James Dukes Served on School Boards for 42 Years

Ever wondered about the namesake of James Dukes Elementary School?

When an elementary school was first proposed for San Diego Country Estates, local historian Guy Woodward was contacted for suggestions on names for the school. At the school board meeting in January 1984, Woodward and Charles Lemenager officially proposed that the school be named for James Dukes. The school opened in 1985. Dukes’ son, Clarence Dukes, attended the dedication ceremony.

As the story goes, James Dukes was a farmer working in his field when, in a nearby schoolhouse, a new board of trustees was being formed for the Santa Maria School. Dukes was asked to come to the meeting and before he knew it he was elected as one of the trustees. That was in 1911. Between the Santa Maria school board and later the Ramona High School board, Dukes served 42 years as a trustee. That was before the school district became unified to include all the schools in Ramona; each school had its own board of trustees at that time.

Dukes was interviewed by Edgar Hastings from San Diego Historical Society on March 31, 1959.  A transcript of the interview is in the archives at Ramona Pioneer Historical Society. Here is Dukes’ own story of what happened on that eventful day in 1911:

“I had a ranch down there right next to the schoolhouse, and I was out there working in the field,” Dukes told the interviewer. “A couple of fellows came over and wanted me to come (to the meeting). They said they were having a school election. So I went over, green, didn’t know what was happening.”

He went on to say no one was nominated for the positions but ballots were cast to elect the five trustees.

“So when I got out, I found I was a trustee,” he continued. “They just worked me in there. I kept at it a long time. I went from there to the high school (board) and was in the high school (district) a couple of years.

Dukes retired from being a trustee in 1953.

It was also in 1911 that Dukes became a deacon at the Congregational Church. The following year, he married Mamie Baldwin. They had one son, Clarence. Dukes’ wife died in 1913 and he never remarried.

Dukes had several business ventures over the years. He became a partner in the farming business with his father, raising barley, grain and “stuff like that.” They had about a dozen cows and that led to Dukes’ next business. He started a dairy farm in 1922. He ran the dairy for 25 years before selling it. He left the family ranch and moved further “down the valley” to a 165-acre ranch he had earlier purchased. There he worked in carpentry, saying it was “just something to do.”

Beekeeping also kept him busy. He had 100 hives, specializing in Mountain Alfalfa and White Sage honeys and shipping them by freight wagon to San Diego.

Dukes' other civic interests included the Ramona Grange. He served as overseer when the organization got under way in 1914. He joined the Rotary Club when it first started in Ramona in 1937. For many years, he was a trustee for Ramona Cemetery District and was instrumental in adopting the rules and regulations that remain in effect today.

Dukes was born Dec. 27, 1886, in Westville, IL. He was the oldest of five children, with two brothers, Fred and John, and a sister, Mary, born after the family moved to Ramona. Another brother had died in infancy on the trip to California.

The family left Illinois when Dukes was 4 years old. They were living in South Dakota when his father’s brother, also named James Dukes, encouraged them to relocate to Ramona and join him on his 2,000-acre ranch in San Vicente Valley.

“It was cold,” Dukes said about South Dakota. “It didn’t take much coaxing.”

Dukes died Dec. 23, 1970, a few days before his 84th birthday. He is buried in Nuevo Memory Gardens next to his wife.

The history of James Dukes was researched in the archives at the Ramona Historical Society, 645 Main St. The society is located at Guy B. Woodward Museum, which is open from 1 to 4 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays. For more information, call 760-789-7644.