To Serve The People, by LeRoy Chatfield

Guest post by LeRoy Chatfield

Personal Introduction:
Because my background is somewhat unusual and not easily understood, I believe it might be helpful to provide some personal commentary by way of explanation.

Changes of Life:
In 1963, I met Cesar Chavez in Delano, California when he was organizing his National Farm Workers Association. I was a Christian Brother teaching at Garces High School in Bakersfield, California. We hit it off and became close friends. Because of my own concerns about the plight of farmworker children, I started a Saturday School educational program for farmworker children living in the Cottonwood Road area of Bakersfield and then the following year, I organized a full-blown summer school for farmworker children in Delano and in Bakersfield for farmworker children living in the Cottonwood Road and La Loma areas.

Two years later, on October 15, 1965 to be exact—at the of age 31—I moved to Delano, California to help Cesar Chavez with the Delano Grape Strike. I came because a few weeks earlier he had called me at USC where I had been assigned by my religious superiors to begin a doctoral program in Social Work. He said he needed help with the Delano farmworkers’ strike and could I come to help him? I said I would. I resigned from my 15-year religious vocation as a member of the Christian Brothers, left my 9-year career as a high school teacher and administrator, packed my few personal belongings, and started a new life working with my friend and his farmworker movement.

Consider this: I was 31 years old without a dollar in my pocket; I had agreed to take a brand new job working with Cesar Chavez to do something I knew nothing about, and I was not going to get paid to do it. And not only that, but I also need to explain that from the age of 15 until age 31, I had lived, studied, and worked in a 100% male religious organization environment, namely the Christian Brothers Monastic Religious Teaching Order. That was the only life I knew.

Because I was required to take the religious vow of poverty, I owned nothing… literally nothing. The only clothes I possessed were those suitable for my status as a religious cleric. I did not even possess a government-issued social security card because as a Christian Brother, I was never paid for my work as a high school teacher. And if that doesn’t sound strange enough, I hasten to add that because I had taken the religious vow of chastity, I never had personal friendships or purely social interactions with women, but only professional interactions that were work-related. In my teenage years, I never hung out with friends and talked about girls, I never attended school dances or the Prom, I never dated or held hands or ever kissed a girlfriend—not that I disapproved of any of these things, but because of the life I had chosen these things were not available and certainly not permitted.

Compared to others, I lived a self-contained and sheltered life—no daily newspapers or monthly magazines, no radio, no popular music or movies, no telephone and no communication or mingling with the outside world. The simple truth is this: for more than 15 years, because of my religious vocation, I had chosen to live a life separate and apart – IN the world but not OF the world, as I had been taught during my religious formation years in the Christian Brothers. In fact, I lived outside the box of normal human interpersonal relationships between men and women. But now in 1965 for the first time in my life because I had agreed to help Cesar Chavez, I was going to live inside the box of those interpersonal relationships. I was a fish out of water. I knew it! And more importantly, I felt it!

Yes, I was now an eligible bachelor and yes, I was employed, but without money or income, and I had no personal experience or knowledge about the social skills I would need to meet and interact with persons of the opposite sex. On a scale of 0 to 10, how would you score my “marriage” readiness? Or my chances of forging a long term relationship with a woman? Or given my background and newly found status, she with me? I don’t know your score, but I will give you mine!  Off the scale! A MINUS 2.

And yet, despite my personal “fish out of water” lack of “marriage readiness” rating, I am pleased to tell you I have been married 54 years to Bonnie Burns Chatfield. We have five married daughters and ten grandchildren. I think you will agree with me that Bonnie Burns had her work cut out for her, but thank God she was up to the task!

Looking Back:
Looking back over the 85-years of my life, I realize I have had several life-changes—I prefer to call them life-saving events:
(1) My parents saved my life when at age 14, they sent me away from home to attend the Christian Brothers boarding school
(2) Brother Gilbert who was in charge of the boarding school, saved my life when he encouraged me to enter the Christian Brothers
(3) Cesar Chavez saved my life when he asked me to come to Delano to help him with the grape strike
(4) Bonnie Burns saved my life when she agreed to marry me
(5) Governor Jerry Brown saved my life when he asked me to manage his first Northern California campaign for Governor
(6) Dan Delany saved my life when he asked me to be the first director of Loaves & Fishes
(7) Jennifer Szabo saved my life when she taught me step-by-step ever so patiently how to publish my Farmworker Movement Documentation Project online
(8) Professor Jorge Mariscal saved my life when he called me and said: “LeRoy, you need a book.

Just how fortunate can one person be? I am eternally grateful!
In conclusion, I offer you a homeless blessing I have heard for more than 20 years at Loaves & Fishes:
“Thank You! God Bless You! You Saved My Life!”

**********
Cesar Chavez National Holiday Prediction
by LeRoy Chatfield

Today is Wednesday, July 17, 2019. I predict that before this same day in 2044, Cesar Chavez Day will be proclaimed a national holiday and take its place alongside that of Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington.

Cesar Chavez has been dead for 26 years and with every passing year his legacy continues to grow, not only in California but in 12 other states, and there is no end in sight. Already Chavez is the most memorialized and honored Californian than anyone else in the state’s 169 year history. This achievement is all the more remarkable because he was born into the grinding poverty of a migrant farmworker family who eked out a living harvesting the crops in the agricultural valleys of California and was never in one place long enough to receive much formal education. Chavez told me he attended 28 elementary schools during his childhood.

Chicano Photographer Series

What makes me believe my prediction will be realized? Consider this documentation of the Cesar Chavez memorials and awards received during the first 25-years after his death. Each memorial has been created through local, state, and federal bureaucracies, which of necessity required citizen petitions, public hearings, local media coverage, and government authorizations. All totaled, tens of thousands of people were involved in developing and creating the 25-year legacy of Cesar Chavez. I predict this is not the sum total of Chavez’s legacy, it is only the foundation on which the march to achieving a national holiday will be realized.

Cesar Chavez parks in CA: 12; other states: 5 [AZ-CO-NV-NY-WA]
Cesar Chavez major streets in CA: 6; other states: 23 [AZ-ID-NM-MI-MN-MO-OR-TX-UT-WI]
Cesar Chavez libraries in CA: 6; other states: 2 [AZ-MI]
Cesar Chavez schools K-12 in CA: 27; other states: 30 [AZ-CO-IL-MD-MN-MI-NM-OH-OK-OR-TX-DC-WI]
Cesar Chavez post-secondary schools in CA: 7; other states: 4 [AZ-CO-NY-OR]
Cesar Chavez bronze statues: 10 [Sacramento; CSU-San Marcos-Fresno State-Riverside- Denver-UT-Austin-Phoenix-San Luis-Tucson-Milwaukee]
Cesar Chavez state holiday designations: 8 [CA-AZ-MI-NM-CO-TX-UT-WI]
Other Cesar Chavez memorials: 5 [Community Centers [CA-WI]; Bowling Alley [TX]; Apartment Complex [CA]; Community Name Change [TX]
Cesar Chavez federal memorials: 3 [USNS Cesar Chavez ship launched 2012; USPS Memorial Stamp; US Park Service: Cesar E. Chavez National Memorial]

Cesar Chavez Awards

1973: Jefferson Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged
1992: Pacem in Terris Award for “Achievements in Peace and Justice”
1994: Presidential Medal of Freedom (posthumously awarded) by President Bill Clinton
2006: Inducted into California Hall of Fame by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
Note: The Pacem in Terris Peace and Freedom Award is a Catholic peace award which has been given annually since 1964, in commemoration of the 1963 encyclical letter Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth) of Pope John XXIII.
Total Cesar Chavez Memorials and Awards: 152

Cesar Chavez Time Line

1927: Birth of Cesar Chavez, Yuma, Arizona, to a Mexican American family
1960: Number of California Latino elected officials: 12
1962: Cesar Chavez organizes National Farm Workers Association later named United Farm Workers of America
1965: 1970 Delano grape strike & grape boycott
1966: 300 mile “March To Sacramento” (from Delano to Sacramento)
1968: Cesar Chavez 25-day “Fast for Nonviolence”
1972: Cesar Chavez 22-day “Fast for Arizona Farmworkers”
1975: 50,000 farmworkers vote in California sponsored union elections
1980: 45,000 farmworkers protected by United Farm Worker Union contracts
1988: Cesar Chavez 36-day “Fast For Life”
1993: Death of Cesar Estrada Chavez (age 66), in San Luis (near Yuma), Arizona; 40,000 mourners attend his funeral in Delano, California
1994: Number of California Latino elected officials: 800

Note: Chavez is the most honored Californian in the state’s 170-year history.

To Serve The People: My Life Organizing With Cesar Chavez and the Poor, by LeRoy Chatfield (UNM Press 2019).

© 2019. LeRoy Chatfield.
All rights reserved.