Historic Laredo

❖
The Sharkey sisters, Anita and Vera, were
students at the Surrat private school.
COURTESY OF E.H. CORRIGAN
January 18, 1898, respectively, to
Ernest E. Sharkey and Viola
Delia Burkett Sharkey.
The sisters became
exemplary, civic-minded
citizens who were
known to many Laredo
youngsters as Mrs.
Enckhausen and Mrs.
Corrigan, women who
would shape lives in
their respective roles
as the director of the
Girl Scouts program in
Laredo and as a Blessed
Sacrament catechism
instructor.
VERA
Vera Enckhausen, or Bab, as
she was known within her family,
married F.H. Enckhausen who came to
Laredo’s Ft. McIntosh with the Wisconsin National
Guard during the Pancho Villa incursions. Vera
and F.H. had two sons, Frederick Harry and
William (Bill) Ernest Enckhausen. After living in
Panama, Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, and
Pontiac, Illinois, Vera and F.H. returned to Texas.
Fred Enckhausen worked for Central Power and
Light in nearby Mirando City. The family lived in
Hebbronville and then in Laredo once again, residing
on Market Street in a home adjoining the
Sharkey property. The low gray stucco residence
had green shutters, a black iron fence, shade trees
that kept the house cool in the summer, an open
verandah facing Market Street. Vera is remembered
by her niece Margaret Poling for her trademark
long gray hair worn in a bun, immaculate white
gloves, and a dress-up hat for outings.
Vera Enckhausen was a teacher at Central
School. She became the social director of the
local USO in 1943. She was the first Executive
Director of the Laredo Girl Scout Council in
1947, a position she held until her death in
1959. She is credited with many of the changes
in the Laredo Scouting program that sparked
civic involvement and gave the program permanence
and sustainability.
The Girl Scout House, which is located behind
the Market Street Tennis Courts complex, was
dedicated to her memory March 17, 1973.
Blue-eyed and white-haired
like her sister Anita Corrigan,
Mrs. Enckhausen is well
remembered by Laredo
Girl Scouts who had
occasion to attend
camp with her in
Uvalde or any of the
number of Girl Scout
activities in and away
from Laredo.
ANITA
When Anita
Sharkey was born in
1898, Laredo was a city
of 13,000, a city that
enjoyed the conveniences
of electric railway transportation,
city lights, and a
public waterworks system, as well
as the economic benefits of the railway
systems of two countries. The intersection of the
international rail traffic of the Texas Mexican
Railway and the Ferrocarriles Nacional de
Mexico, S.A., figured largely in the life of Anita
Sharkey, her marriage to Ed Corrigan in 1924,
and the lives of their children Bartholomew,
E.H., and Mary Alyce. Anita’s father, Ernest
Sharkey, worked for the Tex Mex Railway as a
conductor. Her future father-in-law Bat Corrigan
(Bat I) worked for the Nacional.
Like her sister Vera, Anita attended Mrs.
Surrat’s private school which was near the
Sharkey residence and later La Escuela Amarilla,
Central Elementary School. She was driven to
school by horse and buggy and later took the
streetcar to classes at old Laredo High which is
now the home of La Posada Hotel Suites.
“They were similar but also dissimilar,”
recalled E.H. Corrigan of his mother and Aunt
Bab, “Both very feminine, but distinctly different
in build and demeanor.”
Anita Sharkey Corrigan left behind a large
body of recuerdos (mementos) in priceless scrapbooks
that nicely piece together the Laredo in
which she studied, grew up, and lived until her
death in 1991. Those personal archives provide
a valuable narrative for many of the social customs
surrounding cultural events in Laredo
throughout her lifetime.
26 ✦ HISTORIC LAREDO