[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
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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.
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