José Ramón Villalón, Secretary of Public Works, was born at Santiago in 1864. He was sent to Barcelona to be educated and later studied at the Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pa., where he graduated as civil engineer in 1899. On the outbreak of the war he accompanied General Antonio Maceo on his famous raid in Pinar del Rio province, and was present at the engagements of Artemisa, Ceja del Negro, Montezuelo, attaining the rank of lieutenant-colonel of engineers. While serving under Maceo he designed and constructed the first field dynamite gun, now in the National Museum in Havana. After the war he was made Secretary of Public Works under the military government of General Leonard Wood. Col. Villalon is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Institute of Mining Engineers, the Academy of Sciences (Havana), and the Cuban Society of Engineers. (Willis Fletcher Johnson, The History of Cuba, Vol. Four. New York: B. F. Buck & Company, 1920. Page 13).