At the instigation of the Rev. Charles W. Polzer, S.J., a group of people got together in 1965 and the result was the incorporation of the Southwestern Mission Research Center. The first Board of Directors included Dr. Bernard (Bunny) Fontana; Rev. Charles W. Polzer, S.J.; Rev. Kieran McCarty, O.F.M.; Walter Fathauer; George Eckhard; Mrs. Byron Ivancovich; Dr. Charles Di Peso; Dr. Arthur Woodward; Dr. Ronald Ives; Dr. William Wasley; James M. Murphy; and Rev. John Bannon, S.J. A logo was designed by Don Bufkin and Charlie Polzer, and the SMRC-Newsletter began in 1967.

The SMRC-Newsletter/SMRC Revista
This is what Bunny Fontana has to say about the newsletter origins: “I can only remember that my motivation for becoming involved with the newsletter concerned the fact that a few scholars had simultaneously published translations into English of the same Spanish documents, and had done so without knowing anyone else had been working on the same thing. It occurred to me that a newsletter informing others of what was going on in Spanish Borderlands studies would head such duplicated efforts off at the pass. Given there was (and is) so much to be done, it seemed a terrible waste to see people essentially duplicating one another’s efforts.

“The early issues of the SMRC-Newsletter, those from the first in February 1967 until March 1988, appeared occasionally, which meant they came out on no particular schedule. In many of those years there were three issues rather than four. Finally, in March 1988, it settled down to a quarterly with issues appearing, or at least being dated, each March, June, September, and December. Charlie Polzer and I shared the writing duties for the first ten or more years.“

Mission Tours
What has become SMRC’s signature Kino Mission Tours began in 1974, the idea of Tucsonan Lea Ramirez Ward, who originally organized the Sonoran trips as a fund-raising endeavor of the League of Mexican American Women and the Tucson Museum of Art League. Two years later, when the leagues turned to other projects, SMRC began sponsoring the church visits with assistance from Lea, who continued to be a major factor in their success until she finally retired from the SMRC board in 2007.

Another important early contributor to the tours’ success was Dr. Charles Polzer, S.J., one of the founders of SMRC. He was a frequent lecturer on the original tours and continued in that role after SMRC became responsible for arranging and conducting them.

To learn more about Kino Tours, click here.