Dr. Juan José Osuna

Latin America comes to Bloomsburg:

Juan José Osuna at the Normal School

By Robert Dukenberger

 

             Meandering along the edge of campus from the Haas Center down to Penn Street is Osuna Drive, named in 1985 for Juan José Osuna, a native of Puerto Rico and 1906 graduate of the Bloomsburg State Normal School (BSNS).  He came to Bloomsburg as part of a fascinating chapter in the history of the University when students traveled from Latin America to continue their education in Pennsylvania.

             Following the Spanish-American War in 1898 young men and women from the newly acquired territories were sent to further their education in the United States.  Seventeen year-old Juan Osuna was one of them, but because of the mistaken belief that students from Puerto Rico needed to be acclimated to American culture more than simply learning English, in 1901 he was sent to the Carlisle Indian School.

             This was a great disappointment to Osuna, but he was able to take advantage of a program where students at the school were placed in homes throughout the state.  A faculty member at Carlisle was Oscar H. Bakeless, an 1879 BSNS graduate who saw the young man’s potential.  He secured a place for Osuna in Orangeville north of Bloomsburg at the farm of Mira Welsh.  This was a turning point in his life, and Osuna later wrote that Miss Welsh had the greatest influence on his life after his mother.  Of equal importance was the fact her brother was BSNS principal Judson P. Welsh.

             In only five months Osuna had a practical knowledge of English.  He worked in Orangeville for the Welsh Family and in the fall of 1903 entered the Normal School.  He continued to work to pay his own way, graduating from Bloomsburg with a teaching certificate on June 27, 1906.  Many other Spanish-speaking students also attended the Normal School in addition to the ones from Puerto Rico, including a large number from Cuba, the first arriving in 1900 with the final ones leaving in 1921.  A total of 45 from Puerto Rico came to Bloomsburg, eleven of them graduating.

             It was difficult at first for the Latin American students to adjust.  Having a poor command of English they had a very difficult time communicating, and so the school employed several faculty members who knew Spanish.  Mr. Noble W. Rockey, a young man with teaching experience in Puerto Rico, was hired in 1905, and in 1909 E. Joe Albertson, a 1901 BSNS graduate and for five years an instructor in the Philippines, was taken on.  These teachers were vital in ensuring the students succeeded.

             This was not always the case however, and some of the students did not stay in Bloomsburg very long.  One of the Puerto Rican students left after only six days and three others within two months.  But the rest were able to benefit from the quality education the Normal School offered.

             Because of the language barrier only a few of the students joined the campus literary societies, but one area they did participate in more fully was athletics.  In 1903 a number of Puerto Rican and Cuban students were members of a football team, and in 1907 and 1908 Cuban students fielded their own baseball team.

There is no question though that of all these students Juan Osuna enjoyed the most distinguished career.  After leaving the Normal School he earned three more degrees, a BA from Penn State, a Divinity Degree from the Princeton Theological Seminary in 1915, and finally a Doctorate in Education from Columbia University in 1923.  He also continued to have fond memories of this area and would come back to Orangeville to visit Mira Welsh.  In between earning his degrees he spent two years on missionary work in Puerto Rico with the Presbyterian Church.

In 1923 his professional career began at the University of Puerto Rico, where he first served as director of their Summer School until 1928 and then Dean of the College of Education until 1945.  He still came back to Bloomsburg, including in the fall of 1940 when he lectured on the relationship between the United States and the nations of North and South America.  In 1945 he left his native land when he moved to Washington, D.C., and died in Arlington, Virginia on June 18, 1950.

Juan José Osuna was greatly respected and an internationally known educator, and for his lifetime of work had a high school named after him in his hometown of Caguas, in addition to the street on the Bloomsburg University campus.  His time living here meant so much to him that before his death he asked to be buried in his beloved Pennsylvania hills.  A cemetery in Orangeville is where Osuna was laid to rest, a reminder of the impact the Bloomsburg State Normal School made a century ago on the lives of many young men and women from Latin America.

 

Printed with permission

 

James Osuna in front of  Osuna Drive, a street named after his father Juan J. Osuna, located in the Bloomsburg University Campus.

Jim Osuna (left) and Robert Dukelberger (Right) during a recent visit to Bloomsburg University. The Osuna family donated invaluable documents from Dr. Osuna’s personal papers.

 

For more information visit:

http://www.bloomu.edu/admin/today/PR1006/index.php