Oral History Program Catherine Ortega Interviewed by Ruby Licona 12 April 2002 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Catherine Ortega Interviewed by Ruby Licona 12 April 2002 Copyright © 2024 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in Special Collections. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber and Davis County Community Oral History Collection includes interviews conducted by Weber State University faculty, staff and students, and other members of the community. The interviews cover various topics including city government, diversity, personal everyday life experiences and other recollections regarding the history of the Weber and Davis County areas. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management Special Collections All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Catherine Ortega, an oral history by Ruby Licona, 12 April 2002, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections and University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: This is an oral history interview conducted with Catherine Ortega (b.1951) on April 12, 2002 by Ruby Licona. Catherine was heavily involved in integrating the Hispanic community of Weber County into the public education system. She was also one of the first students to be accepted to the teacher training program at Weber State University. The interview concerns Catherine’s life in Ogden, her career as an educator in Weber County and as an administrator at Dee Elementary School. RL: This is an interview being conducted with Cathy Ortega, the assistant superintendent of the Ogden City Schools. This is being done on April 12, 2002, in the Stewart Library. Cathy, thank you so much for agreeing to come talk with us. We’re just going to be talking about basic things from your past, your present, and what you see for the future. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like you to start out with telling me a little bit about where you were born and maybe some things about your parents—their names, what their background was, and where they came from. Just a little bit about the beginning of where Cathy came from. CO: Okay. Thank you very much. I was born in Springer, New Mexico, May 6, 1951. My parents were also born in New Mexico; my mother was born in Miami, New Mexico. RL: And what was her name? CO: Stella Ariellano Sambulat. My father was born in Maxwell, New Mexico, and his name is Fildelfio Vincente Sambulat. We call him Filly, for short. There were eight children born in our family, all of us born at the hospital in Springer, New Mexico; it was a very small town near Raton, New Mexico. 1 RL: Near the pass? CO: Right near the Raton Pass. All of us began our schooling in Springer schools—at Forrester Grade Elementary School. My father and my mother had an eighthgrade education. They got married very young. My father worked in several jobs throughout his career; he was a handyman and a custodian at the high school. They were very hard-working parents. My mother stayed home with us for a while, and then she did the laundry at the little motel we had there in Springer. She then went on to be a nurse’s aide at the hospital. We moved to Price, Utah, when I was a junior in high school in 1967. My oldest sister didn’t finish high school, but later went back and got her GED. My oldest brother, Edward, was a teacher in Colorado Springs, and just retired this past year. My brother Rick works in Belen, New Mexico, and he’s done waterworks and knows all about how to do the water treatment and those kinds of things. Then my next brother, Santiago, he’s an educator in the Ogden City School District, and he and I had the opportunity of teaching the sixth grade together one year. We’ve had administrative experiences at different schools; he was an assistant principal at Mount Ogden while I was an assistant principal at Mount Ford. He moved to Ogden High School as an assistant principal and I went to Ben Lomond as an assistant principal; then we both became principals, myself at Mount Ogden Middle School and he was principal at Ogden High. We’ve had a very wonderful career together. He’s going to retire next year and I’m probably going to work three more years. 2 I have three younger siblings. My brother Sam was in the military; he lives in Colorado Springs with his family. My brother Jack is a custodian at Polk Elementary here in Ogden, and my sister Cynthia works for the IRS and is in Albuquerque, New Mexico temporarily. RL: So you just kind of all went in all kinds of different directions, didn’t you? CO: Yes, we did. Three of us finished our college education. Several of them have gone to college, but they didn’t ever get their degree. RL: And where did you finish your degree? CO: I went to the College of Eastern Utah right after high school. I got a job with the Carbon County School District as a senior in high school. I had a teacher who saw some potential in me and gave me the opportunity of working for the school district. The teacher paid my way to go to college for the first quarter. He was a teacher who went to the district office as an administrator in Title I and was working with the elementary supervisor, Segi Rizudo. She was the director of the Head Start program, and she oversaw Career Development. I was able to go to school right out of high school for fifteen credit hours at the College of Eastern Utah. I graduated June 2, and was in college the next week. The teacher moved to the district office and was able to write a grant for a program, and they sent several of us to school, and then I began working with Carbon School District as a teacher’s staff assistant at Mt. Harmon Junior High for a half-day. Then I went to the district office in the afternoon and worked for the elementary supervisor as her secretary. 3 RL: Now, the people that went to the College of Eastern Utah with you under this program—have you kept up with them? CO: Absolutely, I have. RL: Have they all gone on to be successful? CO: Yes, they have. Margene Sherman was a teacher in Carbon School District, and she retired a couple of years ago. Elsie Trujillo is currently working in our district as an ESL teacher, and she started the program with me. She was married and had children. She got her teaching degree through Utah State University. Patsy Bueno—well, her name was Patsy Torres, but now it’s Patsy Bueno—she married, and she is now the elementary supervisor in Carbon School District. RL: So that program really paid off. CO: It absolutely did. It gave us an opportunity to go to school and become involved in education. RL: Was it all females? CO: It was all females at the time, and a lot of these individuals had already been working for the school district. I had not, because I had just graduated from high school. Patsy was a year ahead of me, and we still stay in touch. Her daughter came to work with us at Central Middle School and taught there. She’s received her administrative degree and she is now an assistant principal at Carbon High School. So the people are just kind of moving on. RL: It mushrooms, doesn’t it? CO: It does. I think it’s the opportunity and the hope that other people have done it, so it’s possible for you to do it if you have the incentive to move on and to do that. 4 After graduating from the College of Eastern Utah, there was a program called the Teacher Corps. I made an application for the Teacher Corps and met the director. Dr. Floyd Waters had come down to Price to recruit individuals to come into education here at Weber State because it was a new program being run by Dr. Norm Ferrin. I made application there at the district office and he happened to know my boss, so he stopped in to say hello to her and told her about this program he was working on. I was going to go to Utah State University and major in business—I wanted to be a business teacher. Well, they called me into the office, he told me about this program, and I thought, “Well, you know, it sounds interesting.” I made application that day—he waited for me to type up all my information—and a week later I was accepted into the Teacher Corps program here at Weber State College. I came up here with thirty-five other interns. We worked five hours a day in the schools, and then took our classes and our coursework at night. RL: And what did you do in the schools? Did you teach? CO: We taught under the supervision of a master teacher and a team leader. There were five of us in the upper grades, and five in the lower grades. I worked with the upper grades at Dee and taught there for two years while I was getting my degree. Immediately after I finished that, I got a teaching job, right there at Dee. It was a third-fourth grade split. Weber State has helped me immensely, so did Dr. Ferrin, and all of the individuals that were involved with that program. They gave us the chance to succeed and to be involved in this program. And that’s kind of where I started my education career at Dee Elementary, and I was there for nine 5 years. I loved it. One of those years, I had the chance of teaching with my brother Santiago. RL: How large was the group that you were team teaching? CO: The program had ten interns in each school. There were four sites. There were ten interns at Jefferson Elementary; there were ten at Dee Elementary in innercity Ogden; there were five interns at the Intermountain Indian School, at that time; and then there were ten interns that were placed in Salt Lake City School District. I believe they were at Jackson Elementary. RL: Now, was your brother Jim also in this program? CO: He was, but he was in the next cycle of the program. Because he was in the military, he kind of followed a couple of years behind me. They had another cycle of Teacher Corps, so he came in on that second cycle. RL: Now, those people that went through as interns, did they stay in the Ogden School District? CO: Some did, some did not. There are still a few left. RL: So it wasn’t as easy to keep in touch with them as with your first program. CO: It’s been a little bit harder to keep in touch with them. A year ago, Dr. Forrest Crawford put together a group of us, and there were about ten of us that came from the first cycle. RL: Kind of a reunion? CO: Yes, kind of a reunion. There was not only our cycle, but the other cycle that came after. There were about ten of us that showed up, so it was kind of fun to 6 see everybody, see what they were doing, and see them still in the education field. It was exciting. RL: Now, you moved from Springer, New Mexico to Price, Utah; and I don’t know much about Springer. Was it about the same size as Price, or smaller? CO: Very much smaller. It only had a population of maybe 4,000 people total. There was a lot of farming and ranching. RL: So it was a place where everybody knew everybody. Coming to Price, there was probably a little bit of culture shock? CO: Major culture shock. In fact, my high school had two hundred students that were in grades nine through twelve. When I went to Carbon High School, there were about eleven hundred students, and it was ten through twelve. So it was like moving into a city just in the high school itself. And moving as a junior in high school was very difficult. RL: I had to move my senior year in high school and I thought it was the end of the world. CO: Yes, I did too. I was very involved in school in Springer. I was a cheerleader and a student body officer. I ran track and played basketball. When I got to Carbon High, it was very hard because in our home and in New Mexico we spoke a lot of Spanish and got very comfortable doing that. I entered the doors of Carbon High and met some girls and thought that they were going to speak Spanish to me, and they just looked at me like, “We don’t know a thing that you’re telling me.” So that was very difficult. Plus being in a bigger school, not knowing anyone at all, it was really hard. But by my senior year, I was feeling great and had met friends. 7 RL: What was the cultural breakdown in Price when you moved there? CO: It’s pretty diverse in Price. RL: And was it at that time? CO: Oh, yes. It’s probably one of the most diverse cities that we have in Utah. There’s a lot of Greek, Italian, Hispanic, and Latino. It’s a mining town. RL: And you could make the mistake with Greeks and Italians thinking that they were Hispanic and would be able to understand you. CO: Absolutely. Coming to a different school and making the change at the time that I did was hard. I didn’t want to move from New Mexico. Because it still has my roots—my heart and my soul are still in New Mexico, and one of these days I want to return there. RL: When you moved to Price, the community was diverse, but was there a Latino community that you could become a part of? CO: Oh, absolutely, yes. There were a lot of activities. Through the church, they had dances and activities that we were very involved in. So yes, we felt very at home with that. Plus, our family was there—my grandmother lived there, my aunts live there. They knew the people already in Price, so it was very easy to intermingle. RL: Now, had they moved there from New Mexico? CO: Yes. They had moved from New Mexico. My grandmother had moved from New Mexico—she had remarried, and they had been in Price. The reason our parents moved was that they came for a vacation and just decided to stay. My father liked it and decided to stay and see if he could find a job. He found two jobs and decided, almost overnight, that they were going to move and stay in Price. I 8 never thought we’d ever move from Springer. But it happened, and it happened very quickly. He got a job at a service station and as a handyman at a motel. He worked there until they moved to Ogden in 1985. RL: So they followed you and your brother to Ogden? CO: Yes; our other two siblings followed us also. Everybody kind of migrated to Ogden after I got my degree, and my brother followed me the next year. He and his wife Elaine got a job here at Weber State. Jim went through the Teacher Corps and got a teaching job. I came in June of 1972. RL: Now, as far as the work environment, what kinds of attitudes did you encounter in the workplace? Were you accepted, did you feel different at all? CO: My experiences have always been very positive. I started working very young in Springer. I waited tables when I was thirteen years old. When I moved to Price, I got a job in a restaurant waiting tables. I was pretty well accepted. In fact, I worked with a lot of women who had been working for a long time. We’d do banquets and they’d always ask for me to work with them because I was quick and a good worker. I had some very good relationships with people that were a lot older than I was, so I never felt like I was frowned upon or looked down on because of who I was. RL: Now, you don’t necessarily fit the stereotype in physical characteristics, and you certainly don’t have much of an accent. I think there are a lot of us that tend to be chameleons, and can fit in. I think people don’t realize that Latinos come in every color and every flavor. Had you looked different, do you think it would have been a different attitude? 9 CO: Yes, it could have been. In fact, a lot of people didn’t know that I was Latina. When I’d start speaking in Spanish, they’d look at me and they’d say, “Where’d you learn that?” I’d say, “At home. And in school.” As a seventh-grader, it was required that we take Spanish. So I began my formal schooling in Spanish then. RL: When you started school, did you speak English? CO: Yes, I did. We were raised around my grandmother—it was my dad’s grandmother—she lived next door and she took care of us while our parents worked. She spoke very little English, so we knew how to communicate with her. In our home. English was spoken primarily, but Spanish was also spoken. I learned to interpret for my grandmother when I was four and five years old. I’d go to the doctor with her, and was able to interpret for the doctor and let her know what he was saying. So we always spoke the language and had been very proud that we’d retained the language. Our parents had always taught us that it’s nothing to be ashamed of, that it is something that is you, and nobody can take from you. RL: It’s part of your culture. CO: We’ve retained the language, and still speak it now. But when people would hear me speak, they’d say, “Oh, you don’t look Mexican.” And I’d say, “Do we look in a specific way?” But I don’t ever think that was difficult for me, because I was willing to overcome some of that stuff. If people looked at me and said, “You’re a Mexican.” I said, “Yes, and I’m very proud of it.” 10 RL: I think the experience is different for those of us whose families have been in this country for centuries, and who have just kind of become a part of the fabric that is our society. Maybe it’s not as easy to assimilate for immigrants. Like I say, particularly if they have the more indigenous features, and if they learned English either informally or as an adult, and have heavy accents and so forth. That can create some barriers. I think we have a tendency in this country to all of the sudden not be able to understand if we hear an accent. CO: My experience has not been that, because I was born and raised in this country. I just seemed to land in the right place at the right time. It was like, I didn’t have to really go out and seek it, but I think people saw in me that if they created that opportunity, I would excel in it. I took them up on it and I was never was afraid to go out and say, “You know, I don’t know if I can do this, but I’m going to give it my best.” RL: I think that’s something that’s instilled in us. You know, the hard work ethic—if you’re going to do something, then by God, do it. CO: Do it well, yes. I think the experiences that I’ve had in school and being raised in New Mexico were very good for me. I always had good schooling and excellent teachers. They were very good, with the exception of my eighth grade math teacher, who kind of looked at me and said, “Why are you trying to learn this? You’re just going to get married and have babies like all the other girls do.” And I said, “You don’t know that, and I resent you telling me that.” I was really bothered by that. In fact, I went home and I said to my mom, “Why do people do that?” 11 And she said, “Because they’re just ignorant. They don’t always know who you are and what you’re capable of doing.” She said, “But you know what you do when people tell you that? You prove them wrong.” I said, “I’m going to show you.” I’ve not had the opportunity of meeting up with him again, but Mr. Phillips, if you’re out there, I’d like to find you one day. RL: What about some positive experiences with teachers? Do you have any favorites? CO: They didn’t call it kindergarten then, they called it preschool. That teacher, Mrs. Henry, probably gave me my very first start with feeling good about myself in school. I remember meeting her at the drugstore one day. She was just so proud of me and she said to everyone in the drugstore that day, “This little girl is so smart, and she is such a good student, and she comes to school always looking like she’s just nice and clean and ready and willing to work.” She bought me an ice cream cone, and she made me feel very special. I’ll never forget that because I thought, “You know what, I’m okay. I’m a pretty good person, a pretty good kid.” So that kind of started me. My first grade teacher was Mrs. Young and I had a very positive experience with her. Probably the one that stands out is Mrs. Comyford, my second-grade teacher, because everybody would say, “Oh my gosh, she’s so mean.” When I looked at the list and saw my name in her class and I said, “Oh dear, I’ve got her.” She was probably one of the best teachers I’ve had. She expected us to be able to produce, and we did, because we knew that she expected us to be able to get this information and do it. On the playground one day, she said, “You 12 know, Catherine, you’re going to make a great teacher one day.” I was out there kind of directing everybody and putting everyone in place and telling them what they could do. We were organizing for an activity. I’ll never forget that. I’d never ever thought of becoming a teacher until that point. So I remember her, and I had the occasion to tell her that, because I’d go back to Springer. I said to her, “I appreciate your belief in me, because I’ve achieved that goal.” RL: It panned out. CO: Yes. My fifth-grade teacher was Mrs. Sparks and I just got a book written by her the other day. She passed away a couple of years ago. My aunt happened to be traveling around the country, and landed up in this place where Mrs. Sparks was. Her family gave her this book, because she knew that we had gone to school there in Springer. Her writing is in it, and she used to compliment me on my handwriting. Anytime she needed something done, I was the one that she’d pick to do her posters. It was very special to have that book that she wrote, and to know that she touched my life. RL: Now, what about after you finished or when you were in the internship program here in Ogden? Are there individuals that you remember working with that also helped you? CO: Oh, absolutely. Genevieve Morrison at Dee Elementary was a master teacher and loved the kids. Watching her teach and knowing she put her heart and soul into everything she did, I said, “Man, I want to be like her.” Phyllis Savage, and Alice Fay Glenn—Alice is still teaching—they were excellent role models in teaching. Milt Kendrick, I think, gave me my opportunities, and he will always be 13 a person and an individual that I thank for just allowing me to be involved at this school, and be there. Dee School will always have a place in my heart—the kids and the parents, and the interaction that I had there. RL: Even today there’s a lot of good things coming out of Dee School, aren’t there? The summer programs and the migrant programs. CO: There are. I still stay in touch with a lot of those kids that I’ve had in school, and it’s just exciting to see what they’ve done with their lives and just having that interaction and that tie back to that community. That’ll always be very special. RL: Well, you’ve kept in touch with the successes, were there some that were not so successful? CO: Well, yes, there were some not-as-successful students and families that I interacted with. In fact, I served on the youth parole authority board for about five years, and some of those kids that I had in elementary school I met when they were incarcerated. RL: Did you know, back then? Could you tell? CO: Some I worried about, oh yes. Some I worried about, and thought, “You know, if you don’t change your environment and some of the things that you’re doing, you’re going to end up there.” Some of them did. Some of them didn’t. Some of them just surprise you. You know, we’re all kids, and as we’re growing up we do some things that are dumb. But overall, I think most of those kids have done well, they’ve been hardworking kids. They are very proud of what they’ve done, and their accomplishments. They have good families who wanted better for their kids 14 than they had, and more opportunities than were available to them. So, some very good experiences. RL: What about the kids coming through the schools? You know, people say “Oh, well, it’s not like in the good old days,” and “Things were different in my day,” and this kind of thing. What do you see that is the same or different about kids in the schools today? CO: I think kids are more exposed to things than we were. There are a lot of things that are more open today than they were back then. RL: A loss of innocence? CO: Yes, and I think there’s just a lot of stuff out there on the streets and stuff. And, you know, parents are working. I think two-income families now is almost a must in order to survive. I think that’s difficult, because kids need to be supervised, yet parents need to provide for them. I see that as one of the difficulties. Not to say that they’re not good parents. You know, my parents worked; we were supervised by our older siblings, and by our neighbors and our grandparents, etc. I think that’s a bit harder for these kids nowadays…just the exposure of what’s out there. More open, I think. RL: When I was young, evenings were spent visiting family, and sitting on the back porch with a guitar and people singing, and chasing fireflies in the backyard, which is quite different from going to R-rated movies, and watching stuff on television that probably our parents never even knew existed. For kids now, it’s run of the mill. 15 CO: It’s just part of their everyday life. I remember those very things. On Saturdays, we had get-togethers in our neighborhood. Our fathers played the guitar and we all sat around listening to them sing. The kids played while our parents interacted. I think that component is missing from a lot of families. We still maintain that. We get together every Sunday at my house or my brother’s house, as a family. We try to do a lot of things as a family several times throughout the year to keep that bond and to really try to focus in. All of the kids that are my nieces and nephews are like my own kids. CO: To give you an example, we were at our house for Easter Sunday. We have Easter traditions and we watched one of my brother’s daughters kind of take-off where we’re at now, continuing those traditions. You know, we used to do the cookies, and all that stuff. We don’t do that now, as the aunts, or my sister-in-law. The kids are taking over that tradition. We’re hoping that we’re instilling in our family those things that are important, and that they carry those on. If we don’t do it, they say, “When are we going to make those cookies?” or “When are we going to make the tamales?” or “When are we going to do this?” They’re involved in that, and I think teaching them those kinds of traditions and to carry them on is what family needs to do. We have really worked hard as a family to do that. RL: In the school district, is there more sharing of that kind of cultural experience between the different groups, or is there any opportunity for a multicultural exposure? CO: I think there is, but I think there’s always opportunity—there’s always room for improvement in doing that. I have a little niece who’s twelve years old and living 16 with me now. She has been with us for a year and I’ve gotten to know her friends. I went to a birthday party the other day, and it was all of that girl’s family at the party. It was wonderful to see the aunts, the uncles, the cousins—you know, everybody. So those are the traditions that we need to honor. We need to say, “Way to go, great job.” In fact, some of the kids that were there—and the parents of that girl—I taught in school. I didn’t know that until we got there. I think that’s important, and I think we just need to encourage that, and encourage our parents to become part of that school family. I don’t think we’ve done our job as well with that. I think we really need to work harder because education is very important for these kids. But still, we have that barrier and parents are afraid to access the school. We’ve got to tear down the barrier because school is where that foundation is built, and parents are critical if those kids are going to have success in school. So it’s there, but I think we can continually improve that process and make them feel like a bigger part of the community family. RL: Now, are you a parent? CO: I am not a parent. I don’t have my own children, but… RL: But you feel like mother to a lot of kids, don’t you. CO: Yes, I do. RL: And it sounds like you’ve got nieces and nephews that you stay close to. CO: Absolutely. RL: You did marry. 17 CO: I did. I’ve been married for twenty-five years. My husband is also from Price, Utah. I met him in college in Price. He’s been working at Hill Air Force Base for the last twenty-plus years. RL: What is his name? CO: Rudolph Ortega Jr. RL: Were you married to him when you came on the internship program, or did he follow you up here? CO: No, he followed me up here. We were taking courses at CEU. When I came up here for the first year in the Teacher Corps, he stayed in Price and worked and continued to go to school. Then he moved to Salt Lake City and became a truck driver. He did that for about a year and a half, and then we got engaged. I had already been teaching a couple years before we got married. We always knew we were going to get married, but I didn’t want to marry until I had my degree. RL: I’m glad to see that you had that attitude at a young age. CO: When my husband proposed, I said, “I’m going to marry you,” and I knew he was the only person I was going to marry. But then I said, “But I’m not ready to do that, because I want to finish my schooling.” I think it was hard on him, he accepted it. And I always said, “If I get married, I’m probably going to end up having children, and then I’m never going to get done.” So I didn’t want to have that happen. Well, then I got married and didn’t have children, so who knows? You don’t know what your future’s going to be. 18 RL: You don’t. And it sounds as though your life has been a series of serendipitous occurrences that put you, like you said, in the right place at the right time, when something new was happening. Do you see new opportunities for students? CO: Oh, I think we’re seeing more success for kids. Just looking at the high school graduating class last year in Ogden—I get to go to the graduations because of the job that I’m doing right now—I was very proud as I looked at that list, seeing all the Latino kids that are graduating and moving on to college. I know several of the graduates last year from Ogden High School. I think we’re seeing a lot more success. Are we reaching them all? No, we’re not doing good enough yet. RL: What’s our graduation rate for the Latino students in the Ogden Schools? CO: Offhand, I don’t know. I know we did a study a few years ago and our dropout rate was pretty high, and I don’t know the statistics for those high schools now that they go ninth grade to the twelfth grade. I can access that, but off the top of my head, I don’t know what it is. I think what we need to do is start with kids in elementary school. We need to do some things at the elementary level to let them see that it’s possible for them to do that. High school’s too late. RL: It’s the idea of setting up those expectations early, isn’t it? CO: Yes. One of the things that we did recently was to have many of the parents come to the meeting when we hired a principal at Lewis Elementary. Those Latino parents were so excited about having the opportunity to be involved in that process. They said, “Your expectations are ninety percent, but we want one hundred percent. We don’t want to settle for the ninety percent. Reach for that 19 hundred, so it can climb.” We’re saying, “Great, but we need you to be a part of that with us.” RL: That’s the idea, not to settle, isn’t it? CO: Right. You try to reach for those higher expectations. I think the challenge that we’re going to have is that now we’ve got them talking with us, but how do we keep them feeling? So that they are a part of the system? I don’t think we’ve done a good job there. RL: What kinds of groups can you work with to do more outreach? CO: One of our plans is to ask every school to come up with a community plan and a community council. We want to see the diversity there. And we’re going to ask who’s coming and how you’re going out and meeting them, and making them feel a part of that school. RL: So doing the assessment to make certain that everybody’s being reached? CO: Absolutely. And we’re saying, “How are you accessing those homes and those parents?” It’s just not acceptable to say, “Well, we sent out a note.” You’ve got to go beyond that. RL: If you send out a note, what’s the response rate to that note? And if you didn’t get a high enough response rate, what do you change the next go-round? CO: Absolutely. And one of the things that we learned in this process, and I think it’s been helpful, is we also provided childcare for those families so they could be a part of that. We say, “Bring your children. We’ll have some activities for them to do so you can be a part of this.” They were excited that they could do that, and many of them took us up on it. So those are the kinds of things that we’ve got to 20 do: we’ve got to do the outreach to our families in our community, not expect them to just come because it’s a school building. There are things we can be doing with those parents: teaching them how to work with their children. I think there’s a lot more we could be doing, and the resources are there to do it, we just need to do things differently. You know, bring them into the school. RL: Now, I know that during the last census period the State Latino population went up about 136%, and Ogden also reached that level of growth. With the new immigrants into Ogden, what do you see as changes that need to be made, or things that need to be done in order to help? Not just meet the needs of members of the community, but to also empower them to make contributions? CO: Well, I think sometimes in our society we make assumptions that because people come that they need things from us. And we tend to say we’re just going to give, give, give. Those individuals have something to give back to the community. We need to say to them, “What are the things that you can offer to the schools or to the community?” You’d be surprised what those individuals are willing to do if they’re asked. And I think, again, it’s just part of that involvement. How do we get better at doing that? It takes everybody to work together as a whole community; it takes the government agencies, the schooling agencies, the health agencies… RL: The churches. CO: All of these churches and everybody working together. I think we all work in isolation. If we’d get better at planning and organizing as a community, I think our parents would access that, and then they would be givers. I see our parents giving back to the community—they’re going to be the volunteers that can sit 21 there with children reading. Because they’ve got some skills. But we don’t tap that; sometimes we make the assumption that because they come from another country, they’re poor and that we’ve got to do all these things for them. RL: And maybe they’ve got two or three degrees, a profession, and contributions that they can make. CO: And they come to this country, but we just look at them and say, “You’re an immigrant. There’s nothing that you can contribute.” There are things that everybody can contribute. And everybody’s a learner, and everybody has the capacity to learn. We just need to tap into that. RL: Now, I know that in the business community there’s a change coming about. We’re seeing more and more Latino businesses, and not just businesses, but individuals setting up practices: legal practices, insurance agents, real estate agents, and so forth. Do you see that as incorporating the Latino community more into Ogden, or do you think that the Latinos doing this are just aiming for a Latino audience? CO: Well, I haven’t had a lot of experience with that, but the ones I’ve had the opportunity of working with have all said, “How can we help?” Ignolfio’s one of those individuals. He’s out there really trying to work hard accessing the community, and not in isolation. It’s: “What can we do to access different things for our people, and to help them with that?” I have one situation right now—my mother’s on dialysis and she’s met a young lady who is on dialysis and needs some help. The family is willing to work; what they need is just access—how to access those resources. They don’t know how to do that. We’ve got to get better 22 at doing that for them. Now we’ve got Marselo Martinez helping the family out, and trying to get her some assistance, so she can feel like she’s a contributing member—not that she needs something from the system, but that she can give something to the system. RL: Quite often, people don’t ask because they don’t want to be given things. They want to make a trade of some kind, or feel like they are contributing members of the community. CO: Or they don’t know who to ask. That’s the other thing that I’ve found; when you go to some of these businesses, they’re very willing to help, but people don’t know how to go about asking for help if they need it. Sometimes they’ll sit back through some pretty difficult times when there are all these resources that can help them. They don’t want something from you. They want to give something back to you. But people hit hard times. Once they get past that, they go off and they do wonderful things for the community, but it’s just knowing how to tackle those resources. RL: How else are you interwoven into the community? CO: I’ve sat on a lot of different boards; I’m sitting presently on the Board of Trustees at Weber State University. I’ve served on the Youth Parole Authority Board; that was a governor-appointed job. I did that for about five and a half years. I was on the credit union board of directors for several years. RL: For which credit union? CO: For the Ogden District Credit Union. My parents are getting a little older and we put my father in a care center; my mother’s health is not very good, so she’s 23 been living with my husband and I the last two and a half years. I’m a little limited on being involved in the community, because I feel I have a responsibility to my parents, who have helped me throughout my life. I’ve been on several boards—in the district, or if there’s committees that are formed, then I go and help and sit on those committees. Right now, with my present position, I’m working many hours in just the job that I do. RL: Not 40 hours. CO: No, not a 40-hour work week, believe me. RL: Absolutely not. CO: I’d like to do more of that. In my church, I’ve been involved with teaching classes and doing some of those kinds of things, but I’d like to do more. RL: As you reflect on a lot of the things that we’ve talked about today, is there anything that you would change? CO: You know, I think my experiences have been very good. I really can’t sit back and say, “Geez, if only I’d been able to do the things that I wanted to do.” I love the people I work with; I love the challenges. I don’t like staying in one place. I moved around as a teacher. Like I said, Dee was the place my heart longed for, but I knew that in order for me to grow, I had to take on different challenges. And I’m still doing that. In this present job, I’m not done. I’m thinking of even coming back and taking some business classes. I’d like to do some consulting and go on and do some other kinds of things. I really am interested in the ESL endorsement and teaching classes. I’ve taught a few classes. So I want to do those kinds of 24 things…see what else is out there to do and try different things. See if there are some other jobs out there and different challenges that I’d like to take on. RL: How long have you been with the school district now? CO: It’ll be my thirtieth year at the end of this year. RL: You said you might retire in a few more years. What do you plan to do after that? CO: More school, relax, spend time at home, spend time with my parents for as long as I have them, and probably, like I said, come back to school. I’m really interested in the business area, so I may come back and do that, or look at getting a doctorate degree. RL: Now, you said you had hopes of someday going back to Springer. How does your husband feel about that? CO: Well, that’s why I’m still hoping. He’s been back to that area and he’s got family in New Mexico. I think we all have roots in that area. He’s got his paperwork in to retire from Hill Air Force Base; he was one of the ones that got cut in this next go-round of the positions and stuff. I think he’ll go. He’s pretty resigned to doing whatever we want to do and relax and do some things. Right now, our family holds us here. Of course, I have family back there; my sister still lives in our old home. I don’t know, it’s just something that I’d like to do when we retire. I think that’s where my roots are, and I think New Mexico is where I always wanted to stay and do things. RL: But there’s still Thomas Wall saying you can’t go home again. CO: Yeah, and you know, I don’t know whether that’ll happen or not. That’s something I want to have happen, but I don’t know. You know, you have to live 25 every day one day at a time. You don’t know what the next day’s going to bring, but you just tackle it as it comes. It’ll depend really on what I decide to do and how long I decide to work. My husband is pretty flexible, and he can get a job doing anything; he’s pretty handy at what he does. I guess we’ll see. He has property down there also; his father passed away a few years ago, but he left his family land down there. It’s by the Santuadia. Truchas, I think, is the name of the place. RL: So your experiences in coming to Utah and to Ogden have been very positive, it sounds like. What else do you want to tell me about? CO: I think as a Latina in this community, sometimes people look at me and they say, “Oh, I didn’t know that you were Latina.” I think there’s still a lot more that I would like to accomplish within the community to really help individuals out there, and especially our Latino population. I’m not done yet with what I want to accomplish. There’s some volunteer work I want to do and I’d really like to work with families and with educating parents. I used to teach in the community and I loved it. I see myself setting up some areas where I could work with parents and try to help them learn English and be able to access jobs. I’ve worked with kids, and that’s where my first love is, but I think there’s still more to do, and I think I’d really like to work with the parents. I get excited when I’m around the parents and see their enthusiasm to learn and be better parents for their kids, and really want to help them educationally. To be better and to do better than they’ve done. RL: I remember when I first read Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street, and she talks in there about reaching for those who got left behind. I think there’s a 26 little bit of that feeling that comes across in what you’re saying. Being aware of how blessed you’ve been, and feeling a desire to pass that on. CO: Yes. I think if I want to do it bad enough, I’ll do it, and it’ll get done. I don’t know how far-reaching I can go, but I think that there’s some very good people out there. I think these kids are our hope, and I think parents could feel good about where they’re at with their lives, and what they can do to contribute to these kids’ lives—that they’re going to be taking care of us as we get to be the elderly generation. I’m excited about that, especially when I work around these parents. I just see a lot of potential in them, and a desire—they just want so much more, and it can happen for them. RL: They want more for themselves, but mostly they want more for their kids. CO: Absolutely right. And it’s not the monetary things. It’s wanting them to be successful. So, I will probably continue to volunteer and do some more stuff. I don’t feel like I’ve done as much in the community as I probably could have, simply because of the positions and the time element in my job. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to free up some time to do that as I go on to try new ventures. RL: What do you see as your greatest accomplishment? CO: My greatest accomplishment? I think I’ve been a good daughter, a good sister, and a good friend to many people. It feels good when I can do things for others, even if it’s just listening to their problems. I’ve always tried hard to be the best that I could be, and help my family and my parents and the people that I know. Through them, and through the strength that I get from doing that, I feel like I’ve been able to excel and do the things that I’ve wanted to accomplish. I wanted to 27 be a secretary, and I got to do that. I wanted to be a teacher, and I got to do that. I didn’t know if I wanted to be an administrator, and my brother pushed me to do that, but I think I’ve been pretty successful doing that. I’m still learning; I mean, every day is a new opportunity, and every day is a new challenge. So careerwise, and educationally, I’ve been able to do things. I’ve always wanted to get a doctoral degree; it’s not too late to do that. I may be venturing out that way, and will probably do it in the business area. I don’t know. I’ve enjoyed my life. I’ve had a good life, I’ve had excellent opportunities, and there’s still a lot more to do. I’m not done yet. RL: But you’ve only reached the midway point. CO: That’s right. There’s a lot more time. RL: Not too long ago I heard someone who was sixty being described as middleaged. Then someone sarcastically saying, “How many 120-year-old people do you know?” But I think the potentials there. People used to retire at sixty, and not live much longer than that. CO: That’s no longer the case. My father will be 80 years old in May. He was a hard worker. Unfortunately, he’s got Parkinson’s now. But 80 is a long time. RL: But you’re certainly young enough that you could retire and still have another career. CO: I could retire today, with 32 ½ years in the system, and I’m 50 years old; I’ve got a long ways to go yet. So I’m sure that I’ll find things. I tend to get involved with one thing, and then I’m in three or four or five other things. I was involved with a lot of educational organizations, leadership in those areas and stuff, but since my 28 parents came up here, I feel like I need to really concentrate on spending every day and quality time with them. I’m not going to have them forever, so right now that’s a big priority for my husband and I. He’s a very good partner, and willing to do a lot of things for my family. I’m very appreciative of him. RL: Well, I have to tell you that I really admire everything that you’ve accomplished. I’ve formed the opinion over the years that you’re one of the doers. CO: Well, I’m not done with everything yet. I think you have to be giving. I’ve been blessed, and I need to give back. I think every day of the opportunities and the blessings that I’ve had, and I cherish them. You look at where other people sit, and the challenges they have, and I can honestly say I haven’t had that experience. When you go, you don’t take anything with you, so you live every day to the fullest and hope the next day will bring other challenges for you. I’m ready to take them on. RL: Like they say, “Sí, se puede.” CO: Oh, sí, se puede. Si te nirvana, sí se puede. RL: Absolutely. Thank you for coming today. CO: Thank you. I appreciate you inviting me. 29