank. “They all had kids. Four little grocery stores right there. How they raised their kids I don’t know, but they did it.”
There was also a much larger Safeway store in town.
Frank says all four of the mom-and-pop stores allowed their customers to buy on credit.
“But if they (customers) had a lot of money, they’d go to the big Safeway,” says Frank. “When they ran short, they’d come back. But they paid their bills.”
Back then, the economy in the area was booming because of the York Canyon Mine. Coal from the mine was hauled out by freight
16 New Mexico Horse Breeder
Yulla Yulla winning the 2001 New Mexico State Racing Commission Handicap at Sunland Park.