Original research and editing in 2025 by Henry Wright Dunbar, EPRTA
The El Paso Retired Teachers Association celebrated their 80th Anniversary [Ruby Jubilee] of their founding in 1945 on September 17, 2025. The featured speaker at the luncheon was Mr. Tim Lee, Executive Director of the Texas Retired Teachers Association.
This year’s President of the EPRTA, Anna Marie Tolland invited all retired educators to join them for this luncheon, and to hear Mr. Tim Lee talk about the latest on health care insurance and other legislative session issues.
The El Paso Retired Teachers Association (EPRTA) has the distinction of being the very first organization of retired teachers in the State of Texas. It was formed two years before the founding of the National Retired Teachers Association (NRTA) and eight years before the formation of the Texas Retired Teachers Association (TRTA) in 1953, making the El Paso group the Charter member of the state association.
After El Paso pioneered the way in 1945, Dr. Ethel Percy Andrus founded the NRTA, a forty-year career educator in Mt. Vernon, Illinois, in 1947 to help retired educators with the needs related to pensions and health insurance. Her organization came to Texas to help form local groups in Dallas in 1949; Fort Worth in 1950; Houston in 1951; San Antonio in 1952; and Austin in 1952. In 1953 these six local groups sent 65 of their 200 members to the NRTA Convention in Miami Beach, Florida, and they joined to form the Texas Retired Teachers Association. Officers were nominated and another meeting was scheduled ten days later in Dallas, Texas. On November 27, 1953 the officers were elected, bylaws approved and the first convention of the TRTA we know today was scheduled and held in November 1954. And it all started with El Paso in 1945!
As an aside, Dr. Andrus, founder of NRTA, had a distinguished career as a high school teacher and principal. In 1958 she organized and founded the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) to extend the benefits to non-educators, sharing many of the ideas and goals achieved by her earlier efforts with the NRTA. She served as president of the NRTA until her death in 1967.
Why El Paso? What Happened That Caused El Paso To Be the First?
The answer is Laura Yarnall Warren, the founder, organizer and first president of the El Paso Retired Teachers Association. Born in Battlefield, Indiana, in 1874 she moved to El Paso with her husband Richard in 1907. Richard was for many years employed by the Southern Pacific Railroad. They resided at 1504 Montana Avenue with their two sons Richard and Lawrence. She earned a Bachelor’s Degree from North Texas State and a Master’s Degree from Columbia University. While living and teaching in El Paso in the 1920s, 1930s and early 1940s, three high schools were built; El Paso in 1917; Bowie in1927; and Austin in 1930.
Mrs. Warren was very involved as a teacher and in the community. She taught American History, Sociology, and probably other subjects also, while also serving as the Chair for the History Department at El Paso High School. She also served as the Dean of Girls at El Paso High at the time uniforms for girls became the rule in the 1925. She taught summer school and did many things noted in the local newspaper to enrich the learning of her students. She founded, organized and served as president of several education, business and social organizations and was the recipient of several honors and recognitions throughout her life. These included being the first president of the local chapter of Delta Kappa Gamma in 1930, a charter member of an organization of 45 businesswomen, and president of the El Paso Council of Social Studies. She was also a member of St. Clements Episcopal Church.
However, it is the personality of Laura Warren that led her to found the El Paso Retired Teachers association and her reaction to experiences while teaching in a rapidly growing El Paso School District from the 1920s to the early 1940s. The El Paso School District was struggling to build enough buildings to house the students and also finding the money to pay the teachers. She worked through staff layoffs (married women first) in the 1920s; salary reductions over a four-year period that started with 15% for married women, followed by general staff reductions of 10%, then 25% to finally end at 28%; weeks cut off the school year and finally near the end of her retirement in 1943 the battle over pensions for retirees. This last issue was triangular, pitting the State of Texas vs. the School Boards and Administration vs. the teachers and it was a struggle throughout the mid 1930s forward. At issue was who would take responsibility? The local districts claimed they had no money, the state claimed no more taxation and the teachers simply wanted a resolution. The other issue was how much pension was deserved. Should teachers be required to save for their own pension? At one point a $40 pension was suggested and turned down by the El Paso Board of Education.
Laura Warren was not a quiet participant in these negotiations. She actively and strongly advocated for the teachers who by law had to retire at age 70. She is specifically quoted in the newspaper in discussions with school board members and superintendents. In one discussion in 1929, when the school board president insisted that funds be allocated for buildings rather than staff she said, “Education is not a building. Education is the teacher and the pupil taught.”
It was all of the above combined that led to her founding and serving as the first president of the El Paso Retired Teachers Association from 1945-1947. Her experiences with the issues that the El Paso School District was struggling through, the position of the State of Texas toward retirees and the bleak outlook she saw, her successful leadership and skills putting her into organizing and presiding in various organizations, and her public persona through her active participation in the community, all these led her to take action when she did. She faced mandatory retirement in 1944 and created EPRTA the following year.
Laura Yarnall Warren died a widow on April 5, 1960 at the age of 85. She is buried in Evergreen Cemetery. Her legacy is she created a voice for retired educators in El Paso and by extension for the State of Texas and the nation. The National Retired Teachers Association recognized her accomplishment in 1959 and of this she stated that this was the work of which she was most proud. She would be pleased to know that the small group of thirty, which she formed in 1945, now has over 400 EPRTA members carrying on the work, which she began.
