#6

Irmine was born in 1925 in Detroit, Michigan. Her family later resettled in California for her mother’s health. It was a common treatment in those days for Tuberculosis. Her father had to sell his horse training business before they left. Irmine had spent her teenage years exercising the horses and developed a lifelong love of horses.

After graduating from high school in 1942 she and a girlfriend got jobs so they could pay for flying lessons. She remembers well the rickety old guy and airport where she took lessons. The girls had to hand paint the signs on the runway themselves to be sure they knew where they landed and took off. The plane also did not have very good brakes.... Well, they survived and when World War II rolled around they were ready to join the WAFS and fly for the war effort. She doesn’t remember where they flew exactly, but it was within U. S. borders. Women were not allowed anywhere near the battles going on at that time.

After that experience she enrolled in the University of California at Berkeley. She said she seldom stuck to anything for long. Always on the move.

While in college she majored in architecture. When she left she found a job working for the architectural firm of Stone, Merachim and Patterson. When bridges or buildings were proposed and designed it was her job to clean up the drawings. She was a superb Letterer by her own admission, the best they had she remembers. But, again, she got bored and quit to get married to Allen Stelzner.

They soon had two babies to care for, Adam and Peter, all the while traveling throughout Europe by car. Peter lives there to this day and designs skis in Switzerland, while Adam is in charge of part of the NASA Mars Lander project in Los Angeles and can be seen on Nova describing his work.

When I asked Ermine what Allen did for a living she said that he had enough money so that he could do whatever he “danged well pleased!" So in the 1980s they came to Alamos and rebuilt a beautiful ruin. He loved working with brick, cement, and iron. She brought her artistic abilities to designing with textiles, Mexican tiles, sewing, and cooking. Between them they created a stunning home on the back side of Guadalupe de Loma, next to the Maria Felix Home.

She says she came to Alamos with her two horses reluctantly after Allen discovered the town in the 1980s. She soon fell in love with the colonial architecture and beautiful trees . She like being able to walk and ride everywhere while feeling safe among the gracious Mexican people.

They kept mostly to themselves while making their home an expression of their combined tastes. I remember being overwhelmed by the beauty and, I must admit, a bit of chaos, surrounding them. Their dogs were everywhere, as were their books and colorful piles of fabric.

She lives now in her grand castle of a casita which she designed and had built at the back of her property. Since Allen has died she is taken care of by Armando and his family, who live in the main house.

“Why does Armando take such good care of me now that Allen is gone?” she asked me. I reminded her that she brought him up and sent him to school to be an engineer. She had forgotten.

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