Dear Readers, 

As I tell you the tales of Euvaldo Valdez, now 79, I’m going to spend some time telling you about his life as a child. My reasons are threefold. I love hearing stories of our country when we were a young and developing land. I think the past can teach us so much about our future, and I treasure those stories. In addition, to understand Euvaldo and the kind, respectful, caring man that he is today, you can see the beginnings of who he is by his childhood experiences. Readers, how has your childhood impacted who you are today? 

Euvaldo spent his young years in a little village, Avo, in central New Mexico. It is a farming region that sits at the foothills of the southern Rocky Mountains. He was born to a family who had a 100-year heritage of citizenship in the United States – in fact, even before New Mexico was a part of our nation. Euvaldo’s great great-grandfather was the first family member to farm this area. In the 1600s, he was given a grant of 400 acres to the Valdez family from the king of Spain as a way of creating settlements in the New World.

Young Euvaldo’s first school bus was actually a horse and wagon. He attended a one-room schoolhouse in his village. Living on the foothills, when it snowed the neighbors took turns carrying all the children to school with the horse-drawn cart. His father would farm the land during the summer season: beans, corn – all kinds of vegetables. During the winter months, Euvaldo’s father was a sentry for the railroad. His job was to move any obstructions or snow from the nearby 40-mile strip of railroad tracks. 

For many years the Valdez family farmed this region. As often is, with large plots of property, there was a division of land among family members and sales; so by the time Euvaldo was a little boy, his father was still farming on 40 acres of the original land granted from Spain. 

Euvaldo talked about growing up bilingual. He said the language of the village was Spanish and the language of business was English. He said his father conducted his business transactions in English and used Spanish with his family and local community.

Euvaldo saw volunteerism modeled in his home. His mom would help the people in their village fill out legal forms. She also helped organize elections. At times, she even served as the midwife for women in the village. His grandfather and father were both very involved in politics. “They were Republicans and I ended up a Democrat”, Euvaldo said. His grandpa also helped to establish a mission church in the local community. Euvaldo said that he learned “People need to work together to make our community the best we can possibly make it”.  What is a lesson that you learned from your family?

For a number of years in the late 1940s, New Mexico had a drought and farmers did not have access to water to keep their crops irrigated. This took a huge financial toll on the Valdez family. By 1948, Euvaldo’s dad had to sell his land so he could move to an area of the country where he could provide for the financial wellbeing of his family. The 40 acres sold for $10 an acre. As an aside, the people who bought the land were farmers from Texas. They had deeper pockets of corporate money, and they were able to dig wells and use more modern methods of irrigation than that available to the small farmers. Still today, the original Valdez property is a rich and resourceful farming area. 

When Euvaldo’s family left the valley, he was eight years old. His mother, father, and four brothers and sister settled in the larger city of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Euvaldo’s father became a laborer where he worked in construction that included roofing, paving and other jobs related to this field. The family worked together to save their money and they bought a home in Albuquerque. Notice, readers, that I said “the family worked together”. 

Euvaldo’s family truly did combine their skills, when in 1953, they became seasonal migrant workers. This meant that, though they lived in Albuquerque, the family would make annual excursions to California and move from farm to farm harvesting the crops for the large landowners. They left school before the end of the school year and by summer’s end they would return after school had already started in the fall. “We were good students,” Euvaldo said. He talked about how much these experiences imprinted on him. “My dad was the decision-maker in the family. My mother was the real force at work.” Euvaldo said that he and his siblings are the people they are today because of his parents. 

The family, when working during the migrant months, would work six days a week, and then Sunday was for church and recreation like “swimming, movies – all those things young people do”, Euvaldo said. He commented that people often assumed that the life of a migrant worker was pain and suffering. “My parents were a team that looked after our welfare in a very fine manner,” he said. The whole family would get up early and go to the fields to harvest the food: strawberries, green beans, tomatoes, avocados, potatoes, apricots and other fruit – whatever was in season. Euvaldo really treasured that time he had with his family. “It made us who we are,” he said. 

When the family traveled, they had to carefully protect the money they made in the agricultural fields. The money was very much needed to pay the mortgage and other household expenses. However, his parents had two different approaches to keeping the money safe. Euvaldo said that his dad would carry a sawed-off shotgun for protection. Conversely, “Our mother would take a hollowed-out statue of the Lady of Guadalupe”, he said. Euvaldo’s mom assumed that anyone trying to rob them would not desecrate the religious statue. The family would roll their money up in tight rolls to fit it in the statue. Euvaldo remembers the family returning to their home in Albuquerque and sitting around with tweezers as they pulled the rolls from the statue. “As a family, we would laugh about it,” he said. Do you have a funny memory, Reader, from your childhood?

It was important for Euvaldo’s parents to help the family feel as one unit, working together for a common cause. His father never wanted the children to feel like slaves. He always made sure his children enjoyed their life. Euvaldo’s father “always made sure we had a few cents in our pockets,” Euvaldo said. 

One of his favorite memories was the year San Francisco 49er jackets were the craze. “The jackets were $9, which at that time was expensive,” Euvaldo said. From the money they made as a family, his dad allowed all the kids to buy those popular jackets. “That year, the whole Valdez clan was walking around wearing 49er jackets.”

The family went through a difficult time during the last year of their migrant work. Euvaldo’s mother was “trampled by a car and left severely disabled,” he said. When his mother was injured, Euvaldo’s sister left high school to take over all the household duties: cooking, cleaning, making the boys listen, insisting everyone did their homework. “She became our second mother,” he said. “My mother, while she couldn’t do what she used to, continued her direction of teaching us to live a religious life.” Euvaldo’s mother lived to be 85 years old. Often things happen that are out of our control, Euvaldo said, “You can let it destroy you, or you can live with it.” Readers, how have you handled tragedy? What did you learn as you experienced a difficult time?

 

In the tenth grade, Euvaldo had his eye on one girl. Her name was Helen, and Euvaldo said, “She had my head in a whirl.” He graduated from high school in 1960; he was the first one in his family to do so. Then, he went to the University of New Mexico to study Latin American Affairs. In 1962, He and Helen married, and Euvaldo received his degree in 1965. After graduation, for the next four years, he went back to his high school and taught History and Spanish. He was also the school’s wrestling coach. 

 

 

After those years in his hometown, Euvaldo moved to Denver so he could study at Denver University. He completed his Master’s degree in Public School Administration. He then started working for Boulder Valley Schools in 1969. He was the administration assistant for the superintendent. His job also required him to be the Director of Community Information and Services; in layman’s terms, he was the spokesperson for the school district. Feeling settled, he and Helen bought a home in Boulder. They had three boys, and in 1971 their daughter was born. Throughout the rest of his career, Euvaldo worked in administrative leadership: assistant principal at Boulder High School and in that same role at the junior high school. 

In 1998, Euvaldo retired and he and his wife bought a home in Niwot, Colorado. It was the best choice for them because, at that time, Helen owned a retail store in the town. However, the term “retire” is such a misleading word when we discuss so many of the people that we feature in this blog. When I decided a theme for the blog it was about interesting and inspiring seniors. Often, the seniors we are introduced to have a busy fulfilling life after “retirement”. It’s when they begin to define the volunteerism that they will do as they age. Filling the role of “volunteer” was a practice many had already started throughout their career. Then, as senior citizens, they found new interests, devoted more time to favorite non-profits or causes and began to define their years based on quality of days instead of the quantitative measurement that they often adhered to in the workplace.

For Euvaldo, volunteerism was modeled throughout his childhood. Similarly, now in his seventies, it is still an important part of his life. “My family has always been involved in the community,” he said. Throughout his career, Euvaldo volunteered in the Democratic party, and at one time he was a precinct chairman. He also volunteered in his church. He would deliver items to people in need or serve in other ways to help others. He also helped with census taking. Euvaldo served on the YMCA Board at a time in history when it served Boulder, Lafayette and Longmont. As well, he served on the Boulder Community Hospital Board for nine years. 

Euvaldo said that some people have referred to him as an activist, but he would not call himself that. “I don’t like using the word activist, but when issues came up, I organized,” he said. He told me that there was a time in Colorado history when the Hispanic community did not have representation in the nonprofit’s leaderships, Boards, or community concerns. “There wasn’t inclusion. You rarely saw Spanish people in leadership or in the newspapers,” he said. Euvaldo explained further. “It wasn’t just Spanish. Black Americans, Japanese Americans – many cultures needed inclusion to address issues in a positive manner”. He said, “We had to bring to the attention of the larger population the contributions of the minority communities”.  Have you ever had a time where you had to stand up for the rights of others? What did you learn from that experience?

In its history, many Colorado communities lived with an attitude of Whites versus others. Years before Euvaldo and Helen had moved to Colorado, in one of our local towns, a swimming pool was built for the community to use. However, on opening day, a family from the Hispanic community came with their children to swim. The community majority did not want people who were not white – in this case the family from a Hispanic culture – in the pool. Rather than work towards learning inclusive behavior, the very next day the town instead filled up the swimming pool with dirt. It was buried, along with an opportunity for education about sensitivity, empathy and neighborhood growth. 

Colorado was not unique. The attitude of exclusivity continued to perpetuate throughout the United States. In 1964, it was common practice to have “whites only” swimming pools. In protest, on a June summer day, a number of white and black young people jumped into a Florida Motor Lodge swimming pool. In anger, the owner of the pool threw acid toward the swimmers to get the protesters out of the pool; the young people were dragged from the pool and taken to jail. The next day, our country’s Civil Rights Act was approved.

Euvaldo described his early volunteer years as a time when he did not work alone. He said that there was a coalition of people who worked together to help what he described as the “forgotten communities”. “Together, we helped the community to reorganize minorities in services and agency representation”. Euvaldo said that there was a time when if they wanted stories about good things written about their community, they would have to write the stories themselves and submit them to the newspapers and radios. They also worked together towards affirmative action with the police department and judicial systems. 

In 1974, Euvaldo was appointed to the Board of Human Relations Commission of Boulder. This group was responsible for the rights to be upheld of all who lived in the community. During Euvaldo’s reign, the board wrote and adopted a human rights ordinance that stated, among other things, “that in all cases, private citizens did not have the right to exclude people in the entire community”. Euvaldo said they had to address these issues, but change did not happen overnight. He said of that time, “if we had remained silent, we would be silent today”. Euvaldo said that, “little by little the community changed in its civic responsibilities”.

In 2001, Euvaldo also had the role of ombudsman for the Department of Aging. In this position, he would investigate complaints, help problem-solve and mediate resolutions. He also helped to educate others of the rights of those who are aging in our communities. Euvaldo said that one of his responsibilities stands out in his mind about those years he was an ombudsman. Boulder County had, at that time, adopted a model of services, he said, that included advocacy. That is now a common role of an ombudsman, but at that time it was newly introduced. “We were not only Medicare counselors, but also dealt with obstacles to people getting services”. 

In the two years that I have written the Drop In With Debbie blog, I have heard from readers around the world. So often, folks who don’t live in Longmont comment on how amazing it is to hear of all the classes, shows, and ongoing programs offered at the Longmont Senior Center. For those of us who are fortunate to have access to this center, we can say a huge ‘thank you’ to the Friends of the Longmont Senior Center, Inc. I met Euvaldo and Helen about two years ago. At that time, he was a member of this fantastic Board. It was the Board’s job to promote and help raise funds to support the activities of the center. Euvaldo held this role for nine years. He also had another role at the Senior Center. He volunteered with the resource specialists. He would help with outreach and help to meet specific needs where he was able. 

Euvaldo feels that volunteerism is important. “The reality of life is that not everything in life requires dollars and cents compensation. People should do things because of their responsibility to the community. That makes a healthy community,” Euvaldo said. Remembering the lessons from his own childhood, he would take his children along when he served in volunteer roles. He had two reasons. He wanted to spend time with them instead of being busy and absent from their lives. As well, he said, “I wanted to be a role model and teach them community involvement”. 

Frequently, I see Euvaldo at the Senior Center serving in some capacity. Often, Helen is by his side. They are now celebrating 57 years of marriage. They are a couple that understands well that we don’t live in this world alone. What we do for others, improves life for our community as a whole. Readers, do you have a principal belief or practice in life that measures your steps?

Last month, we featured Suzan Hatch. We followed her journey as she discovered her place in the art world. Many readers wrote how much they enjoyed her creative pieces and were inspired by her story. Thank you to: Anna, George, Lucy, John, Barb, Fred, Don, Chris, Bob, Haley, Carol, Gail, Julie, Ann, Pam, Ralph and Shelly.

 

Until next month, may peace be at your side,

Debbie Noel

We have several ways to interact with Debbie!

• Email her at DroppingInWithDebbie@gmail.com

• Register with the site (very bottom of the page) to have your comments viewed online

• Send your letters to:

Debbie Noel
C/o Longmont Senior Center
910 Longs Peak Avenue
Longmont, Colorado 80501

 

The Friends of the Longmont Senior Center, Inc. Board members and donors continue their support of the Center’s programs and services. During the COVID-19 era, the Friends have provided funding which has allowed staff to offer interesting and helpful virtual connections and programs. The Friends ongoing support of funds to assist with necessary basic needs for low income older adults has been critical during this pandemic as well. If you have an interest in becoming a member of the board or you would like to donate to help meet the needs of seniors, please call the Longmont Senior Center at 303-651-8411 or visit their website at http://www.friendslongmont.org/donate/.