In the 1940s — before integration and civil rights marches — Clare Marie Cresap and Jose Luz Villa were unlikely best buddies in Clovis.

She was a blue-eyed, Midwestern girl from Iowa, the daughter of a railroad man. He was the dark-eyed son of Mexican migrant workers. They hooked up against the advice of family and began five decades together making a difference.

Jose Villa, 78, talked about their partnership as he showed a visitor a long wall of family photos in a hallway of the couple's comfortable La Villita, N.M., home near Española. There's a photo of Villa in his military uniform during the Korean War and others of their eight children and 13 grandchildren. "I call this the rogue gallery," he said, chuckling.

The couple moved to La Villita full-time in 1993. Soon they were pitching in to help their new community as they had in all the ones before.

Jose Villa grew up one of 15 siblings. Clare was one of five. Both their Catholic families knew about hard work, faith and helping others. Jose Villa lost his mother when he was 13 and the Cresap family was kind to him. "Her mother kind of adopted me," Villa said, as he sat down to a plate of his wife's homemade enchiladas.

Clare was drawn to the music, language and vibrant colors of Villa's culture. Plus she was a bit drawn to him. They married in Clovis after he returned from the war.

Clare finished a degree in art education before they married and Villa finished an interamerican affairs degree at The University of New Mexico after. He was founding director of the East San Jose Community Center, marshaling the funds to add buildings and sports fields. "I learned my pachuco talk in Albuquerque," Villa joked.

Villa finished a Master's Degree in social work while the family lived in Phoenix and during his internship, he worked with the Pima Indian Tribe and the Jewish Community Council.

He taught social work at San Jose State University in California for 15 years while becoming deeply involved with the Chicano movement from the late 1960s through the 1980s, organizing with César Chávez and other leaders.

"Everything we did at that time was to promote the rights of women and minorities," Villa said.

In 1980, the couple bought a ramshackle adobe house in La Villita and worked in the summers with their children to restore the structure. When Villa retired in 1993 they moved to the little village full-time.

By their second year at La Villita, Villa joined the board of Habitat for Humanity and Clare Villa was on the board of the struggling Española Arts Festival. "I'd just come from California where everything was highly organized," she said.

The festival was started in the mid-1980s by a group of Española businessmen. In 1995, the whole festival crew quit except Clare Villa and another volunteer. Undaunted they carried on. The festival grew from 35 to 90 booths over the next decade. Clare Villa has been less involved the last three years, but the festival is continuing through changes into its 25th year.

"Her interest in the arts motivated her to spearhead the festival for several years and turn it into a first-class event," said Michael Miller, who nominated the couple for the Ten Who Made A Difference award.

Clare Villa took wood-working classes at the local college and began making reredos, the decorated altar screens, and carved saint statues called bultos. She spearheaded efforts to create a museum at the renovated Misión y Convento in Española's original plaza. She worked with local historians and artists to make giant reredos soaring 30 feet tall and detailing 12 major events in the valley's history from the early pueblos to WWII. Others depicted major historic churches in the area. Clare Villa handpainted the wood frames of all the reredos.

Meanwhile, Villa helped organize Española's Habitat for Humanity and volunteered for projects at the San Juan parish. He worked with the local faith communities for five years on the Española Valley's devastating drug problems.

"As a social work organizer, I try to find solutions to social problems," he said. "I thought we had God on our side, and we could do great things. We did, but the community still had drug problems."

Then he learned about national heritage areas, a federal designation that protects historical and cultural treasures and is affiliated with the National Park Service. Ernesto Ortega of Taos had started promoting the idea of a national heritage area in the Northern Rio Grande region. Villa was intrigued at approaching the area from a different way. "This was about celebrating what's right with our history, culture and language instead of what's wrong," Villa said.

There were 23 heritage areas east of the Mississippi River, but only three West of the river. Jose and Ernesto worked on the idea for years, holding countless public meetings and gathering ideas. In 2002, Jose testified before Congress about the benefits of the designation to Santa Fe, Rio Arriba and Taos counties. In 2006, Congress designated the Northern Rio Grande National Heritage Area and a comprehensive plan is almost complete. The plan will allow groups to seek matching funds for projects that protect or promote the area's cultural and historical sites and businesses.

""It took over a decade of planning and design to establish the goals for the heritage area and Jose was there through sickness and health leading the charge and never, never giving up," Miller wrote in his nominating letter.

Through all their commitments, the couple remained committed to each other. They take long roadtrips just to talk about their latest endeavors and get reacquainted, Jose said.

"We're very involved and very opinionated," Clare Villa said.

And if one thinks the other doesn't have enough to do, "we volunteer each other," Villa said with a grin.

Contact Staci Matlock at 986-3055 or smatlock@sfnewmexican.com.