[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 77 (Thursday, April 23, 2020)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E386]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 CELEBRATING THE LIFE OF MAC JARAMILLO

                                 ______
                                 

                     HON. GILBERT RAY CISNEROS, JR.

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, April 23, 2020

  Mr. CISNEROS. Madam Speaker, I rise today to celebrate the life of a 
man from my district and to mark, in his passing, both what we have 
lost and what we must refuse to lose as our country faces a great 
crisis. This man was not lost to the COVID-19 pandemic. But his memory 
almost was. Mac Jaramillo was born on March 10th, 1927 in Hanford, 
California, and died peacefully a few miles from his La Habra, 
California home on March 22nd of this year. Mr. Jaramillo was not a 
great statesman, not a wealthy man, at least in material things, nor 
was he any kind of dignitary except to his family, his community, and 
his church. I only learned about Mac from his children who reached out 
to my office asking for help in remembering him because in the midst of 
our public health crisis, Mac's family and friends were denied a 
funeral mass. They were nearly barred from his burial altogether. On 
April 7th, Mac, a man who was rich in friends and family, was buried by 
his parish priest and nine family members. The many more people who 
loved him and wanted to render their respects were denied that 
opportunity. That is why I felt the need to speak, so that an American 
who came from the humblest of roots, who carried himself with great 
humility and dignity, who sought little for himself, who served his 
country in the Second World War, and who not only exemplified the 
American dream but helped build and expand it for his children, could 
be remembered and honored. This is not then merely a gesture to a 
grieving family; it is a reminder of the great stock of which our 
country is made and how the example of men like Mac give us strength 
when we are called to answer our own challenges.
  Mac's father and mother, Fortino and Sotera Jaramillo started their 
family in the State of Guanajuato where, like many other peasant 
farmers of the revolutionary era in Mexico, they had trouble feeding 
themselves between harvests. Like my ancestors, they sought greater 
opportunities in an Estados Unidos that was often hostile to them even 
as it profited from their labor and skill. The City of Hanford became 
their home, but they really lived across California's great Central 
Valley and out to its lush Central Coast. The seasonal rhythm of 
migrant farm work brought the family out of Hanford every March and 
down to the lettuce and bean fields in coastal Nipomo and Santa Maria. 
Then it was north to San Jose to pick cherries and pears. By August, 
the family would find work back in the central valley grape regions and 
only return to Hanford in September for the cotton harvest.
  The Jaramillos worked hard for little. Tough times in the 1920s 
became unimaginably harsh by the early 1930s as the country sank into 
the depths of the Great Depression and the winters left the children 
hungry. For the family, the winter of 1934, when the average 
temperatures in Hanford hovered in the low 40s, was the worst of the 
Depression. It was that year that the family lost Mac's youngest 
brother who succumbed to a combination of cold and influenza. But even 
in the face of such tragedy, the family carried on. For meager wages, 
they lent their backs to the agricultural colossus of the Central 
Valley that fed and clothed so much of the nation in those lean years. 
It was a system of work that cost Mac a formal education as he left 
school in the eighth grade to join his parents and siblings in the 
fields.
  It was the body he developed in those fields that gave him the 
physical strength to carry his two brothers out of their bedroom during 
a 1941 house fire. The fire had engulfed their bedroom and the two 
brothers were already unconscious from smoke inhalation when Mac, a 
mere boy of 14, saved their lives without even a thought for his own. 
In the summer of 1945, Mac was inducted into the US Army. He served as 
an infantryman and a firefighter in the Second World War. Though he was 
garrisoned in Panama and never saw combat, on at least two occasions he 
showed his courage again fighting fires, first aboard a heavily laden 
ammunition ship and later rolling barrels of oil down the side of a 
mountain before they were engulfed in flames. Heroism and quick action 
in the face of fire seemed to be a theme in Mac's life. Even in middle 
age, when a neighbor's house was set ablaze by fireworks, he 
instinctively jumped into action putting out the fire and saving the 
house before the La Habra Fire Department arrived.
  Like most men of his generation, Mac Jaramillo came home from the war 
with wider eyes and bigger ambitions. Building on skills he had 
acquired in the service, Mac no longer worked in the fields but as 
machinist running cotton gins. In 1955, he joined his brother Dave in 
La Habra, working first in a packing house, then in manufacturing 
plants in La Habra, Brea and Placentia. He purchased a Texaco gas 
station and ran it for three years. Until, with his GI Bill benefits, 
he decided on barber college. He worked in a variety of shops until 
founding his own barbershop in downtown La Habra. Then in 1969, 
searching for better benefits, and perhaps looking for something to 
distract him from the recent loss of his child Lucy Lita to Leukemia 
the year before, Mac started a new chapter. At the age of 42, he became 
a Teamster and drove RC Cola deliveries for 19 years until he finally 
retired to tend a modest garden of roses and fruit trees.
  But Mac Jaramillo's real ambitions were always to be a faithful 
servant to his God and family. In 1956 he met and married his wife of 
63 years, Lucina Quintero. Together they used his GI Bill benefits to 
buy a home in La Habra where they raised eight children. All eight 
children received their baptism, first communion, and confirmation in 
La Habra' s Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, where Mac and Lucina were 
married and Mac remained a parishioner until his passing. The couple 
taught their children to revere God, protect the family, and love their 
country. They also taught their children to seize opportunities. Mac 
and Lucina's proudest achievement was to see all eight of their 
surviving children graduate from La Habra High School and to watch two 
of them graduate from the California State University at Fullerton.
  Mac Jaramillo left this world as the beloved patriarch of a large and 
proud family, he regularly entertained groups of 30 to 40 at Christmas 
and other holidays. Indeed, it is a great irony that this family man, 
this veteran of the greatest generation, this partner in America's 
post-war prosperity, who loved his church, his family and his community 
so much more than he loved himself, was denied a public mass and a 
large burial reception. He is survived by his wife Lucina, brother 
Greg, sisters Lita and Mary, children Carlos, Dona, Mack, Eileen, Inez, 
Joachim, Peter, Lucy, 24 grandchildren, and 23 great-grandchildren, 
seven of whom have followed in the patriarch's footsteps by serving in 
the Army, Air Force or Marines.
  With this, we have tried to ease the hurt of this one family by 
helping to remember Mac Jaramillo and the life he led. I feel we all 
gain from learning about him. He isn't the kind of man who history will 
normally take note of. But if we can remember him and the millions like 
him who built the American and Californian dream out of the ruins of 
the Great Depression and the Second World War, if we can remember their 
courage as well as their kindness and humility, then how can we despair 
for our future. God bless Mac Jaramillo, his family, Our Lady of 
Guadalupe where he worshipped, his adopted city of La Habra, the people 
of my district, and the country we all love.

                          ____________________