Browse Items (31 total)
Sort by:
Interview with Manuel Martinez and Ofelia (Martinez) Silva
Manuel Martinez and Ofelia Silva, brother and sister who have spent most of their lives in El Monte. They lived in La Mission and have seen events in the LA area from the 1920’s to the present, their lives included World war II, segregation, the…
Interview of Vernon Wickstorm
Summary: Vernon Wickstorm is a lifelong resident of El Monte and has been a teacher for four decades. Here he recounts his life growing up in the city in the 1930’s and 1940’s.
Interview of Dr Mary Louise Labrucherie
Summary: Dr Mary Labrucherie, long time superintendent of the Valley Lindo School District talks with SEMAP about the history of the school district and El Monte. Her career as Superintendent and remaking of the district curriculum and teachers.
Interview with Felix Ramos
Summary: Felix Ramos has living in El Monte his entire life. Growing up in Hicks Camp in the 1940’s and 50’s he remembers the conditions of the Mexican workers who made their lives there. He was raised by his God-parents who owned a convenience…
Interview with Jesus Garcia, Ignacio Garcia, & Ylnda Nunez
Summary: The brothers Jesus and Ignacio have spent their live times between Mexico and the United States. From Jalisco they were braceros before coming across undocumented and later fixing their papers. Jesus spend most of his life in the Mariachi…
Interview with Donna Crippen
Summary: Donna Crippen is the curator of the El Monte History Museum and has lived in El Monte her whole life. Wife of the former mayor of the city, she raised two daughters while working alongside her husband in their ambulance dispatch company.…
Interview with Vincent Rojas
Summary: Vincent Rojas grew up in Hicks Camp. His family was from Sonora and Guanajuato Mexico, agriculture migrants. Descriptions of life in Hicks Camp and El Monte from the post-war period. Was one of few Mexican students to graduate high school,…
Interview with Alfred Mendoza
Alfred was born at LA/USC Hospital to Mexican immigrant parents and raised on the south side of El Monte. Mother and father and were from Tijuana, father had been laid off from a metalwork plant before he was born and sought earnings from narcotic…
Interview with Angie Godina
Abstract: Born in California, came to El Monte as a young girl, lived in Medina Court and then moved to South El Monte, leaving at age 14, returning at age 28. Mother was daughter of landholding Mexican-American in Riverside who married a Native…
Interview with Mark Durazo
Abstract: Mark Durazo graciously agreed to participate as a narrator in a teaching interview, with five high school students from the KCET Youth Voices program at Mountain View High School and the vice-president of La Historia. Mark is the son of…
Interview with Olga Gutierrez
Abstract: This was a somewhat impromptu interview that began when Olga (who was overseeing walk-in oral histories at La Historia) began speaking about her experiences as an educator with me (I had just returned from UCLA, which prompted the…
Interview with Thelma Rodriguez
Abstract: Thelma’s father was born raised in Hicks Camp to Mexican immigrants, and her parents migrated within California for agricultural work. He was a photographer who developed his own photos, many of which hang in La Historia. Both of her…
Interview with Elisa Beltran and Evelyn Gonzales
Abstract: The Beltran Family has lived in El Monte in 101 years at the same location, on a parcel of land at what are today Orchard and Cypress streets in the Medina Court neighborhood (formerly the Medina Court barrio). The family came in 1914,…
Interview with Patsy Sutley and Ida Werrett
Abstract: Patsy Sutley moved to El Monte in 1964, after moving to California from Amarillo, TX, where she was born and raised, two years prior. Her children attended schools in the Mountain View District and then Mountain View HS. She began work as…
Interview with Reymundo “Ray” Guzmán
Bio (via Romeo Guzmán, as confirmed by Ray): Ray is the child of Ramon and Leonor (Ramon was a bracero from Zacatecas, met Leonor in Mexicali, where her family was from). They lived along the border for years, then moved to GDL and eventually to…
Interview with Richard Hernandez
Abstract: Grandfather came during Mexican Revolution, settled on Montecito Drive in Medina Court, had 13 children, of whom Richard’s mother was one. Parents started out as agricultural workers, became factory workers in SEM and EM (Richard would…
Interview with Ron Reeder
Dust Bowl, Okies, Cherokee, Norwalk, South El Monte, Valle Lindo High School, El Monte, Multi-Service Center Gallery, LACE, Rio Hondo College, Murals, Native History, Country-Western Music, El Monte Legion Stadium, CSUF, Estrada Courts, David…