4. Generaciones
Marian and Yolanda Zepeda and Lena Garcia Staph
(a portion of this transcript has been omitted due to sound quality)
EF: Pues muchas gracias por haberme permitido venir a entrevistarlas y estoy muy emocionada de poder entrevistar a tres generaciones, ¿no? Primeramente, ¿me podrian dar su nombre y apellido por favor?
MZ: Marian Zepeda (Mother of Yolanda Zepeda)
LGS: Lena Garcia Staph (Great aunt of Yolanda Zepeda)
YZ: Yolanda Zepeda
EF: ¿Dónde nacieron y crecieron ustedes?
MZ: Yo en Longmont, Texas, y luego nos cambiamos para Placido, Texas y allí es dónde fui a la escuela en Bloomington y luego cuando me casé en, Victoria y allí estoy todavía.
LGS: En Mission Valley, Texas.
[Minute 3:20-15:30 were omitted]
Zepeda and Staph Youtube Interview
This lovely trio was interviewed at Yolanda’s home.
EF: Lena, some of the things that you started to do when you moved to Cincinnati you started meeting other Hispanics … what are some of the activities that you did that you feel that contributed to the community?
LGS: One of the friends knew that I could speak a little bit of Spanish and she volunteered in one of the elementary schools and they were having parent day, so she says, “Lena, could you help the teacher to call the parents, tell them how important it is to come to this meeting and find out what your child is doing?” So forth. So I called the parents and told them how important this was and she said, “And then can you come to the school and help the teacher correspond with the parents?” And so, yeah, I did that. It was not too big a job and, that was the beginning, you know, that they needed to get someone in their school system that was able to speak Spanish because we are now have an influx of Hispanic people and, it had grown to the point where we have Salsa on the Square and, it’s so popular, you know, with everybody and so the culture is being introduced as far as the Cinco de Mayo, at my church I started the celebration of the Virgen de Guadalupe and, the community is finally coming together to attend this celebration and realizing that it’s not just for Mexicans, La Virgen de Guadalupe is for everybody. And, so that has been my contribution to our church and our community … So, now it’s, you know, it’s a great diversity there [Cincinnati] but there’s still a lot of discrimination … the sheriff in Hamilton, it was just a notice in the paper this past week that he sent a bill to the Mexican government saying he wanted 90,000 dollars for keeping his jails full of illegal immigrants. And he is so bitter and that rubs off on the community.
EF: I would like to hear from all of you about your relationship with the language, with growing up bilingual, trilingual, what was that like? Was it always comfortable, was it painful sometimes, what can you tell me about that?
YZ: So, my grandfather, her father, when we were growing up he always spoke to me and my cousins in Spanish, only Spanish, I didn’t know that he understood or spoke English at all. Well when he was close to 100, he, well he had a brain tumor and it would give him pain but … cause the brain is a fascinating thing, when he was aging, my mother and her sisters were caring for him and if they would come and talk to him in Spanish he would tell them, “No! English only” (laughter) here he was almost 100 years old with a brain tumor, dying, never in his life did he ever acknowledge that he spoke English, but I think that was also, back in those days if you pretended, if you didn’t admit to knowing English it gave you a little bit of an upper hand in dealing with children, right?
EF: Yolanda did you, have you ever changed you name? Did you ever change your name?
YZ: So I was married before and I went to Germany a few months after getting married and sent my passport to the German, to the government to get a work permit, and when my passport came back, they had changed, they had put a note in there, “This passport is amended to read Yolanda Zepeda Ritter.” Well, I was there a few years, when I came back the identification form I had, was the passport. So then everything said ‘Ritter’. I never intentionally changed it. And then after a few years of that I said, “Alright, I gotta change this all back to Zepeda, cause that’s who I am” So, I inquired about changing my name and they said, “Well you need a copy of the court order when you changed your name to Ritter, or a copy of the divorce.” Well I was neither divorced nor did I have court order changing my name to, you know I didn’t have anything changing it to Ritter, and I wasn’t divorced so that name followed me until I actually did get divorced, then, legally I could get rid of that but I never used it, I’ve always used Zepeda cause that’s who I am.
EF: Did you ever have any experiences like your aunt that had to do with names?
YZ: Yeah, it was funny, only in Texas, which you would think really strange, but when I did get married, I married a German, and so, I remember distinctly one of, one of the professors who said, “Oh, you’re moving up” he said, “Oh, Zepeda. You’re gonna be Ritter now, you’re moving up” but other than that not really, most of my, when I left Texas I’ve always been at a large university so it’s been a very diverse and cosmopolitan population. I think outside, in fact when I came back from Germany I had to apply for a job in Austin and the person who ended up hiring me told me after I was on the job for a few weeks that he wouldn’t have, that he almost didn’t hire me and his colleagues advised him not to hire me, and I asked him why and he said, “Well, because your name, you’re Mexican” he says, “You’re probably radical” (laughter) because I had a Master’s degree and so, he was afraid that I was some kind of a, Chicana! So really Texas is the only place that that was an issue but here it’s never been.
EF: Before you tell me, since you have this background your, your European and your Mexican background, what was your wedding like?
LGS: Our wedding was your typical … Okay, we married in Saint Mary’s Church. While he was taking instructions, I was waiting because those were the days when, if you had a mixed marriage, you know, different then, it wouldn’t be up at the altar. So, we didn’t have much time because he proposed in, probably late August and then we married in November. So, I was waiting for him to finish, cause we had planned this wedding. And, when he finished the instructions he came and said, “There is not that much difference between Lutheran and Catholic beliefs, and if we’re going to have children I think they should all be brought up in the same faith.” So, he converted and we married in Saint Mary’s Church. And it was a typical wedding. Then we had our reception afterwards at the house, and then we left on our honeymoon and they all went dancing.
YZ: So did you and Jerry dance? I mean like, when you were courting … what kind of dances did you go to? Texas swing?
LGS: Oh my gosh! He used to square dance in Ohio, so he loved Texas, the Texas two-step was right in line with him, and he was a good dancer. And, we went to the polka dances, we went to [YZ: Traitor Hall] Traitor Hall, yeah [MZ: Willie Nelson got thrown out of there in the olden days] And so, we did, and then, of course, we loved Spanish Eyes, ohhh dear. So he, he kind of adapted. Oh he was a jitterbug …
YZ: But this relationship almost didn’t get going because remember you worked at the base and he hadn’t paid his dollar to the (laughter) … do you know about those parties?
LGS: Well, because when, Foster Field was a WWII Army Air Force Base, and we opened in the early 50’s and I had worked at Foster Field right after I graduated and, ‘Okay, I go back to the civil service’ and I went to work at Foster. Well, because it was a large building and a lot of the people were having their offices in the building, and I was in supply and then there was other offices, some of these young boys, 18, 19, came, “Do you have any girlfriends?” I was, you know, a little bit older than they were but, I said, “Oh sure” we had a patio on the side of the house and we had our record player so I invited a dozen girls and the boys came and, and they decided that, they got paid once the month, if each one of them gave me a dollar when they got paid, at the end of the month, when they were broke, I’d invite the girls and they could party at my house and had enough money for beverages and snacks.
YZ: Yeah, that was common at that time.
LGS: So, anyways, Jerry came in the middle of the month, and the first thing was, they put him in my unit and I was the unit supervisor and about three days later he wasn’t there anymore and he was sitting up front with the captain and I said, “Hmm,” didn’t think anything of it. Later he told me, he says, “I went up to the captain and I says, ‘Do you have another job for me?’” He said, “Why? Don’t you like your job?” “Well I don’t like working for a civilian, much less a woman” [YZ: Little did he know he’d be taking orders from her the rest of his life] but, since he had come in the middle of the month they said, “Are you going to invite that new boy?” I said, “No, he didn’t pay his dollar” (laughter) So that was the beginning of our relationship. But then afterwards he was a part of a group and, I thought he was a very good dancer and we had a lot of fun together but, my mindset was that the military, here today and gone tomorrow. So I never knew when he was gonna be gone, I mean, yeah, sure I liked him but, and he was military, he could go at any time. Well, when he reenlisted, this time he asked his parents to come and, knowing Jerry’s mindset, he was thinking about it, but he waited until his parents met me before he proposed.
YZ: Well can I ask—those parties, were they all white?
MZ: [LGS: Yeah] basically there wasn’t a lot of social mixing at that time, right?
LGS: As a matter of fact when I worked for Dr. Shields and this one lady used to come in all the time and, one day she found out my name was Lena Garcia, and she, “Oh, you’re one of them.” So the discrimination came with fear, you know, is what Frankie told me …
YZ: So that’s the legacy my parents grew up with, coming back to the question about language, so language was very, I mean I guess, when I was growing up, nobody ever said this to me but, the sense I had was, Spanish was really, for the private realm. It was prayer and celebration, that’s where we, that’s where Spanish was, I was immersed in it. But then publically it’s English, you speak like they speak on TV, you know, and that, that line was very clear even though we never talked about it, it was just the lesson I picked up. So, I never spoke Spanish, and a lot of my generation we grew up with it, we understand it, but we don’t use it.
MZ: Yeah, now see with your dad he had more problems because he was from the valley, he was in Falfurrias and Mission, and all those other towns around there and so, because of that problem when he was in high school or junior high, one of his buddies was Anglo, well the mother was Hispanic and the father was Anglo and the friend asked him to go stay the night with him because they were in music together and they were going to practice and so that meant a lot to them to do… But when the dad came from work, he wanted to know, “Was he Mexican?”, and he made his wife bring him back home. That just crushed him.
YZ: My dad was very sensitive too, he was a musician, he was an artist, those things really went to his core, he was very sensitive. He went to Texas A & M, or PanAm? One of those, he went to both schools but he went to one, his first paper, an economics paper he wrote, and the professor asked him who wrote it for him, he didn’t believe a Mexican could write that, it crushed him, he just left, so growing up with all of those things …
Audio of the song “Girl Down the Street”
Ernest’s song to Yolanda’s mother “Girl Down the Street,” song provided by the Zepeda Family
MZ: And that’s why when we were raising ya’ll, he wanted to make sure that ya’ll got a good command of the English language because he did not want ya’ll to have any problems. So when we spoke in Spanish, cause we spoke in Spanish at home, Ernest and I did, and they thought that we didn’t want them to know what we were talking about …
LGS: It was the same with the German. My mother and my grandma used to speak to me, you know, German to each other and, I never picked any of it, because, well, of course my dad spoke Spanish at home and I learned it …
EF: What have been the most difficult times of living here, in this area, in the Midwest, in Ohio?
YZ: Well I’ll say for me it’s really been these last couple of years when my father’s health declined and not being able to just get in the car and go home and, you know, that’s … that was rough. Even though you know we had email and cell phones but, being able to be there …
EF: You already mentioned a lot of memories that you have from families, from the time in Texas or here, the early days. I want to ask each of you, what are some of the stories that your parents, or your mom used to tell that you loved listening to? Over and over again. The same with you [Marian], what are some of the stories that you like to tell of your youth or when you met your husband?
MZ: Well, I know Yolanda mentioned that story about Ernest and about that song that he made. That’s what I like to pass on to them, we were next-door neighbors. He moved right next door to where I lived and so, there was a little store and I needed to go to and I walked … but I could taken the other way but I chose to walk in front of his house and that’s when he noticed me and he told his mom, “Ahhh, me la voy a echar al plato” (laughter) and his mom said, “No, no m’ijito, esa es muy buena muchacha, no…” “No what are you doing!?” So, you know, then later on that’s when he started thinking about that, when I was walking down the street in my white pants, he started making that song after we were married, so I like to pass on that to them and also how we got started …
YZ: Well I remember, we would often gather at my grandmother’s house, her mother’s house, her sister’s house, the extended family gathered there on Sundays, and, so many times we would have stacks and stacks of dishes because everybody ate and so, washing the dishes would take a long time, cleaning up the kitchen but oh!, she and her sisters just, had me in stiches all the time, talking about those dancing days. So, they were eight girls and if one went everybody went. So if one had a date, everybody was in the car. Hearing those stories about the boyfriend and Isabel’s boyfriend who came with the big bow tie and they were all in the back laughing, they couldn’t come out because they kept laughing …
MZ: He was in a bowtie … and he was taking her to San Antonio and all of us got self-invited (laughter) but then when he came to pick her up, well yeah, we couldn’t come out, I was, Oh my god he came home in a white shirt … And then, there was another boyfriend cause who was going to take you out to the dance and we thought he was taking her to the Hall where we were meeting our boyfriends, but he takes off to el matón, so Angie, Jamie and I started crying, Jamie and I started crying because we had waited all week to see our boyfriends and you go out and work in the fields and then, a weekend lost! We didn’t even get off the car, they got off and we couldn’t at that time, the dance floor, it had the windows open, they didn’t have air conditioning. And we would see, and we were in the car, we could see them just whirling by and then there we were upset we couldn’t even get off because our eyes were like water. But that’s what we get for tagging along with, you know that was our ride, you know, whoever had a date and that, that was my older sister and, so we all tagged along with her and got taken off of there to el matón.
YZ: So they all picked cotton and from the time we could walk you had your cotton bag and [ MZ: they were custom made by my mom] And my grandfather, with his eight girls, he’d go, “Come on boys!” and they were all in the truck.
EF: So you only had sisters?
MZ: Well I had four brothers. The boys, two brothers are older than me and two are younger than me … And Holly and Luther are younger than me. But my dad would always, you know, when we got ready to go, we would come in from the field for an hour for lunch and you’d watch that clock, “Okay boys, let’s go.” It was mostly girls (laughter) But you know what, my grandpa, on my dad’s side, his dad, always lived with us and so I thought every family, their grandpa or grandma lived with them, I always thought that. It was so nice just to have a grandparent living with you and to this day, because, to go to the kitchen, our home didn’t have any hallways, it was just one room, you know, four rooms. They had to go out through the bedroom, my grandpa had to walk through our bedroom to go to our kitchen and, if we didn’t go to school because we’re sick or something, you know, and I’d be all lying down in my bed and, and he’d pass by and all he had to say was, “¿Qué le pasó a mi hijita…?” Because he said it so tender, “¿Qué le pasó a mi hijita?” and now … somebody would come up to me and they want to know how I’m coping, and I think about my grandpa asking me that, and that’s what happens.
EF: Yeah, of course.
MZ: I feel like they’re asking me that, you know, the way my grandpa asked me and, it does that all the time.
LGS: My father used to clean out the barn and had dances every so often and, I was like four or five years old, and I watched those people dancing and then the next day I’d get out there cause, it was all floor, you know, inviting me to come out there and practice what I had seen, and then when I was in like my teenage years and Jitterbug was popular, and I would hold onto a doorknob [to dance]. In my memory book from my 80th birthday and Sunny said that I had kept all of the doorknobs polished. Any time there was music on, well I loved dancing and I thought hold on and swing and … And, then of course we’d go to dances and, I didn’t have a boyfriend but, you know, you’d either set around or something, somebody would come ask you to dance and, if you liked to dance with them you’d maybe have a second dance and if you didn’t like him you’d walk away and wait for the next one. But, the dances, you know, my father would have conjunto music …“cuatro milpas” is one of songs that I remember and also, (singing) I don’t remember the name of it but I remember the words.
MZ: Well she’s got one brother left and he’s gonna be 95 in October and [YZ: Cause people live forever. He’s still driving.] And I was telling him, you know, “I’m gonna be coming to Ohio and Lena and I are gonna come over and stay with Yolanda and…” and I say, “And you know what she told me? She says that we’re gonna plan the party for you” Cause, you know in October he’s 95, I say, “Lena told me that we’re gonna plan your party while we’re up there” Yolanda says, “Oh, that girl’s big party.” Or just she was young. So that’s your legacy.
LGS: Okay, at my 83rd birthday, one of the choir members put together this song, the choir came down and sang for me, we had the 83rd birthday in the church, and the song is, let’s see how does it go … but anyway, it’s like my legacy of dancing and, it’s by the tune of one of the hymns so, everything kind of rhymes, it’s about meeting Jerry and my children and then coming to Cincinnati and … So, I took it to the choir director, music director, and I said, “This is kind of hymn, tune, can they play something at my funeral?” Then he said, “Well, it can’t be part of a mass but if you sing it beforehand” I said, “I wanted the recessional, ‘Dance, dance, wherever she will go. She is a queen of the dance, you know.’” And she rhymed it all together and so, he said, “Sure.” So I gave him a copy of it, cause I’m planning what I want and that’s some of the hymns. I would rather have a mariachi band and a polka band … marching down the …
YZ: My father had mariachis at his funeral.
EF: Yolanda, you have been sort of removed from Texas for many years, you’ve gone to different places. What are some of the things you try to hang onto as part of your identity, your background?
YZ: Well the stories and knowing where I come from and really being connected with the day-to-day lives of my family, that’s important to me. I have a 40 minute commute and I usually spend that commute with my mother finding out who’s pregnant now and who’s, you know, what ailments, all those little details, so that is important being in touch in that way. And as I mentioned before, the food is important, in fact, Jim and I just came back from vacation in Alaska and I had asked his son what he wanted me to bring him from Ohio. He asked for whatever he needs to learn to make tortillas. So I sent him a comal and took him a little notecard and while we were there we practiced making tortillas. So that, you know, things like that, the foods of home, that’s, that’s important. It’s really those every day, being in touch and then being connected through the food. Now the problem with the tortillas is that she makes the best ones ever. [LGS: Thank you. A lot of practice] So, you know, mine aren’t bad, mine are passable until I have hers and then I remember, ‘Oh, this is what these are supposed to taste like’ (laughter)
LGS: From my memories, you know, is, since I had left in ‘55 … ’56 … anyway, and never went back there to live but, staying connected with family and of course Sophie was so good at having family [YZ: That’s her sister] and, they would come to visit and bring your children. And so I pretty well knew that generation.
YZ: And now she’s on Facebook, so now she can connect with everybody on Facebook.
LGS: And that is a blessing. It really keeps me connected to the family and even getting acquainted with more of them and I look forward to that. I find that travel is pretty easy with a wheelchair, you know, getting through the airports and getting where you’re going, and so, that has been such a blessing for me. I mean, I’m going home and I like to go out to Camper City where we lived, old two room school house is still there but, right down the road is where my grandmother lived and Sunny was born in grandma’s house and, we’d walk to school from where we lived and so all those memories there that; I took my granddaughter there when I was here and she came with, I mean not here, Texas where, in Victoria so she had met all the extended families and when we got back to Dallas where my son lives, she said, “Oh dad, we’ve got to go back to Victoria so I can introduce you to all your cousins.” So yeah, so it’s a lot of tradition down there and I always feel so blessed that I have so many memories and, I want to keep on going back.
YZ: Yeah and most of the family’s still there so, you just, [LGS: All of the nephews and] [EF: So you get to see everybody then?] Right, it’s very much a sense of a place of connectedness and that sort of continued unbroken family tradition.
EF: What do you bring from Texas when you go visit?
YZ: That I bring back with me? [EF: Yeah] Wow [LGS: I know one answer] Yeah I mean, I think it’s really up here and it’s always a few extra, a few extra pounds. I have to diet a little while but, it’s yeah, that singing together as I mentioned when my father, after his funeral, we all gathered and we told stories and that funeral was the most joyful funeral, even, you know, he’s the closest person that I’ve ever had to let go of, in a funeral, but it was so, so very joyful. So many people, we, so, poor Jim cause, White funerals are not like Mexican funerals so the rosary was at 7 o’clock at night and my mother was saying, “Well we have to be there at 9 o’clock in the morning” And he’s like, “Why do we have to be there at 9 in the morning?” Well people started coming at 9 in the morning and he was shaking hands steady until 10 o’clock that night. And we had mariachis from different groups come in from out of town, they played, my brother had his music, so it was a lot of singing, a lot of joy, a lot of sharing stories and those are the things I bring back with me. Those are. And a few extra pounds, of course. So…
LGS: Okay, that was, last two times I have gone I empty out my carry out bag and I bring back six dozen of tamales.
YZ: They let you bring those? They let you bring them on the plane?
LGS: Yeah. [YZ: Do you freeze them before you bring them?] Okay [YZ: Gotta learn the secrets] the first time I had enough time to freeze them. The last time, cause, there’s a lady and she’s a distant relation actually, married one of our cousins [YZ: She was in Savannah and she married a Garcia, [LGS: But the Garcia was…] but no relation, a second cousin to us] So anyways, but, she makes these tamales and, it wasn’t, you know I went down for Ernest’s funeral so I didn’t have enough time to freeze them, so actually when she brought ‘em, some of ‘em were still warm [YZ: And she brings them home?] Yeah, but, you know, the flight, get home then I freeze them. [YZ: But you took it with you warm and it was okay?] Yeah [YZ: But they’re not in the suitcase they’re in your carry-on bag?] they’re in my carry-on bag but, Victoria being a very small airport …
EF: What about, a story or event that has been one of the funniest things that has happened to you, either from your youth or in Ohio or from, even sometimes we encounter those moments because of our own culture, because of being bi-culture or bilingual, what are some of those things that you can remember that are related to that?
YZ: It’s like the air is everywhere so it’s hard to, you know, tease it out and figure out …
MZ: What did dad tell you when you were singing?
YZ: Dad? I don’t know if I’m … Oh! It wasn’t really because of my culture except that I come from a very musical cultured family and, I didn’t get that. So the dancing, they both did jitterbug? That didn’t work [for me] And then my brothers were both very, very greedy with the music talent so they didn’t leave too much but, my dad was already suffering, he was already suffering from dementia, he had some good days and some not so good days. But we were there and we were all sitting around with the guitars and singing songs as we often do and, oh, I know, it was after the anniversary … so we, they celebrated their 50th and we had a big party, 400 people in a hall and we were all exhausted, it was probably two or three in the morning and we were sitting around the living room and I started singing, there’s an old country song, The Happiest Girl in the Whole USA, and I was singing loud and just putting everything in it, and my dad, and everybody had been singing the whole night and my dad’s sorta been, you know, jumping in a little bit and, but he didn’t, he wasn’t talking. And at that point he kinda sat up and moved forward and everybody noticed like, “He’s about to speak.” So we all got quiet and looked at him and, he says, “Um, Yolanda, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way but, there’re gonna be times where you’re working some new material and …” God, how did it go!? “Shut the hell up! People are gonna tell you to shut the hell up!” or something like that … it was hilarious, oh my gosh, I thought he was gonna praise me or say something great about my singing, “People are gonna tell you to shut the hell up!” Classic. It was classic.
MZ: He wasn’t even talking that much, and he came out with that! But when we met with the priest that was going to do his homily at his funeral, they brought that story up and James says, “Oh no, no Yolanda, let me tell it,” so, “Let me tell it, I know it perfectly.”
YZ: With my first marriage I moved to Germany soon after I got married and, but … my husband, and the people around me, it wasn’t just him it was Germans, [for them] I was so loud, “I shouldn’t laugh so much, I shouldn’t talk so loud,” you know, that was definitely a cultural thing cause, you know, we’re happy people, I was just, I talked too loud, I laughed too loud I just, that was hard for me. And, and when I’m walking down the street I would greet people, you know acknowledge them, oh, [LGS: Don’t do that] No, don’t do that, you’re coming on to everybody. Who knew? Who knew?
MZ: Yolanda couldn’t be Yolanda.
LGS: I remember, when Jerry’s mom and dad came down and we went to Mexico and we went to Arturo’s, who sold liquor, and we could sample … so, we brought back, because they had a license plate from Ohio, now Texas could only bring a small amount, they could bring a gallon, or equivalent to and they had, it was a pretty bottle of Tequila and it had straw wrapped around it and was very a show thing and, I was driving when we came through, we went to Falfurrias, no, where is that dam? [YZ: Watch your language, we’re on camera] but it was, not a, not a real checkpoint but … on the border. And I was driving and, he said, “Did you buy anything over there?” And of course you’re supposed to [YZ: Declare it] stamp or whatever and, I said, “No, just clothes.” And, they waved us on. So the entire time from there to Victoria, Jerry’s mom and dad, well mom especially, then they have to drive all the way to Ohio with, and she was fearful that they were gonna find her on the way and so, she got home and they had a lock safe, they put the liquor in there and, when she was getting ready to move out of her house and was gonna go live with her daughter … and that bottle with straw and all of that tequila was in there and so I have it. It’s a souvenir, and it’s a reminder of that.
EF: And you still have it?
LGS: I still have it.
EF: What is the most, or the proudest moment in your life so far?
YZ: Wow, that’s a tough one [MZ: You have several] you know we’re Mexicans, we’re not proud people, we’re humble.
MZ: But you have several things to be so proud of. Look at where you’re at, in school with your … oh gosh, you have very much to be proud of. All of your accomplishments and what you’re doing and then you’re gonna be interviewed, oh you’re come out in that magazine …
YZ: “Women You Should Know.” I’ll be a calendar girl (laughter) that’s a big accomplishment From Columbus, it’s a Women’s organization. Well I’m very proud of you [YZ to MZ], I have to say so, I’ve learned a lot about my mother over the years, I guess you only see your mother as your mother and you see one side but, coming from the humble background, she didn’t have a lot of advantages, poor background, not educated, that she has really done so much, not only was she bedrock for our family, but also contributing to the community. So, twenty, more than twenty five years ago she started a ministry in the church to visit shut-ins, at that time there were a number of different ministries that were started, and the parishioners who started the missionaries, they took some college classes and got some training and this is the only one that still, still exists today. So she’s been very involved publically and, and then even, so she worked after high school, and that was a big step, moving all the way from Placedo to Victoria, 13 miles (laughter) and, so going to work, you know at that time given, given the relations in Texas and given the background that you had, that was a big step, and then later when she was at home raising all of us, she got a license in flower arrangement and had a wonderful flower shop in the house and, had as much business as she could carry without advertising, [MZ: Because Ernest had a long time when he was gone cause he worked with the railroad and then he had the band, so I had a lot of time to myself and with kids, and that’s why, and I loved, I loved floral arrangements.] So, those things that you kind take for granted when you’re growing up then you look back and it’s like, “wow” you know, “those were big things.”
EF: What have you learned from your mom?
YZ: I think that, that inner strength that’s really … it’s gonna sound weird, but knowing what’s important, knowing what you want and it’s not selfish though, but knowing, “these are the thing that are important and I’m gonna do these things” and, even when there are some challenges or obstacles, you don’t have to be in your face, but, stay focused and achieve or accomplish those things, or defend those things, sometimes it’s defending and protecting things that are important to you and just having that kind of courage without having to, be … nasty about it. You know you can, you can respect people that are around you and that may want something different from you, but respecting them isn’t the same thing as just doing what everybody wants you to do. So, on the outside she was a homemaker, housewife, so she spent much of her time, attending to the needs of all the rest of us, but still she very much had her own ideas and pursued her own things at the same time and I learned that, and I learned that not directly, you know, it was not, she sits down and says, “This is how you….” it was through her example. Yeah, yeah.
MZ: My husband called me perpetual motion.
YZ: Yeah well see, what I didn’t say and I’ll say it just directly, so my dad was a Mexican man, he wanted her attention, undivided always, and she had a lot of things going on, and so she, she figured out how to manage him and, and never threaten him and his role, but still she got what she wanted, she got to do the things that she wanted too, and that’s, that takes a lot of skill.
MZ: And he, when we got married I was teaching CCD classes and that had to come to a stop, he didn’t like that, but I was gone once a week, every day. So I did quit, but then kids started coming—and I had Arlanda, Mark and Yolanda within three years—well well right now you [talking to Yolanda] and Mark are still 48 years old because Mark won’t be 49 until tomorrow. So it was after they came, and Leticia came four years after Yolanda, when they started having catechism classes and I thought, “I’m not gonna go just drop Yolanda off and go get her in an hour, I’ll just stay there” and that’s how I got back, I got back into the CCD you know, dropping them off. And so by the time he had his dementia to where I needed to stay home, I had already put in almost 50 years of CCD teaching and 25 years as a coordinator for the shut-in ministry so, you know, I gave all that up. God gave, made me give that up so that I could take care of Ernest. There he is, I’m looking at him.
LGS: I got this picture and, these are two books on Victoria, but this picture, I did work for Arthur … I knew he was a Falstaff [beer] dealer. Well, they were having a Christmas parade, and he decided that he wanted to enter this float … so here I am, a good Catholic girl all dressed up … Yeah! (laughter) [YZ: A good Catholic girl advertising beer, Catholics don’t have any problem with drinking…] So, anyways, so I actually kind of had a different life after I got married, and of course travel has always been my cup of tea. And we lived in Japan and, I had gone to Mexico with the girls and everywhere I go I learn some of the dances and, being in girl scouts, the international understanding and the multicultural awareness was always something that I looked for that I could help them with, and sharing some of my personal stories that hopefully help them, and as a matter of fact, the troop that we took to Mexico in ‘88 w- we bonded cause I had those girls for so long that, Saturday, one of girls had called and said, “We want to take you out for your birthday,” and so Saturday there was about eight of them, they were on Facebook, I had gone to their weddings and their baby showers and one of those, the girls, has twin boys, and one of them is going to, here to Ohio State … it’s such a pleasure that they think that much of me and that they keep me in their circle and I keep them in my circle cause I invite them to all my birthday parties and, to see how they have grown up and, as teenagers, that they have the respect for an old girl scout leader that, some of them say, “Uhh…”
EF: I want to ask this question and even though you don’t live in Ohio, I want that perspective too, so the question is general, and I just want to ask, what does Ohio mean to you? And it could be even from the perspective of being in Texas, you have somebody, a few people that live here. So I would like to know what that is.
YZ: Well, I’ll start. So, I left home when I was 17 to go to school and then I lived in a lot of different places and, really quickly after I left Texas, I didn’t feel like Texas was home anymore. So, my personal home family, my parents, that, yes, but I didn’t feel like I belonged there. I always felt like there was a bigger world out there and Texas really is an insular place, like, Texas is a whole other country, and so when I left Texas I didn’t feel that, ‘Oh, I got to go back to be in Texas’ I never felt that, and I think part of it too was, in my years in school, I was very involved in school activities and school organizations and I don’t feel necessarily separate from any discrimination but, I never got really close to anybody there. I had a lot of acquaintances, and it’s kind of like here, a lot of professional acquaintances but not close friends. So all the years that I lived in other places I really enjoyed places where I was and the overall adventures, but I never felt like there was any place calling, tugging at me to call home. Ohio is the first time, and I know that my husband has a lot to do with that, I know having granddaughters here has a lot to do with that but, really the last, and I’d say even the last 5-7 years is when I really started to feel like, ‘now, now I do have a home again’ So there was, from 17 to just, my 40s, I didn’t have a longing for a place that I needed to put down roots or call home, and it just snuck up on me so. But that, but Ohio, that’s Ohio.
LGS: Ohio, well of course, it is my home now. And I have three children, two daughters and a son. Well our son lives in Dallas and the two daughters are very close, blessed, they take good care of each other, they try to boss me but, [YZ: Nobody bosses Lena] It’s a reverse role, you know, ‘Mom, where are you going? Who’s gonna pick you up? When do you think you’re gonna be home?’ But, when Jerry passed away, some of the people, ‘Do you feel like you need to go back to Texas?’ And I said, “Why? All my friends are here. I would have to get reacquainted with everybody” I mean, everybody is living their own lives [YZ: And it’s so gosh darn hot] it can be hot here too, but, now, and of course still having family down there that I appreciate being able to get down there. I have two homes. Everybody knows I’m a Texan, if you take the girl out of Texas … that’s what Jerry, well he always said, “Yeah I took her out of Texas but I also kept her from being an old maid”
MZ: Well to me Ohio is, I always communicate through letters we wrote, always wrote to each other so, I thought of Ohio, I thought of Aunt Lena and she always mailed out clippings from Ohio to me, you know, whatever was going on she’d send clippings, even the, there was the cowboy that … the, [YZ: What?] [LGS: The naked cowboy] The naked cowboy, there is a picture and, there is Lena with him, and all you see is his back [LGS: I have the picture right in here] So we’ve always communicated and so I’ve always had Ohio … think of Aunt Lena, and then Yolanda moved up here to Ohio and so now I’ve got two and, in my kitchen I’ve got three clocks and I’ve got the Ohio time, I’ve got Texas time and the Las Vegas time cause [there is a family member] up there so, Ohio’s always in my heart and in my mind because Yolanda and Aunt Lena.
LGS: [Showing pictures] These are my two girls. That’s my dog. This a group at my party and, this was … this was a birthday card from Theresa, [YZ: Is she dancing there?] Is she dancing now? Look. Looks like her. I remember she was a little. And so she had the kind of birthday that embarrasses your kids. [YZ: It’s not over yet] No, no it gets better because when you get to be this age, you can do or say just about anything. Because there’s some times where Theresa will say, “Oh, mom” We were at Oktoberfest, and [YZ: Well anything at Oktoberfest] Yeah, they had this tent and they had this pole, so, we were out there on the dance floor, dancing and so forth, and I held onto this pole and this man handed me a dollar. And she says, “Mom, I should’ve taught you.” So now, in the church basement, there’s these pillars, not poles and, at the Church basement and so I tell Father Jim, “Well I’ve been pole dancing.” (laughter) Anyway, the story of my life is around dancing.
EF: Yolanda, I have a couple more questions: You have worked, primarily in Ohio but maybe in other places too, you have worked with a lot of immigrants, primarily Hispanic, Latino immigrants. What advice would you give to new immigrants coming to this country?
YZ: Yeah, I think the most important advice is to get connected, not just within your immediate community of other immigrant groups, but get to know others, and it can be uncomfortable, especially when you think you might use the wrong word or you might not quite understand the subtleties of the language but, so much of our communication and so much of the information we need to know goes without saying, people just assume everybody knows. I mean here, very basic example, a few years ago I was living in Illinois and driving back and forth a lot, I mean I was working in Illinois, living here, so I was on the road a lot. I’d never gone to a drive through fast food place, but since I was on the road then, I remember the first time I went to McDonalds, it hasn’t been that many years: I went up and I ordered and, they shut the window, and then I sat there, people started honking at me, and the person came up very frustrated, “You need to drive up.” Well I didn’t know. Nobody told me I needed to drive up to the next window. How are you supposed to know that? So there’s a lot of just, a lot of the little pieces of information of the things you need to know, nobody ever tells you. And so get involved, leave the comfort zone, get involved with people, not just for, if it’s for school not just in your academic circle but socially, try to spend time with others because only by spending that time will you get exposed to a lot of these and, and then don’t be afraid to ask stupid questions.
LGS: We have a higher number of diversity … and, it’s a lot of, we have a lot of Filipinos and, more Hispanics are coming in and, when I told our pastor, he had just returned from Italy so when I came out of church on Sunday I said, “Did you see the Pope?” Oh, no, I said, “Did you see Francis?” “Yes, I did” But, he is eager to get all the cultures, you know, make them [interact] but, I can sense the white Europeans holding on to their traditions and all this stuff and they feel like they’re being invaded by other cultures. So even though we may have a social, inviting everybody to share their culture, it doesn’t seem to help so we are struggling with trying to get the inclusion of everybody and, he says to me, I told him what I was going to do and what this interview was all about, he said, “Get some good ideas.”
YZ: Well actually, so that does bring up the other point for immigrants to let them know that they’re bringing a real richness to our life here and the language, the experiences and the perspectives that they bring can really enrich our community. Whether it’s the workplace, whether it’s the classroom whether it’s just our day-to-day life, and, in fact, and I know the work that you’re doing with this Spanish in Ohio and, working with heritage speakers to learn to view that as an asset, not even, I mean it is an asset and, making folks aware that, this that you bring is just, it’s added value, it’s really a bonus and not to, not to hide it like my dad when he was growing up, they were taught not to use, they were taught that that was a deficit, not an advantage.
EF: Is there anything else that you would like to share that I haven’t asked or…?
MZ: Well with the immigrants, I just always want to pray for them, I mean three, three days out of the week I go to pray with the nuns about two minutes away from me, and I live out in the country and they build a convent about two minutes away, out in the country. And so, I noticed that in their petitions they always pray for the immigrants and so I, just three days out of the week they have mass there so that’s when I go but then the others days I go to Saint Mary’s, where she used to go, and I always bring my petition. This is God’s country and all the people that are saying, “Oh you can’t come here!” This is God’s country and if he wants them here, they’re being sent here, we better take care of them.
LGS: Especially the children.
EF: Yeah. Thank you so much for this time. Thank you for all of your stories and, just the time you took to, to spend with me. Thank you so much I really appreciate …
YZ: Thank you, Elena, it was fun. And it was nice being, you know, having this opportunity for us to hear each other’s stories. Some of them old, some of them new, some of them change in the retelling.
