Graciella Martinez interview
Item
Title
Graciella Martinez interview
Description
Microsoft Word document, 16 pages
Creator
Martinez, Graciella
Herron, Richard
Relation
StoryCorps Interviews
Coverage
California State University, Fresno
Date
4/16/2016
Identifier
SCMS_stcp_00006
extracted text
>> Graciela Martinez: Hi. My name is Graciela Martinez. I am 71 years old, and today is Saturday, April
the 16th, 2016. We are at the Henry Madden Library at Fresno State University. And my partner today
happens to be my one and only son, Richard M. -- no, Richard Herron, but what's your middle name,
Sweetheart?
>> Richard Herron: My middle name is Charles.
>> Graciela Martinez: Richard Charles Herron.
>> Richard Herron: Dad's middle name was Martin.
>> Graciela Martinez: Martin, yes. Yeah. Hi, Sweetheart.
>> Richard Herron: Hi, Mama. My name is Richard Charles Herron. I am 43 years old. Today's date is
April 16, just like my mother said. And this is the first time I've actually done an interview, and who else
to do it with other than your own mom, so this is going to be pretty interesting. I'm kind of excited and
nervous at the same time, so...
>> Graciela Martinez: Well, you just -- whatever you need, want to find out from me, you just ask me,
Sweetheart, and I'll answer.
>> Richard Herron: Well, I think you have a better story than I do. You've done quite a few things in your
lifetime that I know you're proud of and I myself am proud of you as well, and I know the rest of your
kids and grandkids are extremely proud of you. So I want to kind of make this about you. So I guess I've
heard you tell your stories before, and you've got quite a story to tell, so I guess maybe in a nutshell,
starting with your career, I know you've done extensive work with American Friends Services Committee
and the farm worker movement, and I love that story, about how you and Dad met. So can you tell me a
little bit about that?
>> Graciela Martinez: But of course, Sweetheart. Wow, we go back a long time, and I guess how you—
your dad and I met, I was very young. I was maybe about 19 years old when I had decided to go and join
the, you know, the farm worker movement. It was at that time gaining ground and I went with these
great aspirations of being Cesar Chavez's secretary, which I did for a very, very short time. It was not
really a set-up office like I expected, you know, so we went out on the picket lines and what have you.
Your dad came in around the same time that people started gathering, around the summer of 1965.
Yeah, at the beginning of 1965, '64, '65.
>> Richard Herron: He was pretty much like a free spirited guitar player.
>> Graciela Martinez: Your dad was a roving person. He loved to travel. He was big on justice, and he
had a very great friend that was also part of the farm worker movement. So on his travels back and forth
across the country, he decided to stop in at Delano one day and I met him, and, well, the rest is history.
Beautiful blue eyes I fell in love with, and he used to play the guitar. He taught Augustine Leda, who was
part of the farm worker group that used to do the Proyecto Campesino, and he helped him learn how to
finger pick the guitar, because your dad was an amazing guitar player and, you know, he also worked
with the United Farm Workers since he was a stonemason. He helped them build the clinic out there,
the [foreign language] Clinic, which is a wonderful thing, because anybody could go in there and get
medical services. Your oldest sister, Hannah -- well, my first baby, Richard Edward Herron, was
conceived during that time. And your dad and I had traveled to Washington D.C. to go and see what was
going on over there as far as picketing Safeway for their iceberg lettuce that was being shipped from
Central Valley all over, you know, and I got pregnant over there. When I found out I was pregnant, I
came back home. Unfortunately, I lost that child, Richard Edward. I wanted to continue the line, or the
name, you know. So I lost that baby. He was born December 24, 1966, in fact, and he was stillborn. It
was a very sad time in my life, you know, looking forward to a child. He was born full term. He died three
days before he was actually born, so I almost died too. You almost were not here, Sweetheart.
>> Richard Herron: Wow.
>> Graciela Martinez: But anyway, your dad and I continued our relationship. Sometimes he'd want to
be at a different place. We'd be in Washington D.C., and he decided that he'd want to go up to northern
California, and so we moved around quite a bit. Hannah came along, your oldest sister, and then Jenny
also. You guys were born here in Visalia, because this is where my mother lived, and whenever I was
pregnant, I wanted my mother close by, because she was very wise and knew a lot. And finally, when
you came along, we lived in San Francisco, and you were conceived, and your dad wanted to move all
the way back across the country to Florida, and I chose not to follow because Hannah was at the age
where she was going to go to school and I just needed to settle down, you know, with my children. So I
came back to California. You were born here in 1973, September 9. And for me, every birth of every
child has been a wondrous time. I enjoyed it, my pregnancies, my deliveries. And to me that's, you know
-- my treasure trove is my four children.
>> Richard Herron: You were I know, from the stories I've heard and from what you've told me, and I
personally, from knowing my grandmother, you were really close with Grandma, and so I know during
that time that you were young and traveling the country with my father that Grandma always had close
-- she always had close dibs on you. She always wanted to know where you were at, and she always
wanted you back home. Grandma came from Mexico, and she was a very religious, Catholic lady. What
did she think about you hitching up with my dad at that time and traveling the country and, you know,
experiencing all these movements with him?
>> Graciela Martinez: She didn't care for it. She didn't really care for me leaving home and going to
Delano, which is only about 40, 50 miles away from home. First time I'd ever been away from home, you
know, and when she found out that I had hooked up with this man, a bald-headed gringo, she used to
call him el gringo pelon, and she didn't like the idea at all, because being a very religious person, my path
was to get married, settle down somewhere. And we have just gone into the darkness, but that's okay if
we continue recording. Yeah. I was very close to my mother. I always wanted to be close to her. She -she and I were very, very close. I was the only girl and the last one of the family, and she just prided
herself on me, so it was difficult for her to accept me leaving home, not working to continue to work to
help the family. She was kind of disappointed, but she got to love your dad a lot, and he actually came
and lived with us in Visalia and actually went out to work in the fields with your grandmother and Tia
Monie [spelled phonetically], and he learned how to pick oranges and became part of the family.
>> Richard Herron: He probably got a lot of respect from Grandma, from—from doing that.
>> Graciela Martinez: Oh, yeah. Oh, definitely. And then of course her grandchildren from me, I was the
closest one. You—you are the only ones that she really saw grow up from babies into adulthood, you
know, so she was always very proud of the children, and she cared a lot for your dad, yeah.
>> Unidentified Speaker: You guys can keep talking. I'm just going to go turn on the lights, okay?
>> Graciela Martinez: Okay.
>> Richard Herron: I'd have to say Grandma had a lot of grandkids, and growing up next to her like we
did, I know we had a special bond with her.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah.
>> Richard Herron: Her and Tia Monie [spelled phonetically], we had a very special bond with her, and it
was nice because I kind of felt like whenever our other cousins would come visit from Riverside or from,
you know, Oceanside, you know, they wanted to get time with Grandma as much as possible because
they didn't get to see her that much, but I kind of felt privileged being right down the street from
Grandma, and I could go see her any time and she could come see us any time.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah.
>> Richard Herron: And she did, and we did too.
>> Graciela Martinez: Uh-huh.
>> Richard Herron: I remember going over to Grandma's house when she would make her special
cinnamon bunuelos.
>> Graciela Martinez: Oh, yeah.
>> Richard Herron: She would send me home with at least two dozen of them.
>> Graciela Martinez: Uh-huh.
>> Richard Herron: And every time I came home there was at least three or four missing.
>> Graciela Martinez: Oh, yeah.
>> Richard Herron: And I just took my time walking home.
>> Graciela Martinez: Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. We tried to live really close to my mom. And you
know, she, I know, at this point, she would really be proud. Even though at first she didn't really care for
me to go away from home and being what the old ladies in those days used to call a metiche. Metiche
means that you are sticking your nose in other people's business. And I remember telling her, because
we talked back to our parents, you know, when we're -- we're challenging our parents and trying to
establish ourselves, and I used to tell her that, yeah, I wanted to know what was going on around me,
that there were a lot of things. And since my mother had been a farm worker, I saw firsthand some of
the abuses the farm workers went through. I mean, your grandmother got fired from a lot of jobs. We
had a lot of jobs. And I say "we" because when they were working in the field, that was before we got
the child labor laws installed. We used to go work in the fields with her. I mean, I remember picking
cotton way back in Texas. And when we moved to California from Texas, heck, finally my mother settled
on -- she loved picking oranges. She loved getting on the trees and being able to look out, you know,
above and see the birds and the birds nests and, you know, instead of using the ladder to pick the
oranges from inside the trees, she would actually climb the trees. So I learned how to do all that. You
know, in those days, we didn't have the protection that farm workers have now. Like they didn't have
bathrooms, and water, you drank water out of the same containers. And they probably had water in
those containers for three days already. It tasted like it, but you needed water. The situation for farm
workers at that time was not good. If you were a woman and your supervisor came along and, you
know, wanted to brush your nalgas[foreign language], your butt, you know, you didn't complain because
you'd get fired. You know, it was easy to fire. There was all kinds of people waiting for jobs. So it was
really bad. And I think that's the only reason that my mother finally agreed and went along with me
joining the Farm Workers, but they used to be up there every weekend, every weekend. And every time
she went, she would take tacos and pan and, you know, anything that she happened to make. The first
typewriter that I ever used at the United Farm Workers in that old house is still sitting in my mother's
closet in our—in my bedroom.
>> Richard Herron: Wow.
>> Graciela Martinez: You can see it. It's one of those old, nothing with electric typewriters. These things
you had to really pound—
>>Richard Herron: Oh, mechanical. Yeah.
>>Graciela Martinez: you know, to be able to -- so, yeah, she got accustomed to it, and she used to
come -- you know, they used to come and do some volunteer work every now and then. And she would
donate, yeah.
>> Richard Herron: Now, Grandma was a farm worker for a really long time, and you growing up the way
you did around my father and around the whole United Farm Workers Movement, that started off your
career at a very young age. And as you grew up, you've had different jobs working with Visalia Legal
Typing Services, transcribing for different lawyers in the Tulare County area, come full circle. You end up
going back to American Friends Services Committee. And not only did you work as a farm worker, you
retired with the AFC advocating for farm workers.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, yeah.
>> Richard Herron: Did you know that was going to come full circle like that?
>> Graciela Martinez: No, of course not. I can't foresee the future. But actually my civil rights bug, I was
bitten earlier than the United Farm Workers, and that's when I was working with the AFSC, the
American Friends Service Committee, when an opportunity was given to some of the staff to go to
Montgomery, Alabama, to join the march that was going on at that time with Martin Luther King, Junior,
and so I was blessed to be in that. And that's where, you know, seeing that Mexicanos over here were
being oppressed in one way and the black people in a different way, being that we're all human beings
and we were all -- should have, you know, the same rights. Why couldn't the black people vote if I could
vote, or this other person, you know, what have you? So when I came back from Alabama, from that
march, which we didn't go all the way, because we were being sponsored by the AFSC, and early in the
day the march started, one of the other marshals—marshals—marchers—I need a drink of water. One
of the other marchers, James Reeb, from the Unitarians, was murdered. And so I imagine that the AFSC
was concerned about the liability should something happen to any of us. And it was dangerous, very,
very dangerous. It was a scary time in my life, being part of the march because of, you know, the things
that I saw and experienced. It was a whole brand new. So by the time I came to the United Farm
Workers, I already had this bug in me, this, you know, searching for justice in the workplace, and, you
know, in schools, segregation thing and all that. So I kind of, you know, I kind of went with the role and
worked towards helping to make things a little bit better.
>> Unidentified Speaker: Ms. Martinez, do you remember like what the march was like? Can you paint a
picture of being there?
>> Graciela Martinez: I don't know if I can. It was all very strange to me. I grew up here in Visalia on the
north side, and the only ones that lived in that area were us, the Chicanos, the Mexicanos, the native
Americans, and a few black people. So I really didn't have that much, you know, back and forth with the
black people, but for some reason, I don't know why, I was attracted to that, the fact that, you know,
they couldn't participate in civic things like we could. It was incomprehensible to me, being human
beings, you know, they should have the same rights as any other human beings. And to me, what rights
are we guaranteed under our Constitution is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That means being
treated well, wherever you go, to school, to work, at home, you know, so there's so much, so much to
get involved with. The American Friends Service Committee, to me, was a stepping stone, because that
was my very first job ever, fresh out of high school, and I wasn't expected to be a secretary. I was
expected to be a homemaker or maybe work in a clothing factory, which Bailey's, which used to be in
Visalia. And in those days the telephone systems were all handled by those push --
>> Richard Herron: Switch—switch operators.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, those were the kind of jobs we were looking for, we
were looking forward to. And I actually went and applied at all these things, but a friend of my mother's,
farm labor contractor, who was a member of the meeting of the Quakers that gathered together to
create Self Help Enterprises, he told me about this job opening and, lo and behold, I applied and I got
the job. I didn't expect to, but I did, and I learned a lot. You know, I think that AFSC was a stepping stone
for me and opened the door for me to be able to go out and experience these things, like the march in
Alabama and like being involved with Cesar Chavez, because Bard McAllister, who was a director of a
farm labor office at that day, he personally took me and introduced me to Cesar Chavez, and they were
just getting set up, and he needed someone to help him kind of organize things a little bit. So my job was
over with the AFSC, and that's when I transferred over to United Farm Workers. We were paid $5 a
week. But your dad and I became pretty important in the movement, not because I was out -- I wasn't
out picketing, and your dad wasn't out picketing a lot. We were involved—I was in the legal department.
At that time the farm workers were not covered under the National Labor Relations Board. They didn't
have the same kind of protections, so the UFW was working on what's now named the American Labor
Relations Board, which brings the farm workers in under the protections that we have now, like working
conditions, you know, making sure you have fresh water, and toilets and all that kind of stuff, and are
free of sexual harassment, or any kind of harassment, you know, which still goes on incidentally, but it's
an ongoing struggle. Yeah. It was -- my coming back to the AFSC was sort of -- that was a weird
experience. I never told you about that?
>> Richard Herron: Uh-uh, no you haven’t.
>> Graciela Martinez: All right. Well, I had been into business on my own in Goshen for about ten years.
>> Richard Herron: I was one of your associates.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, you were. I created a program called Martinez & Associates. I remember
sitting down with my children, they were very young, and saying, you know, that means I have to give a
great portion of my time to taking care of customers that came in. I began my service in my bedroom.
And I was very fortunate, because, like you say, I had worked with Legal Services, I had worked with
California Rural Legal Assistance. That was one of the first programs I worked with after the UFW, and
Cruz Reynoso, who became a big person, was my first boss at CRLA, and Legal Services here in Tulare
County, I learned a lot about the law. So my last job that I had was with a woman lawyer, Linda Luke. I
remember -- I'll always remember her because even though we parted, I walked out of the job because I
felt that she was asking way too much from me, you know, like being a legal secretary and interpreter
and then also having to make sure that her little girls got to practice or to the doctor and stuff like that,
and so I disagreed with that. And she didn't fire me. I walked out and didn't come back, even though we
wound up being really good friends. I still kept doing work for her. She trained me a lot. So when I
became independent, I opened up my own office. She made it possible in the loop for me to become a
notary public. So I was a professional typist, legal secretary, interpreter. I used to interpret a lot at
courts. I used to do a lot of work for court reporters. You guys, the lullabies that you went to sleep with
was a clack of my typewriter.
>> Richard Herron: Absolutely.
>> Graciela Martinez: After putting you to bed at night and I'd have to get to work on my -- you know,
and I was until 1 or 2:00 in the morning.
>> Richard Herron: It was just amazing that sometimes we would be in the living room, me, Hannah, and
Jenny, watching TV and there you were in the kitchen with your typewriter on the kitchen table and
your headphones on transcribing away. To us it sounded like you were typing 5,000 words per minute,
and you would look at the TV and sometimes carry on short conversations at the same time while you
would transcribe, and I always thought that was just amazing that you could do that.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, yeah.
>> Richard Herron: I know how to use a computer and type but not anywhere near you. I clack and I do
the finger pecking. But yeah, you had, still do, just your skills on the typewriter are amazing.
>> Graciela Martinez: I know when I was working at Legal Services, who became my compadre later on,
Lois String, she was supervisor at Legal Services at one time.
>> Richard Herron: I didn't know she was your supervisor.
>> Graciela Martinez: Uh-huh. I learned a lot from Lois. And she said that I was machine—she
nicknamed me Machine Gun Grace. And one time when I did a state test for typing, I was up to 150
some odd, almost 160 words a minute typing, with very few errors. That's why I was able to get the kind
of jobs that I could get. I was very proficient in language and grammar and punctuation. And some of the
attorneys I used to work for used to ask me to edit their appeal briefs. Richard Rumery, yeah, he used to
dictate the appeal briefs and I could edit and adjust and do whatever, and he always loved it. They
always encouraged me. I had great mentors. I had people that I guess saw potential in me I couldn't see
in myself, and they kind of fed it. So, you know, I got to be somebody, and it wasn't alone. In fact, I have
a bumper sticker on the back of my car that says, "If the people lead, the leaders will follow." I've been
called a leader, but a leader is nobody unless the people get together. The people have to ask you to
lead them. And I did. I did a lot. Not because I was a big leader or anything like that, because people
have always come to me. And when I was working at Proyecto Campesino with the AFSC, we were called
various times in newspaper articles a guiding light, where people of any background or social or
economic status could come in, and if we didn't have an answer to a question, we would find, try to find
an answer for them or try to help navigate them through some of these processes, like applying for
Social Security, applying for unemployment, applying for welfare, you know. Some people have -- they
need to have a middle man. Somebody that's getting evicted from their apartment, sometimes a
middleman can kind of settle things down a little bit and allow the people to continue to live there, you
know. So yeah, I was very successful, but it was because other people helped to build me up, and then
my children.
>> Unidentified Speaker: Do you remember when your mother kind of changed her tune as far as your
activism and that kind of thing? Was there a moment that she realized that your work was very worthy
or --
>> Graciela Martinez: Uh-huh, there was. Early on when I got involved, she really was totally against me
going to Alabama. Totally.
>> Richard Herron: Was it because—
>> Graciela Martinez: I went and I told her, I'm going without your permission, but I hope I go with your
blessings. And -- but with the United Farm Workers, again, I had come back and I was working and blah,
blah, and leaving again, but not too long after that, because we got to hear Cesar a lot. She actually got
to talk and meet face-to-face with Cesar, and as he was learning. Cesar is not, you know, I mean, great
man, but when I learned that, you know, oh, boy, you know, he was a leader, well, yeah, he was a
leader. He picked up the farm workers struggle from the Filipinos, who picked it up from the Japanese,
was it, with the internment camps way back and the Japanese wound up in our portion of the valley?
Yeah, no, the Japanese and the Chinese people are land owners, and they have big agricultural areas, so,
you know, it's -- My mother got in tune with the work that I was doing. I think she saw in me too the
potential that I had and tried to help me, you know, because she always stood up against injustices, and
I think it was, you know, that she used to tell me, [foreign language]. If that can happen to that person, it
can happen to you, you know, and don't let an abuse go by, not even animals. Not even animals. Don't
abuse. Don't abuse, period. So yeah, my mother accepted early on the United Farm Workers Movement.
She contributed to it. She probably spoke to people around here, because our part of the Central Valley
was one of the last areas to be actually arisen to farm worker. We had a few of Cesar's oldest organizers,
Pablo Espinoza was one of them, Eliseo Medina, Gilbert Padilla. Gilbert still lives here, I think, in Fresno.
They are the ones that organized the north -- South Valley. And yeah, the North Valley was somebody
else. So, you know, it's -- my mother knew, and she would go out when she was working because she
picked oranges until she fell down. Remember when she split her finger?
>> Richard Herron: No, I don’t.
>> Graciela Martinez: And yeah, that made her go into disability. She could no longer work, but she
could sure speak. And, you know, know that things were not quite right yet, but we were making
advances. And things are still not quite right, but we're making advances.
>> Richard Herron: She'd be very proud of you right now.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah. The minimum wage thing that we’ve been—I've been, you know, waging for
years, we should have already been making 15 bucks an hour. I don't believe in some of the people that
say that the $15 an hour is going to drive down -- they are going to have to fire their people, because if
you are making 15 bucks an hour, you're going to spend that money in your community. You know,
you're going to be buying better clothes and better shoes and better food and, you know, that will kind
of help to leverage communities. A lot of these communities are in great need, you know. So we had
intended to do good things. The struggle has to keep on. And people like me, at my age, we look to
people like you, younger people, that can know that there's a struggle going on, and just because I laid
down the string, I'm not marching anymore, I'm only marching from my bedroom to the kitchen and the
backyard. That's all I'm marching anymore. But, you know, there's people like you, young people, that
can pick up the string and remember. And remember that -- like you, for instance, remember that your
mother has waged a lifelong battle, beginning when she was a farm worker, a cotton picker back in
Texas. And one of your songs that I used to sing to you guys a lot was -- oh, what was the name? "You
are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when days are blue. You never know, dear,
how much I love you. Please don't take my sunshine away." Do you remember that?
>> Richard Herron: I remember that, Mom. I do.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah. It was -- yeah. For all of you, my children were my blessings.
>> Richard Herron: That song will always be stuck in my head.
>> Graciela Martinez: Well, we used to do that. I used to parade you guys. Come on, let's get moving.
Come on, let's march, march, march, march, not knowing that that was going to send my son into
military service, something I didn't want. But anyway, yeah.
>> Richard Herron: I came back alive four years later.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, thank God. Yes, thank God. That was a big worrisome time in my life. And
always. A mother is always a mother. You'll always worry about your children. They are over there living
their life and having fun and what have you, but a mother until the day she's gone will be there. I hope
like -- when we were coming, we ran into that big accident, oh, my gosh, you know, if that could happen
to them, that could happen to us. And love and tell people you love them while they're still alive. Bring
me flowers while I'm still alive because I'm not going to be buried anywhere. I am going to be pushing up
daisies. No way. You're going to burn me and then you're going to let my ashes fly, baby, uh-huh.
>> Richard Herron: What's some of the proudest accomplishments in your life, Mom?
>> Graciela Martinez: My children.
>> Richard Herron: I saw that one coming. I should have known.
>> Unidentified Speaker: Do you want to give Richard's father's name for the record?
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, yeah.
>> Unidentified Speaker: And your mother's.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah. Richard's father's name is Richard Martin Herron.
>> Richard Herron: Yeah.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah. And my mother, oh, my mother, her name was Paulita -- well, Paula Cavazos
Martinez, Paula C. Martinez. Cavazos is her maiden name. We come from a long line of Spanish people,
from Spain, and my Spanish grandfather met and married my really Indian looking little grandmother,
and the bloods mixed and there I am. I'm [foreign language]. And somewhat too, I brought you back a
little closer to the white line, though.
>> Richard Herron: Yeah. We do kind of, me and my sisters, my two older sisters, we ran a fine line
there.
>> Graciela Martinez: Do you guys feel like any deprivation by the fact that Jenny gets mad when people
say she's gringa?
>> Richard Herron: No. I don't feel any deprivation at all.
>> Graciela Martinez: No?
>> Richard Herron: I've kind of gone my life with just being happy with who I am and being happy of my
heritage and being proud of where I come from.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah. Yeah.
>> Richard Herron: And so I've had nothing but proud feelings of who I am and where I came from.
>> Graciela Martinez: Well, I hope each of you feel like that. I think so.
>> Richard Herron: I kind of feel like I had the best of both worlds.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, yeah.
>> Richard Herron: That's kind of the way I looked at it my entire life, so...
>> Graciela Martinez: Well, it's been a good life, mijo. I'm 71. I never thought I would get to this age. I
kept thinking, well, maybe -- because my brother died when he was 56. He had a massive heart attack.
He went like that. And I always thought that's the way I'd like to go, really fast, you know, have it hit me,
and I keep thinking, well, shoot, you know, if I die, my children, they're going to miss me a lot. But you
guys have to face that. I will be leaving here one day, and then I'm going to fly like an eagle, because
when your spirit leaves, it's free to roam. And then I'm really going to be free, free at least.
>> Unidentified Speaker: What are some of your favorite memories together from when you were a
child?
>> Richard Herron: Oh, wow. We were talking about that on the way over here. Some of my favorite
memories as a child with my mom and my sisters were Saturday -- it was usually a Sunday afternoon, we
would go to this little [foreign language] in Farmersville, which was like a Mexican meat market, and
we'd get a couple pounds of food, and usually Barbacoa and some corn tortillas and some frijoles
charros, and then there was a park we used to go to right next-door to the meat market and we'd sit
there all afternoon and have a picnic while me and my sisters played and Mom would be out there with
Grandma and Tia Monie [spelled phonetically], whoever else.
>> Graciela Martinez: Sleeping under a tree.
>> Richard Herron: Sleeping under a tree. You know, sometimes we had a little radio, sitting there
listening to some good music and just, you know, playing out in the park and just eating like a Mexican
lunch with my family. And not just that, at that park, there were plenty of parks that we did that, but the
memory of just being out there with my family when I was younger, being out there with you and
Grandma and hearing Grandma complain about something, don't let the kids off too far, make sure they
have shoes on.
>> Graciela Martinez: Always.
>> Richard Herron: You know, there were always goat heads in the park, so someone was always
stepping on a goat head, but those were my favorite memories as a kid.
>> Graciela Martinez: Okay. And do you want to know what my favorite memory is of you?
>> Richard Herron: Uh-huh.
>> Graciela Martinez: When I bought you that Big Wheel. You were probably about six, seven.
>> Richard Herron: I was about seven years old.
>> Graciela Martinez: Seven. Yeah, and that was the biggest thing for you, your Big Wheel, and I
remember you going around the corner and I was standing there -- you were on the sidewalk, and
thinking, oh, my God, he's going to go over right onto the freeway, roadway, and you never did.
>>Richard Herron: I just slide.
>> Graciela Martinez: And you would always, "Look at me, Mom." And your sisters convincing you that
you were Superman and could fly off of a telephone pole.
>> Richard Herron: Yeah. Well, I used to use the telephone pole to climb up to the carport, and I would
wrap my Superman towel around my neck and I would jump off the top of the carport, which was
probably a good 10, 12 feet off the ground, and land on the ground, not ever able to fly like Superman,
but I would always get up and try it again.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yep, you always did. You've got scars to prove it.
>> Richard Herron: I never broke any bones doing that. Now that I think about it in retrospect, I was a
very lucky boy.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yes, you were. And people that took care of you, like Stan.
>> Richard Herron: Stan illima [spelled phonetically].
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, yeah. Coming to tell me that you were up at the telephone pole. Oh, my
gosh. Yeah.
>> Richard Herron: Those are good memories.
>> Graciela Martinez: They are good memories.
>> Richard Herron: Good memories.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah.
>> Unidentified Speaker: I was wondering too if you two wanted to paint a picture of your mother,
Graciela, just in looks and personality, and if you could just paint a picture of her?
>> Graciela Martinez: She -- well, of course, I remember her in her youth, in her vigor. My mother was a
very avid fisherwoman. Get her near any kind of a little puddle and she'd throw hook, line, and sinker in
there and fish. So we grew up eating a lot of fish because we -- she used to take -- that was where we
used to go, and, you know, and have fun, going fishing with your Grandma. And she was very strict. She
knew that if she said no, it meant no. And if the rule was broken -- I don't remember -- I only remember
one good spanking that my mother gave me when I ran off to the cemetery and I fell into a hole and I
came back all full of mud and everything, and she didn't know I'd been gone, so she gave me a good
whacking and sat me in the corner. I was kneeling in the corner for about an hour, and so I never went
near a cemetery anymore. That's why I don't want to be buried. So she was very strict, but also very
giving. My mother had a halfway house in Texas, when we lived in Texas. Her house was considered a
halfway house, and if you came knocking on her door and you said you were hungry, you never got sent
away without something to eat or drink or take a shower. Our shower thing used to be on the outside,
so people would stop on their way from Mexico, because we lived only about 40 miles from the border,
and that was a halfway house. People knew they could come in there and get a bowl of beans, a tortilla,
or something to help carry them to the norte, so my mother was very friendly. She had lots of people.
She was very opinionated. When she met a friend of mine that she didn't care for, she would definitely
let me know. And now looking back on it, the people that she said was not going to be a good influence,
they weren't. One of my friends, that we were really close together, got hooked up on cocaine and
finally overdosed and killed herself. So my mother was very strict and always kept really good tags on
especially me, because I was the only girl, her only girl, and always proud of me. Although she didn't -she was not the huggy, kissy, to come up and give me a hug just because, not any of that demonstration
of physical love. It was more, I don't know, a bonding, binding of the souls. So I didn't need to have my
mother tell me all the time, I love you, mija. I knew my mother loved me, even though she didn't tell it
to me all the time, so -- Yeah, and she loved to paint her hair. She never -- that's one thing that I find
kind of funny about my mom. She always had her hair, except for that white streak she had here, it was
always black. She was kind of vain. She liked to wear, you know, earrings, and she wore makeup and
lipstick all the time until she was -- she died of Alzheimer's. And until she was no longer able to take care
of herself, she always did. You know, she was very active. She was a baker. She's descended from a
family of bakers in Mexico and she was always baking things. Always bake. Yeah. And she would bake
pan that she would take out to the fields where she was working, so she could take out a piece of pan
and have with coffee and also offer it to everybody else that was sitting around, some pan and some
coffee.
>> Unidentified Speaker: Well, we just have a few minutes left. Was there any last things that you two
want to say to each other?
>> Richard Herron: Well, I've always -- I've always told myself, my friends and everyone else, that my
mom has always been my rock, and she still is. You still are my rock to this day. Everything I do in life, I
always think, you know how you see those bumper stickers, what would Jesus do? To me it's what
would mom do? And that kind of drives my sense of direction --
>> Graciela Martinez: Oh, Sweetheart.
>> Richard Herron: -- on what's right and what's wrong. So you've always been my rock, and you're
always going to be my rock. And I love you and thank you for everything you've done for me and my
sisters.
>> Graciela Martinez: Oh, Sweetheart. I'm so happy you told me that. That's been an aspiration of mine,
that you guys are comfortable in your own skin.
>> Richard Herron: Yeah.
>> Graciela Martinez: I love you.
>> Richard Herron: I love you too, Mom. Thanks for the time.
>> Graciela Martinez: Thank you.
the 16th, 2016. We are at the Henry Madden Library at Fresno State University. And my partner today
happens to be my one and only son, Richard M. -- no, Richard Herron, but what's your middle name,
Sweetheart?
>> Richard Herron: My middle name is Charles.
>> Graciela Martinez: Richard Charles Herron.
>> Richard Herron: Dad's middle name was Martin.
>> Graciela Martinez: Martin, yes. Yeah. Hi, Sweetheart.
>> Richard Herron: Hi, Mama. My name is Richard Charles Herron. I am 43 years old. Today's date is
April 16, just like my mother said. And this is the first time I've actually done an interview, and who else
to do it with other than your own mom, so this is going to be pretty interesting. I'm kind of excited and
nervous at the same time, so...
>> Graciela Martinez: Well, you just -- whatever you need, want to find out from me, you just ask me,
Sweetheart, and I'll answer.
>> Richard Herron: Well, I think you have a better story than I do. You've done quite a few things in your
lifetime that I know you're proud of and I myself am proud of you as well, and I know the rest of your
kids and grandkids are extremely proud of you. So I want to kind of make this about you. So I guess I've
heard you tell your stories before, and you've got quite a story to tell, so I guess maybe in a nutshell,
starting with your career, I know you've done extensive work with American Friends Services Committee
and the farm worker movement, and I love that story, about how you and Dad met. So can you tell me a
little bit about that?
>> Graciela Martinez: But of course, Sweetheart. Wow, we go back a long time, and I guess how you—
your dad and I met, I was very young. I was maybe about 19 years old when I had decided to go and join
the, you know, the farm worker movement. It was at that time gaining ground and I went with these
great aspirations of being Cesar Chavez's secretary, which I did for a very, very short time. It was not
really a set-up office like I expected, you know, so we went out on the picket lines and what have you.
Your dad came in around the same time that people started gathering, around the summer of 1965.
Yeah, at the beginning of 1965, '64, '65.
>> Richard Herron: He was pretty much like a free spirited guitar player.
>> Graciela Martinez: Your dad was a roving person. He loved to travel. He was big on justice, and he
had a very great friend that was also part of the farm worker movement. So on his travels back and forth
across the country, he decided to stop in at Delano one day and I met him, and, well, the rest is history.
Beautiful blue eyes I fell in love with, and he used to play the guitar. He taught Augustine Leda, who was
part of the farm worker group that used to do the Proyecto Campesino, and he helped him learn how to
finger pick the guitar, because your dad was an amazing guitar player and, you know, he also worked
with the United Farm Workers since he was a stonemason. He helped them build the clinic out there,
the [foreign language] Clinic, which is a wonderful thing, because anybody could go in there and get
medical services. Your oldest sister, Hannah -- well, my first baby, Richard Edward Herron, was
conceived during that time. And your dad and I had traveled to Washington D.C. to go and see what was
going on over there as far as picketing Safeway for their iceberg lettuce that was being shipped from
Central Valley all over, you know, and I got pregnant over there. When I found out I was pregnant, I
came back home. Unfortunately, I lost that child, Richard Edward. I wanted to continue the line, or the
name, you know. So I lost that baby. He was born December 24, 1966, in fact, and he was stillborn. It
was a very sad time in my life, you know, looking forward to a child. He was born full term. He died three
days before he was actually born, so I almost died too. You almost were not here, Sweetheart.
>> Richard Herron: Wow.
>> Graciela Martinez: But anyway, your dad and I continued our relationship. Sometimes he'd want to
be at a different place. We'd be in Washington D.C., and he decided that he'd want to go up to northern
California, and so we moved around quite a bit. Hannah came along, your oldest sister, and then Jenny
also. You guys were born here in Visalia, because this is where my mother lived, and whenever I was
pregnant, I wanted my mother close by, because she was very wise and knew a lot. And finally, when
you came along, we lived in San Francisco, and you were conceived, and your dad wanted to move all
the way back across the country to Florida, and I chose not to follow because Hannah was at the age
where she was going to go to school and I just needed to settle down, you know, with my children. So I
came back to California. You were born here in 1973, September 9. And for me, every birth of every
child has been a wondrous time. I enjoyed it, my pregnancies, my deliveries. And to me that's, you know
-- my treasure trove is my four children.
>> Richard Herron: You were I know, from the stories I've heard and from what you've told me, and I
personally, from knowing my grandmother, you were really close with Grandma, and so I know during
that time that you were young and traveling the country with my father that Grandma always had close
-- she always had close dibs on you. She always wanted to know where you were at, and she always
wanted you back home. Grandma came from Mexico, and she was a very religious, Catholic lady. What
did she think about you hitching up with my dad at that time and traveling the country and, you know,
experiencing all these movements with him?
>> Graciela Martinez: She didn't care for it. She didn't really care for me leaving home and going to
Delano, which is only about 40, 50 miles away from home. First time I'd ever been away from home, you
know, and when she found out that I had hooked up with this man, a bald-headed gringo, she used to
call him el gringo pelon, and she didn't like the idea at all, because being a very religious person, my path
was to get married, settle down somewhere. And we have just gone into the darkness, but that's okay if
we continue recording. Yeah. I was very close to my mother. I always wanted to be close to her. She -she and I were very, very close. I was the only girl and the last one of the family, and she just prided
herself on me, so it was difficult for her to accept me leaving home, not working to continue to work to
help the family. She was kind of disappointed, but she got to love your dad a lot, and he actually came
and lived with us in Visalia and actually went out to work in the fields with your grandmother and Tia
Monie [spelled phonetically], and he learned how to pick oranges and became part of the family.
>> Richard Herron: He probably got a lot of respect from Grandma, from—from doing that.
>> Graciela Martinez: Oh, yeah. Oh, definitely. And then of course her grandchildren from me, I was the
closest one. You—you are the only ones that she really saw grow up from babies into adulthood, you
know, so she was always very proud of the children, and she cared a lot for your dad, yeah.
>> Unidentified Speaker: You guys can keep talking. I'm just going to go turn on the lights, okay?
>> Graciela Martinez: Okay.
>> Richard Herron: I'd have to say Grandma had a lot of grandkids, and growing up next to her like we
did, I know we had a special bond with her.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah.
>> Richard Herron: Her and Tia Monie [spelled phonetically], we had a very special bond with her, and it
was nice because I kind of felt like whenever our other cousins would come visit from Riverside or from,
you know, Oceanside, you know, they wanted to get time with Grandma as much as possible because
they didn't get to see her that much, but I kind of felt privileged being right down the street from
Grandma, and I could go see her any time and she could come see us any time.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah.
>> Richard Herron: And she did, and we did too.
>> Graciela Martinez: Uh-huh.
>> Richard Herron: I remember going over to Grandma's house when she would make her special
cinnamon bunuelos.
>> Graciela Martinez: Oh, yeah.
>> Richard Herron: She would send me home with at least two dozen of them.
>> Graciela Martinez: Uh-huh.
>> Richard Herron: And every time I came home there was at least three or four missing.
>> Graciela Martinez: Oh, yeah.
>> Richard Herron: And I just took my time walking home.
>> Graciela Martinez: Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. We tried to live really close to my mom. And you
know, she, I know, at this point, she would really be proud. Even though at first she didn't really care for
me to go away from home and being what the old ladies in those days used to call a metiche. Metiche
means that you are sticking your nose in other people's business. And I remember telling her, because
we talked back to our parents, you know, when we're -- we're challenging our parents and trying to
establish ourselves, and I used to tell her that, yeah, I wanted to know what was going on around me,
that there were a lot of things. And since my mother had been a farm worker, I saw firsthand some of
the abuses the farm workers went through. I mean, your grandmother got fired from a lot of jobs. We
had a lot of jobs. And I say "we" because when they were working in the field, that was before we got
the child labor laws installed. We used to go work in the fields with her. I mean, I remember picking
cotton way back in Texas. And when we moved to California from Texas, heck, finally my mother settled
on -- she loved picking oranges. She loved getting on the trees and being able to look out, you know,
above and see the birds and the birds nests and, you know, instead of using the ladder to pick the
oranges from inside the trees, she would actually climb the trees. So I learned how to do all that. You
know, in those days, we didn't have the protection that farm workers have now. Like they didn't have
bathrooms, and water, you drank water out of the same containers. And they probably had water in
those containers for three days already. It tasted like it, but you needed water. The situation for farm
workers at that time was not good. If you were a woman and your supervisor came along and, you
know, wanted to brush your nalgas[foreign language], your butt, you know, you didn't complain because
you'd get fired. You know, it was easy to fire. There was all kinds of people waiting for jobs. So it was
really bad. And I think that's the only reason that my mother finally agreed and went along with me
joining the Farm Workers, but they used to be up there every weekend, every weekend. And every time
she went, she would take tacos and pan and, you know, anything that she happened to make. The first
typewriter that I ever used at the United Farm Workers in that old house is still sitting in my mother's
closet in our—in my bedroom.
>> Richard Herron: Wow.
>> Graciela Martinez: You can see it. It's one of those old, nothing with electric typewriters. These things
you had to really pound—
>>Richard Herron: Oh, mechanical. Yeah.
>>Graciela Martinez: you know, to be able to -- so, yeah, she got accustomed to it, and she used to
come -- you know, they used to come and do some volunteer work every now and then. And she would
donate, yeah.
>> Richard Herron: Now, Grandma was a farm worker for a really long time, and you growing up the way
you did around my father and around the whole United Farm Workers Movement, that started off your
career at a very young age. And as you grew up, you've had different jobs working with Visalia Legal
Typing Services, transcribing for different lawyers in the Tulare County area, come full circle. You end up
going back to American Friends Services Committee. And not only did you work as a farm worker, you
retired with the AFC advocating for farm workers.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, yeah.
>> Richard Herron: Did you know that was going to come full circle like that?
>> Graciela Martinez: No, of course not. I can't foresee the future. But actually my civil rights bug, I was
bitten earlier than the United Farm Workers, and that's when I was working with the AFSC, the
American Friends Service Committee, when an opportunity was given to some of the staff to go to
Montgomery, Alabama, to join the march that was going on at that time with Martin Luther King, Junior,
and so I was blessed to be in that. And that's where, you know, seeing that Mexicanos over here were
being oppressed in one way and the black people in a different way, being that we're all human beings
and we were all -- should have, you know, the same rights. Why couldn't the black people vote if I could
vote, or this other person, you know, what have you? So when I came back from Alabama, from that
march, which we didn't go all the way, because we were being sponsored by the AFSC, and early in the
day the march started, one of the other marshals—marshals—marchers—I need a drink of water. One
of the other marchers, James Reeb, from the Unitarians, was murdered. And so I imagine that the AFSC
was concerned about the liability should something happen to any of us. And it was dangerous, very,
very dangerous. It was a scary time in my life, being part of the march because of, you know, the things
that I saw and experienced. It was a whole brand new. So by the time I came to the United Farm
Workers, I already had this bug in me, this, you know, searching for justice in the workplace, and, you
know, in schools, segregation thing and all that. So I kind of, you know, I kind of went with the role and
worked towards helping to make things a little bit better.
>> Unidentified Speaker: Ms. Martinez, do you remember like what the march was like? Can you paint a
picture of being there?
>> Graciela Martinez: I don't know if I can. It was all very strange to me. I grew up here in Visalia on the
north side, and the only ones that lived in that area were us, the Chicanos, the Mexicanos, the native
Americans, and a few black people. So I really didn't have that much, you know, back and forth with the
black people, but for some reason, I don't know why, I was attracted to that, the fact that, you know,
they couldn't participate in civic things like we could. It was incomprehensible to me, being human
beings, you know, they should have the same rights as any other human beings. And to me, what rights
are we guaranteed under our Constitution is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That means being
treated well, wherever you go, to school, to work, at home, you know, so there's so much, so much to
get involved with. The American Friends Service Committee, to me, was a stepping stone, because that
was my very first job ever, fresh out of high school, and I wasn't expected to be a secretary. I was
expected to be a homemaker or maybe work in a clothing factory, which Bailey's, which used to be in
Visalia. And in those days the telephone systems were all handled by those push --
>> Richard Herron: Switch—switch operators.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, those were the kind of jobs we were looking for, we
were looking forward to. And I actually went and applied at all these things, but a friend of my mother's,
farm labor contractor, who was a member of the meeting of the Quakers that gathered together to
create Self Help Enterprises, he told me about this job opening and, lo and behold, I applied and I got
the job. I didn't expect to, but I did, and I learned a lot. You know, I think that AFSC was a stepping stone
for me and opened the door for me to be able to go out and experience these things, like the march in
Alabama and like being involved with Cesar Chavez, because Bard McAllister, who was a director of a
farm labor office at that day, he personally took me and introduced me to Cesar Chavez, and they were
just getting set up, and he needed someone to help him kind of organize things a little bit. So my job was
over with the AFSC, and that's when I transferred over to United Farm Workers. We were paid $5 a
week. But your dad and I became pretty important in the movement, not because I was out -- I wasn't
out picketing, and your dad wasn't out picketing a lot. We were involved—I was in the legal department.
At that time the farm workers were not covered under the National Labor Relations Board. They didn't
have the same kind of protections, so the UFW was working on what's now named the American Labor
Relations Board, which brings the farm workers in under the protections that we have now, like working
conditions, you know, making sure you have fresh water, and toilets and all that kind of stuff, and are
free of sexual harassment, or any kind of harassment, you know, which still goes on incidentally, but it's
an ongoing struggle. Yeah. It was -- my coming back to the AFSC was sort of -- that was a weird
experience. I never told you about that?
>> Richard Herron: Uh-uh, no you haven’t.
>> Graciela Martinez: All right. Well, I had been into business on my own in Goshen for about ten years.
>> Richard Herron: I was one of your associates.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, you were. I created a program called Martinez & Associates. I remember
sitting down with my children, they were very young, and saying, you know, that means I have to give a
great portion of my time to taking care of customers that came in. I began my service in my bedroom.
And I was very fortunate, because, like you say, I had worked with Legal Services, I had worked with
California Rural Legal Assistance. That was one of the first programs I worked with after the UFW, and
Cruz Reynoso, who became a big person, was my first boss at CRLA, and Legal Services here in Tulare
County, I learned a lot about the law. So my last job that I had was with a woman lawyer, Linda Luke. I
remember -- I'll always remember her because even though we parted, I walked out of the job because I
felt that she was asking way too much from me, you know, like being a legal secretary and interpreter
and then also having to make sure that her little girls got to practice or to the doctor and stuff like that,
and so I disagreed with that. And she didn't fire me. I walked out and didn't come back, even though we
wound up being really good friends. I still kept doing work for her. She trained me a lot. So when I
became independent, I opened up my own office. She made it possible in the loop for me to become a
notary public. So I was a professional typist, legal secretary, interpreter. I used to interpret a lot at
courts. I used to do a lot of work for court reporters. You guys, the lullabies that you went to sleep with
was a clack of my typewriter.
>> Richard Herron: Absolutely.
>> Graciela Martinez: After putting you to bed at night and I'd have to get to work on my -- you know,
and I was until 1 or 2:00 in the morning.
>> Richard Herron: It was just amazing that sometimes we would be in the living room, me, Hannah, and
Jenny, watching TV and there you were in the kitchen with your typewriter on the kitchen table and
your headphones on transcribing away. To us it sounded like you were typing 5,000 words per minute,
and you would look at the TV and sometimes carry on short conversations at the same time while you
would transcribe, and I always thought that was just amazing that you could do that.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, yeah.
>> Richard Herron: I know how to use a computer and type but not anywhere near you. I clack and I do
the finger pecking. But yeah, you had, still do, just your skills on the typewriter are amazing.
>> Graciela Martinez: I know when I was working at Legal Services, who became my compadre later on,
Lois String, she was supervisor at Legal Services at one time.
>> Richard Herron: I didn't know she was your supervisor.
>> Graciela Martinez: Uh-huh. I learned a lot from Lois. And she said that I was machine—she
nicknamed me Machine Gun Grace. And one time when I did a state test for typing, I was up to 150
some odd, almost 160 words a minute typing, with very few errors. That's why I was able to get the kind
of jobs that I could get. I was very proficient in language and grammar and punctuation. And some of the
attorneys I used to work for used to ask me to edit their appeal briefs. Richard Rumery, yeah, he used to
dictate the appeal briefs and I could edit and adjust and do whatever, and he always loved it. They
always encouraged me. I had great mentors. I had people that I guess saw potential in me I couldn't see
in myself, and they kind of fed it. So, you know, I got to be somebody, and it wasn't alone. In fact, I have
a bumper sticker on the back of my car that says, "If the people lead, the leaders will follow." I've been
called a leader, but a leader is nobody unless the people get together. The people have to ask you to
lead them. And I did. I did a lot. Not because I was a big leader or anything like that, because people
have always come to me. And when I was working at Proyecto Campesino with the AFSC, we were called
various times in newspaper articles a guiding light, where people of any background or social or
economic status could come in, and if we didn't have an answer to a question, we would find, try to find
an answer for them or try to help navigate them through some of these processes, like applying for
Social Security, applying for unemployment, applying for welfare, you know. Some people have -- they
need to have a middle man. Somebody that's getting evicted from their apartment, sometimes a
middleman can kind of settle things down a little bit and allow the people to continue to live there, you
know. So yeah, I was very successful, but it was because other people helped to build me up, and then
my children.
>> Unidentified Speaker: Do you remember when your mother kind of changed her tune as far as your
activism and that kind of thing? Was there a moment that she realized that your work was very worthy
or --
>> Graciela Martinez: Uh-huh, there was. Early on when I got involved, she really was totally against me
going to Alabama. Totally.
>> Richard Herron: Was it because—
>> Graciela Martinez: I went and I told her, I'm going without your permission, but I hope I go with your
blessings. And -- but with the United Farm Workers, again, I had come back and I was working and blah,
blah, and leaving again, but not too long after that, because we got to hear Cesar a lot. She actually got
to talk and meet face-to-face with Cesar, and as he was learning. Cesar is not, you know, I mean, great
man, but when I learned that, you know, oh, boy, you know, he was a leader, well, yeah, he was a
leader. He picked up the farm workers struggle from the Filipinos, who picked it up from the Japanese,
was it, with the internment camps way back and the Japanese wound up in our portion of the valley?
Yeah, no, the Japanese and the Chinese people are land owners, and they have big agricultural areas, so,
you know, it's -- My mother got in tune with the work that I was doing. I think she saw in me too the
potential that I had and tried to help me, you know, because she always stood up against injustices, and
I think it was, you know, that she used to tell me, [foreign language]. If that can happen to that person, it
can happen to you, you know, and don't let an abuse go by, not even animals. Not even animals. Don't
abuse. Don't abuse, period. So yeah, my mother accepted early on the United Farm Workers Movement.
She contributed to it. She probably spoke to people around here, because our part of the Central Valley
was one of the last areas to be actually arisen to farm worker. We had a few of Cesar's oldest organizers,
Pablo Espinoza was one of them, Eliseo Medina, Gilbert Padilla. Gilbert still lives here, I think, in Fresno.
They are the ones that organized the north -- South Valley. And yeah, the North Valley was somebody
else. So, you know, it's -- my mother knew, and she would go out when she was working because she
picked oranges until she fell down. Remember when she split her finger?
>> Richard Herron: No, I don’t.
>> Graciela Martinez: And yeah, that made her go into disability. She could no longer work, but she
could sure speak. And, you know, know that things were not quite right yet, but we were making
advances. And things are still not quite right, but we're making advances.
>> Richard Herron: She'd be very proud of you right now.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah. The minimum wage thing that we’ve been—I've been, you know, waging for
years, we should have already been making 15 bucks an hour. I don't believe in some of the people that
say that the $15 an hour is going to drive down -- they are going to have to fire their people, because if
you are making 15 bucks an hour, you're going to spend that money in your community. You know,
you're going to be buying better clothes and better shoes and better food and, you know, that will kind
of help to leverage communities. A lot of these communities are in great need, you know. So we had
intended to do good things. The struggle has to keep on. And people like me, at my age, we look to
people like you, younger people, that can know that there's a struggle going on, and just because I laid
down the string, I'm not marching anymore, I'm only marching from my bedroom to the kitchen and the
backyard. That's all I'm marching anymore. But, you know, there's people like you, young people, that
can pick up the string and remember. And remember that -- like you, for instance, remember that your
mother has waged a lifelong battle, beginning when she was a farm worker, a cotton picker back in
Texas. And one of your songs that I used to sing to you guys a lot was -- oh, what was the name? "You
are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when days are blue. You never know, dear,
how much I love you. Please don't take my sunshine away." Do you remember that?
>> Richard Herron: I remember that, Mom. I do.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah. It was -- yeah. For all of you, my children were my blessings.
>> Richard Herron: That song will always be stuck in my head.
>> Graciela Martinez: Well, we used to do that. I used to parade you guys. Come on, let's get moving.
Come on, let's march, march, march, march, not knowing that that was going to send my son into
military service, something I didn't want. But anyway, yeah.
>> Richard Herron: I came back alive four years later.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, thank God. Yes, thank God. That was a big worrisome time in my life. And
always. A mother is always a mother. You'll always worry about your children. They are over there living
their life and having fun and what have you, but a mother until the day she's gone will be there. I hope
like -- when we were coming, we ran into that big accident, oh, my gosh, you know, if that could happen
to them, that could happen to us. And love and tell people you love them while they're still alive. Bring
me flowers while I'm still alive because I'm not going to be buried anywhere. I am going to be pushing up
daisies. No way. You're going to burn me and then you're going to let my ashes fly, baby, uh-huh.
>> Richard Herron: What's some of the proudest accomplishments in your life, Mom?
>> Graciela Martinez: My children.
>> Richard Herron: I saw that one coming. I should have known.
>> Unidentified Speaker: Do you want to give Richard's father's name for the record?
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, yeah.
>> Unidentified Speaker: And your mother's.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah. Richard's father's name is Richard Martin Herron.
>> Richard Herron: Yeah.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah. And my mother, oh, my mother, her name was Paulita -- well, Paula Cavazos
Martinez, Paula C. Martinez. Cavazos is her maiden name. We come from a long line of Spanish people,
from Spain, and my Spanish grandfather met and married my really Indian looking little grandmother,
and the bloods mixed and there I am. I'm [foreign language]. And somewhat too, I brought you back a
little closer to the white line, though.
>> Richard Herron: Yeah. We do kind of, me and my sisters, my two older sisters, we ran a fine line
there.
>> Graciela Martinez: Do you guys feel like any deprivation by the fact that Jenny gets mad when people
say she's gringa?
>> Richard Herron: No. I don't feel any deprivation at all.
>> Graciela Martinez: No?
>> Richard Herron: I've kind of gone my life with just being happy with who I am and being happy of my
heritage and being proud of where I come from.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah. Yeah.
>> Richard Herron: And so I've had nothing but proud feelings of who I am and where I came from.
>> Graciela Martinez: Well, I hope each of you feel like that. I think so.
>> Richard Herron: I kind of feel like I had the best of both worlds.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, yeah.
>> Richard Herron: That's kind of the way I looked at it my entire life, so...
>> Graciela Martinez: Well, it's been a good life, mijo. I'm 71. I never thought I would get to this age. I
kept thinking, well, maybe -- because my brother died when he was 56. He had a massive heart attack.
He went like that. And I always thought that's the way I'd like to go, really fast, you know, have it hit me,
and I keep thinking, well, shoot, you know, if I die, my children, they're going to miss me a lot. But you
guys have to face that. I will be leaving here one day, and then I'm going to fly like an eagle, because
when your spirit leaves, it's free to roam. And then I'm really going to be free, free at least.
>> Unidentified Speaker: What are some of your favorite memories together from when you were a
child?
>> Richard Herron: Oh, wow. We were talking about that on the way over here. Some of my favorite
memories as a child with my mom and my sisters were Saturday -- it was usually a Sunday afternoon, we
would go to this little [foreign language] in Farmersville, which was like a Mexican meat market, and
we'd get a couple pounds of food, and usually Barbacoa and some corn tortillas and some frijoles
charros, and then there was a park we used to go to right next-door to the meat market and we'd sit
there all afternoon and have a picnic while me and my sisters played and Mom would be out there with
Grandma and Tia Monie [spelled phonetically], whoever else.
>> Graciela Martinez: Sleeping under a tree.
>> Richard Herron: Sleeping under a tree. You know, sometimes we had a little radio, sitting there
listening to some good music and just, you know, playing out in the park and just eating like a Mexican
lunch with my family. And not just that, at that park, there were plenty of parks that we did that, but the
memory of just being out there with my family when I was younger, being out there with you and
Grandma and hearing Grandma complain about something, don't let the kids off too far, make sure they
have shoes on.
>> Graciela Martinez: Always.
>> Richard Herron: You know, there were always goat heads in the park, so someone was always
stepping on a goat head, but those were my favorite memories as a kid.
>> Graciela Martinez: Okay. And do you want to know what my favorite memory is of you?
>> Richard Herron: Uh-huh.
>> Graciela Martinez: When I bought you that Big Wheel. You were probably about six, seven.
>> Richard Herron: I was about seven years old.
>> Graciela Martinez: Seven. Yeah, and that was the biggest thing for you, your Big Wheel, and I
remember you going around the corner and I was standing there -- you were on the sidewalk, and
thinking, oh, my God, he's going to go over right onto the freeway, roadway, and you never did.
>>Richard Herron: I just slide.
>> Graciela Martinez: And you would always, "Look at me, Mom." And your sisters convincing you that
you were Superman and could fly off of a telephone pole.
>> Richard Herron: Yeah. Well, I used to use the telephone pole to climb up to the carport, and I would
wrap my Superman towel around my neck and I would jump off the top of the carport, which was
probably a good 10, 12 feet off the ground, and land on the ground, not ever able to fly like Superman,
but I would always get up and try it again.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yep, you always did. You've got scars to prove it.
>> Richard Herron: I never broke any bones doing that. Now that I think about it in retrospect, I was a
very lucky boy.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yes, you were. And people that took care of you, like Stan.
>> Richard Herron: Stan illima [spelled phonetically].
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, yeah. Coming to tell me that you were up at the telephone pole. Oh, my
gosh. Yeah.
>> Richard Herron: Those are good memories.
>> Graciela Martinez: They are good memories.
>> Richard Herron: Good memories.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah.
>> Unidentified Speaker: I was wondering too if you two wanted to paint a picture of your mother,
Graciela, just in looks and personality, and if you could just paint a picture of her?
>> Graciela Martinez: She -- well, of course, I remember her in her youth, in her vigor. My mother was a
very avid fisherwoman. Get her near any kind of a little puddle and she'd throw hook, line, and sinker in
there and fish. So we grew up eating a lot of fish because we -- she used to take -- that was where we
used to go, and, you know, and have fun, going fishing with your Grandma. And she was very strict. She
knew that if she said no, it meant no. And if the rule was broken -- I don't remember -- I only remember
one good spanking that my mother gave me when I ran off to the cemetery and I fell into a hole and I
came back all full of mud and everything, and she didn't know I'd been gone, so she gave me a good
whacking and sat me in the corner. I was kneeling in the corner for about an hour, and so I never went
near a cemetery anymore. That's why I don't want to be buried. So she was very strict, but also very
giving. My mother had a halfway house in Texas, when we lived in Texas. Her house was considered a
halfway house, and if you came knocking on her door and you said you were hungry, you never got sent
away without something to eat or drink or take a shower. Our shower thing used to be on the outside,
so people would stop on their way from Mexico, because we lived only about 40 miles from the border,
and that was a halfway house. People knew they could come in there and get a bowl of beans, a tortilla,
or something to help carry them to the norte, so my mother was very friendly. She had lots of people.
She was very opinionated. When she met a friend of mine that she didn't care for, she would definitely
let me know. And now looking back on it, the people that she said was not going to be a good influence,
they weren't. One of my friends, that we were really close together, got hooked up on cocaine and
finally overdosed and killed herself. So my mother was very strict and always kept really good tags on
especially me, because I was the only girl, her only girl, and always proud of me. Although she didn't -she was not the huggy, kissy, to come up and give me a hug just because, not any of that demonstration
of physical love. It was more, I don't know, a bonding, binding of the souls. So I didn't need to have my
mother tell me all the time, I love you, mija. I knew my mother loved me, even though she didn't tell it
to me all the time, so -- Yeah, and she loved to paint her hair. She never -- that's one thing that I find
kind of funny about my mom. She always had her hair, except for that white streak she had here, it was
always black. She was kind of vain. She liked to wear, you know, earrings, and she wore makeup and
lipstick all the time until she was -- she died of Alzheimer's. And until she was no longer able to take care
of herself, she always did. You know, she was very active. She was a baker. She's descended from a
family of bakers in Mexico and she was always baking things. Always bake. Yeah. And she would bake
pan that she would take out to the fields where she was working, so she could take out a piece of pan
and have with coffee and also offer it to everybody else that was sitting around, some pan and some
coffee.
>> Unidentified Speaker: Well, we just have a few minutes left. Was there any last things that you two
want to say to each other?
>> Richard Herron: Well, I've always -- I've always told myself, my friends and everyone else, that my
mom has always been my rock, and she still is. You still are my rock to this day. Everything I do in life, I
always think, you know how you see those bumper stickers, what would Jesus do? To me it's what
would mom do? And that kind of drives my sense of direction --
>> Graciela Martinez: Oh, Sweetheart.
>> Richard Herron: -- on what's right and what's wrong. So you've always been my rock, and you're
always going to be my rock. And I love you and thank you for everything you've done for me and my
sisters.
>> Graciela Martinez: Oh, Sweetheart. I'm so happy you told me that. That's been an aspiration of mine,
that you guys are comfortable in your own skin.
>> Richard Herron: Yeah.
>> Graciela Martinez: I love you.
>> Richard Herron: I love you too, Mom. Thanks for the time.
>> Graciela Martinez: Thank you.
>> Graciela Martinez: Hi. My name is Graciela Martinez. I am 71 years old, and today is Saturday, April
the 16th, 2016. We are at the Henry Madden Library at Fresno State University. And my partner today
happens to be my one and only son, Richard M. -- no, Richard Herron, but what's your middle name,
Sweetheart?
>> Richard Herron: My middle name is Charles.
>> Graciela Martinez: Richard Charles Herron.
>> Richard Herron: Dad's middle name was Martin.
>> Graciela Martinez: Martin, yes. Yeah. Hi, Sweetheart.
>> Richard Herron: Hi, Mama. My name is Richard Charles Herron. I am 43 years old. Today's date is
April 16, just like my mother said. And this is the first time I've actually done an interview, and who else
to do it with other than your own mom, so this is going to be pretty interesting. I'm kind of excited and
nervous at the same time, so...
>> Graciela Martinez: Well, you just -- whatever you need, want to find out from me, you just ask me,
Sweetheart, and I'll answer.
>> Richard Herron: Well, I think you have a better story than I do. You've done quite a few things in your
lifetime that I know you're proud of and I myself am proud of you as well, and I know the rest of your
kids and grandkids are extremely proud of you. So I want to kind of make this about you. So I guess I've
heard you tell your stories before, and you've got quite a story to tell, so I guess maybe in a nutshell,
starting with your career, I know you've done extensive work with American Friends Services Committee
and the farm worker movement, and I love that story, about how you and Dad met. So can you tell me a
little bit about that?
>> Graciela Martinez: But of course, Sweetheart. Wow, we go back a long time, and I guess how you—
your dad and I met, I was very young. I was maybe about 19 years old when I had decided to go and join
the, you know, the farm worker movement. It was at that time gaining ground and I went with these
great aspirations of being Cesar Chavez's secretary, which I did for a very, very short time. It was not
really a set-up office like I expected, you know, so we went out on the picket lines and what have you.
Your dad came in around the same time that people started gathering, around the summer of 1965.
Yeah, at the beginning of 1965, '64, '65.
>> Richard Herron: He was pretty much like a free spirited guitar player.
>> Graciela Martinez: Your dad was a roving person. He loved to travel. He was big on justice, and he
had a very great friend that was also part of the farm worker movement. So on his travels back and forth
across the country, he decided to stop in at Delano one day and I met him, and, well, the rest is history.
Beautiful blue eyes I fell in love with, and he used to play the guitar. He taught Augustine Leda, who was
part of the farm worker group that used to do the Proyecto Campesino, and he helped him learn how to
finger pick the guitar, because your dad was an amazing guitar player and, you know, he also worked
with the United Farm Workers since he was a stonemason. He helped them build the clinic out there,
the [foreign language] Clinic, which is a wonderful thing, because anybody could go in there and get
medical services. Your oldest sister, Hannah -- well, my first baby, Richard Edward Herron, was
conceived during that time. And your dad and I had traveled to Washington D.C. to go and see what was
going on over there as far as picketing Safeway for their iceberg lettuce that was being shipped from
Central Valley all over, you know, and I got pregnant over there. When I found out I was pregnant, I
came back home. Unfortunately, I lost that child, Richard Edward. I wanted to continue the line, or the
name, you know. So I lost that baby. He was born December 24, 1966, in fact, and he was stillborn. It
was a very sad time in my life, you know, looking forward to a child. He was born full term. He died three
days before he was actually born, so I almost died too. You almost were not here, Sweetheart.
>> Richard Herron: Wow.
>> Graciela Martinez: But anyway, your dad and I continued our relationship. Sometimes he'd want to
be at a different place. We'd be in Washington D.C., and he decided that he'd want to go up to northern
California, and so we moved around quite a bit. Hannah came along, your oldest sister, and then Jenny
also. You guys were born here in Visalia, because this is where my mother lived, and whenever I was
pregnant, I wanted my mother close by, because she was very wise and knew a lot. And finally, when
you came along, we lived in San Francisco, and you were conceived, and your dad wanted to move all
the way back across the country to Florida, and I chose not to follow because Hannah was at the age
where she was going to go to school and I just needed to settle down, you know, with my children. So I
came back to California. You were born here in 1973, September 9. And for me, every birth of every
child has been a wondrous time. I enjoyed it, my pregnancies, my deliveries. And to me that's, you know
-- my treasure trove is my four children.
>> Richard Herron: You were I know, from the stories I've heard and from what you've told me, and I
personally, from knowing my grandmother, you were really close with Grandma, and so I know during
that time that you were young and traveling the country with my father that Grandma always had close
-- she always had close dibs on you. She always wanted to know where you were at, and she always
wanted you back home. Grandma came from Mexico, and she was a very religious, Catholic lady. What
did she think about you hitching up with my dad at that time and traveling the country and, you know,
experiencing all these movements with him?
>> Graciela Martinez: She didn't care for it. She didn't really care for me leaving home and going to
Delano, which is only about 40, 50 miles away from home. First time I'd ever been away from home, you
know, and when she found out that I had hooked up with this man, a bald-headed gringo, she used to
call him el gringo pelon, and she didn't like the idea at all, because being a very religious person, my path
was to get married, settle down somewhere. And we have just gone into the darkness, but that's okay if
we continue recording. Yeah. I was very close to my mother. I always wanted to be close to her. She -she and I were very, very close. I was the only girl and the last one of the family, and she just prided
herself on me, so it was difficult for her to accept me leaving home, not working to continue to work to
help the family. She was kind of disappointed, but she got to love your dad a lot, and he actually came
and lived with us in Visalia and actually went out to work in the fields with your grandmother and Tia
Monie [spelled phonetically], and he learned how to pick oranges and became part of the family.
>> Richard Herron: He probably got a lot of respect from Grandma, from—from doing that.
>> Graciela Martinez: Oh, yeah. Oh, definitely. And then of course her grandchildren from me, I was the
closest one. You—you are the only ones that she really saw grow up from babies into adulthood, you
know, so she was always very proud of the children, and she cared a lot for your dad, yeah.
>> Unidentified Speaker: You guys can keep talking. I'm just going to go turn on the lights, okay?
>> Graciela Martinez: Okay.
>> Richard Herron: I'd have to say Grandma had a lot of grandkids, and growing up next to her like we
did, I know we had a special bond with her.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah.
>> Richard Herron: Her and Tia Monie [spelled phonetically], we had a very special bond with her, and it
was nice because I kind of felt like whenever our other cousins would come visit from Riverside or from,
you know, Oceanside, you know, they wanted to get time with Grandma as much as possible because
they didn't get to see her that much, but I kind of felt privileged being right down the street from
Grandma, and I could go see her any time and she could come see us any time.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah.
>> Richard Herron: And she did, and we did too.
>> Graciela Martinez: Uh-huh.
>> Richard Herron: I remember going over to Grandma's house when she would make her special
cinnamon bunuelos.
>> Graciela Martinez: Oh, yeah.
>> Richard Herron: She would send me home with at least two dozen of them.
>> Graciela Martinez: Uh-huh.
>> Richard Herron: And every time I came home there was at least three or four missing.
>> Graciela Martinez: Oh, yeah.
>> Richard Herron: And I just took my time walking home.
>> Graciela Martinez: Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. We tried to live really close to my mom. And you
know, she, I know, at this point, she would really be proud. Even though at first she didn't really care for
me to go away from home and being what the old ladies in those days used to call a metiche. Metiche
means that you are sticking your nose in other people's business. And I remember telling her, because
we talked back to our parents, you know, when we're -- we're challenging our parents and trying to
establish ourselves, and I used to tell her that, yeah, I wanted to know what was going on around me,
that there were a lot of things. And since my mother had been a farm worker, I saw firsthand some of
the abuses the farm workers went through. I mean, your grandmother got fired from a lot of jobs. We
had a lot of jobs. And I say "we" because when they were working in the field, that was before we got
the child labor laws installed. We used to go work in the fields with her. I mean, I remember picking
cotton way back in Texas. And when we moved to California from Texas, heck, finally my mother settled
on -- she loved picking oranges. She loved getting on the trees and being able to look out, you know,
above and see the birds and the birds nests and, you know, instead of using the ladder to pick the
oranges from inside the trees, she would actually climb the trees. So I learned how to do all that. You
know, in those days, we didn't have the protection that farm workers have now. Like they didn't have
bathrooms, and water, you drank water out of the same containers. And they probably had water in
those containers for three days already. It tasted like it, but you needed water. The situation for farm
workers at that time was not good. If you were a woman and your supervisor came along and, you
know, wanted to brush your nalgas[foreign language], your butt, you know, you didn't complain because
you'd get fired. You know, it was easy to fire. There was all kinds of people waiting for jobs. So it was
really bad. And I think that's the only reason that my mother finally agreed and went along with me
joining the Farm Workers, but they used to be up there every weekend, every weekend. And every time
she went, she would take tacos and pan and, you know, anything that she happened to make. The first
typewriter that I ever used at the United Farm Workers in that old house is still sitting in my mother's
closet in our—in my bedroom.
>> Richard Herron: Wow.
>> Graciela Martinez: You can see it. It's one of those old, nothing with electric typewriters. These things
you had to really pound—
>>Richard Herron: Oh, mechanical. Yeah.
>>Graciela Martinez: you know, to be able to -- so, yeah, she got accustomed to it, and she used to
come -- you know, they used to come and do some volunteer work every now and then. And she would
donate, yeah.
>> Richard Herron: Now, Grandma was a farm worker for a really long time, and you growing up the way
you did around my father and around the whole United Farm Workers Movement, that started off your
career at a very young age. And as you grew up, you've had different jobs working with Visalia Legal
Typing Services, transcribing for different lawyers in the Tulare County area, come full circle. You end up
going back to American Friends Services Committee. And not only did you work as a farm worker, you
retired with the AFC advocating for farm workers.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, yeah.
>> Richard Herron: Did you know that was going to come full circle like that?
>> Graciela Martinez: No, of course not. I can't foresee the future. But actually my civil rights bug, I was
bitten earlier than the United Farm Workers, and that's when I was working with the AFSC, the
American Friends Service Committee, when an opportunity was given to some of the staff to go to
Montgomery, Alabama, to join the march that was going on at that time with Martin Luther King, Junior,
and so I was blessed to be in that. And that's where, you know, seeing that Mexicanos over here were
being oppressed in one way and the black people in a different way, being that we're all human beings
and we were all -- should have, you know, the same rights. Why couldn't the black people vote if I could
vote, or this other person, you know, what have you? So when I came back from Alabama, from that
march, which we didn't go all the way, because we were being sponsored by the AFSC, and early in the
day the march started, one of the other marshals—marshals—marchers—I need a drink of water. One
of the other marchers, James Reeb, from the Unitarians, was murdered. And so I imagine that the AFSC
was concerned about the liability should something happen to any of us. And it was dangerous, very,
very dangerous. It was a scary time in my life, being part of the march because of, you know, the things
that I saw and experienced. It was a whole brand new. So by the time I came to the United Farm
Workers, I already had this bug in me, this, you know, searching for justice in the workplace, and, you
know, in schools, segregation thing and all that. So I kind of, you know, I kind of went with the role and
worked towards helping to make things a little bit better.
>> Unidentified Speaker: Ms. Martinez, do you remember like what the march was like? Can you paint a
picture of being there?
>> Graciela Martinez: I don't know if I can. It was all very strange to me. I grew up here in Visalia on the
north side, and the only ones that lived in that area were us, the Chicanos, the Mexicanos, the native
Americans, and a few black people. So I really didn't have that much, you know, back and forth with the
black people, but for some reason, I don't know why, I was attracted to that, the fact that, you know,
they couldn't participate in civic things like we could. It was incomprehensible to me, being human
beings, you know, they should have the same rights as any other human beings. And to me, what rights
are we guaranteed under our Constitution is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That means being
treated well, wherever you go, to school, to work, at home, you know, so there's so much, so much to
get involved with. The American Friends Service Committee, to me, was a stepping stone, because that
was my very first job ever, fresh out of high school, and I wasn't expected to be a secretary. I was
expected to be a homemaker or maybe work in a clothing factory, which Bailey's, which used to be in
Visalia. And in those days the telephone systems were all handled by those push --
>> Richard Herron: Switch—switch operators.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, those were the kind of jobs we were looking for, we
were looking forward to. And I actually went and applied at all these things, but a friend of my mother's,
farm labor contractor, who was a member of the meeting of the Quakers that gathered together to
create Self Help Enterprises, he told me about this job opening and, lo and behold, I applied and I got
the job. I didn't expect to, but I did, and I learned a lot. You know, I think that AFSC was a stepping stone
for me and opened the door for me to be able to go out and experience these things, like the march in
Alabama and like being involved with Cesar Chavez, because Bard McAllister, who was a director of a
farm labor office at that day, he personally took me and introduced me to Cesar Chavez, and they were
just getting set up, and he needed someone to help him kind of organize things a little bit. So my job was
over with the AFSC, and that's when I transferred over to United Farm Workers. We were paid $5 a
week. But your dad and I became pretty important in the movement, not because I was out -- I wasn't
out picketing, and your dad wasn't out picketing a lot. We were involved—I was in the legal department.
At that time the farm workers were not covered under the National Labor Relations Board. They didn't
have the same kind of protections, so the UFW was working on what's now named the American Labor
Relations Board, which brings the farm workers in under the protections that we have now, like working
conditions, you know, making sure you have fresh water, and toilets and all that kind of stuff, and are
free of sexual harassment, or any kind of harassment, you know, which still goes on incidentally, but it's
an ongoing struggle. Yeah. It was -- my coming back to the AFSC was sort of -- that was a weird
experience. I never told you about that?
>> Richard Herron: Uh-uh, no you haven’t.
>> Graciela Martinez: All right. Well, I had been into business on my own in Goshen for about ten years.
>> Richard Herron: I was one of your associates.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, you were. I created a program called Martinez & Associates. I remember
sitting down with my children, they were very young, and saying, you know, that means I have to give a
great portion of my time to taking care of customers that came in. I began my service in my bedroom.
And I was very fortunate, because, like you say, I had worked with Legal Services, I had worked with
California Rural Legal Assistance. That was one of the first programs I worked with after the UFW, and
Cruz Reynoso, who became a big person, was my first boss at CRLA, and Legal Services here in Tulare
County, I learned a lot about the law. So my last job that I had was with a woman lawyer, Linda Luke. I
remember -- I'll always remember her because even though we parted, I walked out of the job because I
felt that she was asking way too much from me, you know, like being a legal secretary and interpreter
and then also having to make sure that her little girls got to practice or to the doctor and stuff like that,
and so I disagreed with that. And she didn't fire me. I walked out and didn't come back, even though we
wound up being really good friends. I still kept doing work for her. She trained me a lot. So when I
became independent, I opened up my own office. She made it possible in the loop for me to become a
notary public. So I was a professional typist, legal secretary, interpreter. I used to interpret a lot at
courts. I used to do a lot of work for court reporters. You guys, the lullabies that you went to sleep with
was a clack of my typewriter.
>> Richard Herron: Absolutely.
>> Graciela Martinez: After putting you to bed at night and I'd have to get to work on my -- you know,
and I was until 1 or 2:00 in the morning.
>> Richard Herron: It was just amazing that sometimes we would be in the living room, me, Hannah, and
Jenny, watching TV and there you were in the kitchen with your typewriter on the kitchen table and
your headphones on transcribing away. To us it sounded like you were typing 5,000 words per minute,
and you would look at the TV and sometimes carry on short conversations at the same time while you
would transcribe, and I always thought that was just amazing that you could do that.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, yeah.
>> Richard Herron: I know how to use a computer and type but not anywhere near you. I clack and I do
the finger pecking. But yeah, you had, still do, just your skills on the typewriter are amazing.
>> Graciela Martinez: I know when I was working at Legal Services, who became my compadre later on,
Lois String, she was supervisor at Legal Services at one time.
>> Richard Herron: I didn't know she was your supervisor.
>> Graciela Martinez: Uh-huh. I learned a lot from Lois. And she said that I was machine—she
nicknamed me Machine Gun Grace. And one time when I did a state test for typing, I was up to 150
some odd, almost 160 words a minute typing, with very few errors. That's why I was able to get the kind
of jobs that I could get. I was very proficient in language and grammar and punctuation. And some of the
attorneys I used to work for used to ask me to edit their appeal briefs. Richard Rumery, yeah, he used to
dictate the appeal briefs and I could edit and adjust and do whatever, and he always loved it. They
always encouraged me. I had great mentors. I had people that I guess saw potential in me I couldn't see
in myself, and they kind of fed it. So, you know, I got to be somebody, and it wasn't alone. In fact, I have
a bumper sticker on the back of my car that says, "If the people lead, the leaders will follow." I've been
called a leader, but a leader is nobody unless the people get together. The people have to ask you to
lead them. And I did. I did a lot. Not because I was a big leader or anything like that, because people
have always come to me. And when I was working at Proyecto Campesino with the AFSC, we were called
various times in newspaper articles a guiding light, where people of any background or social or
economic status could come in, and if we didn't have an answer to a question, we would find, try to find
an answer for them or try to help navigate them through some of these processes, like applying for
Social Security, applying for unemployment, applying for welfare, you know. Some people have -- they
need to have a middle man. Somebody that's getting evicted from their apartment, sometimes a
middleman can kind of settle things down a little bit and allow the people to continue to live there, you
know. So yeah, I was very successful, but it was because other people helped to build me up, and then
my children.
>> Unidentified Speaker: Do you remember when your mother kind of changed her tune as far as your
activism and that kind of thing? Was there a moment that she realized that your work was very worthy
or --
>> Graciela Martinez: Uh-huh, there was. Early on when I got involved, she really was totally against me
going to Alabama. Totally.
>> Richard Herron: Was it because—
>> Graciela Martinez: I went and I told her, I'm going without your permission, but I hope I go with your
blessings. And -- but with the United Farm Workers, again, I had come back and I was working and blah,
blah, and leaving again, but not too long after that, because we got to hear Cesar a lot. She actually got
to talk and meet face-to-face with Cesar, and as he was learning. Cesar is not, you know, I mean, great
man, but when I learned that, you know, oh, boy, you know, he was a leader, well, yeah, he was a
leader. He picked up the farm workers struggle from the Filipinos, who picked it up from the Japanese,
was it, with the internment camps way back and the Japanese wound up in our portion of the valley?
Yeah, no, the Japanese and the Chinese people are land owners, and they have big agricultural areas, so,
you know, it's -- My mother got in tune with the work that I was doing. I think she saw in me too the
potential that I had and tried to help me, you know, because she always stood up against injustices, and
I think it was, you know, that she used to tell me, [foreign language]. If that can happen to that person, it
can happen to you, you know, and don't let an abuse go by, not even animals. Not even animals. Don't
abuse. Don't abuse, period. So yeah, my mother accepted early on the United Farm Workers Movement.
She contributed to it. She probably spoke to people around here, because our part of the Central Valley
was one of the last areas to be actually arisen to farm worker. We had a few of Cesar's oldest organizers,
Pablo Espinoza was one of them, Eliseo Medina, Gilbert Padilla. Gilbert still lives here, I think, in Fresno.
They are the ones that organized the north -- South Valley. And yeah, the North Valley was somebody
else. So, you know, it's -- my mother knew, and she would go out when she was working because she
picked oranges until she fell down. Remember when she split her finger?
>> Richard Herron: No, I don’t.
>> Graciela Martinez: And yeah, that made her go into disability. She could no longer work, but she
could sure speak. And, you know, know that things were not quite right yet, but we were making
advances. And things are still not quite right, but we're making advances.
>> Richard Herron: She'd be very proud of you right now.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah. The minimum wage thing that we’ve been—I've been, you know, waging for
years, we should have already been making 15 bucks an hour. I don't believe in some of the people that
say that the $15 an hour is going to drive down -- they are going to have to fire their people, because if
you are making 15 bucks an hour, you're going to spend that money in your community. You know,
you're going to be buying better clothes and better shoes and better food and, you know, that will kind
of help to leverage communities. A lot of these communities are in great need, you know. So we had
intended to do good things. The struggle has to keep on. And people like me, at my age, we look to
people like you, younger people, that can know that there's a struggle going on, and just because I laid
down the string, I'm not marching anymore, I'm only marching from my bedroom to the kitchen and the
backyard. That's all I'm marching anymore. But, you know, there's people like you, young people, that
can pick up the string and remember. And remember that -- like you, for instance, remember that your
mother has waged a lifelong battle, beginning when she was a farm worker, a cotton picker back in
Texas. And one of your songs that I used to sing to you guys a lot was -- oh, what was the name? "You
are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when days are blue. You never know, dear,
how much I love you. Please don't take my sunshine away." Do you remember that?
>> Richard Herron: I remember that, Mom. I do.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah. It was -- yeah. For all of you, my children were my blessings.
>> Richard Herron: That song will always be stuck in my head.
>> Graciela Martinez: Well, we used to do that. I used to parade you guys. Come on, let's get moving.
Come on, let's march, march, march, march, not knowing that that was going to send my son into
military service, something I didn't want. But anyway, yeah.
>> Richard Herron: I came back alive four years later.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, thank God. Yes, thank God. That was a big worrisome time in my life. And
always. A mother is always a mother. You'll always worry about your children. They are over there living
their life and having fun and what have you, but a mother until the day she's gone will be there. I hope
like -- when we were coming, we ran into that big accident, oh, my gosh, you know, if that could happen
to them, that could happen to us. And love and tell people you love them while they're still alive. Bring
me flowers while I'm still alive because I'm not going to be buried anywhere. I am going to be pushing up
daisies. No way. You're going to burn me and then you're going to let my ashes fly, baby, uh-huh.
>> Richard Herron: What's some of the proudest accomplishments in your life, Mom?
>> Graciela Martinez: My children.
>> Richard Herron: I saw that one coming. I should have known.
>> Unidentified Speaker: Do you want to give Richard's father's name for the record?
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, yeah.
>> Unidentified Speaker: And your mother's.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah. Richard's father's name is Richard Martin Herron.
>> Richard Herron: Yeah.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah. And my mother, oh, my mother, her name was Paulita -- well, Paula Cavazos
Martinez, Paula C. Martinez. Cavazos is her maiden name. We come from a long line of Spanish people,
from Spain, and my Spanish grandfather met and married my really Indian looking little grandmother,
and the bloods mixed and there I am. I'm [foreign language]. And somewhat too, I brought you back a
little closer to the white line, though.
>> Richard Herron: Yeah. We do kind of, me and my sisters, my two older sisters, we ran a fine line
there.
>> Graciela Martinez: Do you guys feel like any deprivation by the fact that Jenny gets mad when people
say she's gringa?
>> Richard Herron: No. I don't feel any deprivation at all.
>> Graciela Martinez: No?
>> Richard Herron: I've kind of gone my life with just being happy with who I am and being happy of my
heritage and being proud of where I come from.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah. Yeah.
>> Richard Herron: And so I've had nothing but proud feelings of who I am and where I came from.
>> Graciela Martinez: Well, I hope each of you feel like that. I think so.
>> Richard Herron: I kind of feel like I had the best of both worlds.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, yeah.
>> Richard Herron: That's kind of the way I looked at it my entire life, so...
>> Graciela Martinez: Well, it's been a good life, mijo. I'm 71. I never thought I would get to this age. I
kept thinking, well, maybe -- because my brother died when he was 56. He had a massive heart attack.
He went like that. And I always thought that's the way I'd like to go, really fast, you know, have it hit me,
and I keep thinking, well, shoot, you know, if I die, my children, they're going to miss me a lot. But you
guys have to face that. I will be leaving here one day, and then I'm going to fly like an eagle, because
when your spirit leaves, it's free to roam. And then I'm really going to be free, free at least.
>> Unidentified Speaker: What are some of your favorite memories together from when you were a
child?
>> Richard Herron: Oh, wow. We were talking about that on the way over here. Some of my favorite
memories as a child with my mom and my sisters were Saturday -- it was usually a Sunday afternoon, we
would go to this little [foreign language] in Farmersville, which was like a Mexican meat market, and
we'd get a couple pounds of food, and usually Barbacoa and some corn tortillas and some frijoles
charros, and then there was a park we used to go to right next-door to the meat market and we'd sit
there all afternoon and have a picnic while me and my sisters played and Mom would be out there with
Grandma and Tia Monie [spelled phonetically], whoever else.
>> Graciela Martinez: Sleeping under a tree.
>> Richard Herron: Sleeping under a tree. You know, sometimes we had a little radio, sitting there
listening to some good music and just, you know, playing out in the park and just eating like a Mexican
lunch with my family. And not just that, at that park, there were plenty of parks that we did that, but the
memory of just being out there with my family when I was younger, being out there with you and
Grandma and hearing Grandma complain about something, don't let the kids off too far, make sure they
have shoes on.
>> Graciela Martinez: Always.
>> Richard Herron: You know, there were always goat heads in the park, so someone was always
stepping on a goat head, but those were my favorite memories as a kid.
>> Graciela Martinez: Okay. And do you want to know what my favorite memory is of you?
>> Richard Herron: Uh-huh.
>> Graciela Martinez: When I bought you that Big Wheel. You were probably about six, seven.
>> Richard Herron: I was about seven years old.
>> Graciela Martinez: Seven. Yeah, and that was the biggest thing for you, your Big Wheel, and I
remember you going around the corner and I was standing there -- you were on the sidewalk, and
thinking, oh, my God, he's going to go over right onto the freeway, roadway, and you never did.
>>Richard Herron: I just slide.
>> Graciela Martinez: And you would always, "Look at me, Mom." And your sisters convincing you that
you were Superman and could fly off of a telephone pole.
>> Richard Herron: Yeah. Well, I used to use the telephone pole to climb up to the carport, and I would
wrap my Superman towel around my neck and I would jump off the top of the carport, which was
probably a good 10, 12 feet off the ground, and land on the ground, not ever able to fly like Superman,
but I would always get up and try it again.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yep, you always did. You've got scars to prove it.
>> Richard Herron: I never broke any bones doing that. Now that I think about it in retrospect, I was a
very lucky boy.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yes, you were. And people that took care of you, like Stan.
>> Richard Herron: Stan illima [spelled phonetically].
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, yeah. Coming to tell me that you were up at the telephone pole. Oh, my
gosh. Yeah.
>> Richard Herron: Those are good memories.
>> Graciela Martinez: They are good memories.
>> Richard Herron: Good memories.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah.
>> Unidentified Speaker: I was wondering too if you two wanted to paint a picture of your mother,
Graciela, just in looks and personality, and if you could just paint a picture of her?
>> Graciela Martinez: She -- well, of course, I remember her in her youth, in her vigor. My mother was a
very avid fisherwoman. Get her near any kind of a little puddle and she'd throw hook, line, and sinker in
there and fish. So we grew up eating a lot of fish because we -- she used to take -- that was where we
used to go, and, you know, and have fun, going fishing with your Grandma. And she was very strict. She
knew that if she said no, it meant no. And if the rule was broken -- I don't remember -- I only remember
one good spanking that my mother gave me when I ran off to the cemetery and I fell into a hole and I
came back all full of mud and everything, and she didn't know I'd been gone, so she gave me a good
whacking and sat me in the corner. I was kneeling in the corner for about an hour, and so I never went
near a cemetery anymore. That's why I don't want to be buried. So she was very strict, but also very
giving. My mother had a halfway house in Texas, when we lived in Texas. Her house was considered a
halfway house, and if you came knocking on her door and you said you were hungry, you never got sent
away without something to eat or drink or take a shower. Our shower thing used to be on the outside,
so people would stop on their way from Mexico, because we lived only about 40 miles from the border,
and that was a halfway house. People knew they could come in there and get a bowl of beans, a tortilla,
or something to help carry them to the norte, so my mother was very friendly. She had lots of people.
She was very opinionated. When she met a friend of mine that she didn't care for, she would definitely
let me know. And now looking back on it, the people that she said was not going to be a good influence,
they weren't. One of my friends, that we were really close together, got hooked up on cocaine and
finally overdosed and killed herself. So my mother was very strict and always kept really good tags on
especially me, because I was the only girl, her only girl, and always proud of me. Although she didn't -she was not the huggy, kissy, to come up and give me a hug just because, not any of that demonstration
of physical love. It was more, I don't know, a bonding, binding of the souls. So I didn't need to have my
mother tell me all the time, I love you, mija. I knew my mother loved me, even though she didn't tell it
to me all the time, so -- Yeah, and she loved to paint her hair. She never -- that's one thing that I find
kind of funny about my mom. She always had her hair, except for that white streak she had here, it was
always black. She was kind of vain. She liked to wear, you know, earrings, and she wore makeup and
lipstick all the time until she was -- she died of Alzheimer's. And until she was no longer able to take care
of herself, she always did. You know, she was very active. She was a baker. She's descended from a
family of bakers in Mexico and she was always baking things. Always bake. Yeah. And she would bake
pan that she would take out to the fields where she was working, so she could take out a piece of pan
and have with coffee and also offer it to everybody else that was sitting around, some pan and some
coffee.
>> Unidentified Speaker: Well, we just have a few minutes left. Was there any last things that you two
want to say to each other?
>> Richard Herron: Well, I've always -- I've always told myself, my friends and everyone else, that my
mom has always been my rock, and she still is. You still are my rock to this day. Everything I do in life, I
always think, you know how you see those bumper stickers, what would Jesus do? To me it's what
would mom do? And that kind of drives my sense of direction --
>> Graciela Martinez: Oh, Sweetheart.
>> Richard Herron: -- on what's right and what's wrong. So you've always been my rock, and you're
always going to be my rock. And I love you and thank you for everything you've done for me and my
sisters.
>> Graciela Martinez: Oh, Sweetheart. I'm so happy you told me that. That's been an aspiration of mine,
that you guys are comfortable in your own skin.
>> Richard Herron: Yeah.
>> Graciela Martinez: I love you.
>> Richard Herron: I love you too, Mom. Thanks for the time.
>> Graciela Martinez: Thank you.
the 16th, 2016. We are at the Henry Madden Library at Fresno State University. And my partner today
happens to be my one and only son, Richard M. -- no, Richard Herron, but what's your middle name,
Sweetheart?
>> Richard Herron: My middle name is Charles.
>> Graciela Martinez: Richard Charles Herron.
>> Richard Herron: Dad's middle name was Martin.
>> Graciela Martinez: Martin, yes. Yeah. Hi, Sweetheart.
>> Richard Herron: Hi, Mama. My name is Richard Charles Herron. I am 43 years old. Today's date is
April 16, just like my mother said. And this is the first time I've actually done an interview, and who else
to do it with other than your own mom, so this is going to be pretty interesting. I'm kind of excited and
nervous at the same time, so...
>> Graciela Martinez: Well, you just -- whatever you need, want to find out from me, you just ask me,
Sweetheart, and I'll answer.
>> Richard Herron: Well, I think you have a better story than I do. You've done quite a few things in your
lifetime that I know you're proud of and I myself am proud of you as well, and I know the rest of your
kids and grandkids are extremely proud of you. So I want to kind of make this about you. So I guess I've
heard you tell your stories before, and you've got quite a story to tell, so I guess maybe in a nutshell,
starting with your career, I know you've done extensive work with American Friends Services Committee
and the farm worker movement, and I love that story, about how you and Dad met. So can you tell me a
little bit about that?
>> Graciela Martinez: But of course, Sweetheart. Wow, we go back a long time, and I guess how you—
your dad and I met, I was very young. I was maybe about 19 years old when I had decided to go and join
the, you know, the farm worker movement. It was at that time gaining ground and I went with these
great aspirations of being Cesar Chavez's secretary, which I did for a very, very short time. It was not
really a set-up office like I expected, you know, so we went out on the picket lines and what have you.
Your dad came in around the same time that people started gathering, around the summer of 1965.
Yeah, at the beginning of 1965, '64, '65.
>> Richard Herron: He was pretty much like a free spirited guitar player.
>> Graciela Martinez: Your dad was a roving person. He loved to travel. He was big on justice, and he
had a very great friend that was also part of the farm worker movement. So on his travels back and forth
across the country, he decided to stop in at Delano one day and I met him, and, well, the rest is history.
Beautiful blue eyes I fell in love with, and he used to play the guitar. He taught Augustine Leda, who was
part of the farm worker group that used to do the Proyecto Campesino, and he helped him learn how to
finger pick the guitar, because your dad was an amazing guitar player and, you know, he also worked
with the United Farm Workers since he was a stonemason. He helped them build the clinic out there,
the [foreign language] Clinic, which is a wonderful thing, because anybody could go in there and get
medical services. Your oldest sister, Hannah -- well, my first baby, Richard Edward Herron, was
conceived during that time. And your dad and I had traveled to Washington D.C. to go and see what was
going on over there as far as picketing Safeway for their iceberg lettuce that was being shipped from
Central Valley all over, you know, and I got pregnant over there. When I found out I was pregnant, I
came back home. Unfortunately, I lost that child, Richard Edward. I wanted to continue the line, or the
name, you know. So I lost that baby. He was born December 24, 1966, in fact, and he was stillborn. It
was a very sad time in my life, you know, looking forward to a child. He was born full term. He died three
days before he was actually born, so I almost died too. You almost were not here, Sweetheart.
>> Richard Herron: Wow.
>> Graciela Martinez: But anyway, your dad and I continued our relationship. Sometimes he'd want to
be at a different place. We'd be in Washington D.C., and he decided that he'd want to go up to northern
California, and so we moved around quite a bit. Hannah came along, your oldest sister, and then Jenny
also. You guys were born here in Visalia, because this is where my mother lived, and whenever I was
pregnant, I wanted my mother close by, because she was very wise and knew a lot. And finally, when
you came along, we lived in San Francisco, and you were conceived, and your dad wanted to move all
the way back across the country to Florida, and I chose not to follow because Hannah was at the age
where she was going to go to school and I just needed to settle down, you know, with my children. So I
came back to California. You were born here in 1973, September 9. And for me, every birth of every
child has been a wondrous time. I enjoyed it, my pregnancies, my deliveries. And to me that's, you know
-- my treasure trove is my four children.
>> Richard Herron: You were I know, from the stories I've heard and from what you've told me, and I
personally, from knowing my grandmother, you were really close with Grandma, and so I know during
that time that you were young and traveling the country with my father that Grandma always had close
-- she always had close dibs on you. She always wanted to know where you were at, and she always
wanted you back home. Grandma came from Mexico, and she was a very religious, Catholic lady. What
did she think about you hitching up with my dad at that time and traveling the country and, you know,
experiencing all these movements with him?
>> Graciela Martinez: She didn't care for it. She didn't really care for me leaving home and going to
Delano, which is only about 40, 50 miles away from home. First time I'd ever been away from home, you
know, and when she found out that I had hooked up with this man, a bald-headed gringo, she used to
call him el gringo pelon, and she didn't like the idea at all, because being a very religious person, my path
was to get married, settle down somewhere. And we have just gone into the darkness, but that's okay if
we continue recording. Yeah. I was very close to my mother. I always wanted to be close to her. She -she and I were very, very close. I was the only girl and the last one of the family, and she just prided
herself on me, so it was difficult for her to accept me leaving home, not working to continue to work to
help the family. She was kind of disappointed, but she got to love your dad a lot, and he actually came
and lived with us in Visalia and actually went out to work in the fields with your grandmother and Tia
Monie [spelled phonetically], and he learned how to pick oranges and became part of the family.
>> Richard Herron: He probably got a lot of respect from Grandma, from—from doing that.
>> Graciela Martinez: Oh, yeah. Oh, definitely. And then of course her grandchildren from me, I was the
closest one. You—you are the only ones that she really saw grow up from babies into adulthood, you
know, so she was always very proud of the children, and she cared a lot for your dad, yeah.
>> Unidentified Speaker: You guys can keep talking. I'm just going to go turn on the lights, okay?
>> Graciela Martinez: Okay.
>> Richard Herron: I'd have to say Grandma had a lot of grandkids, and growing up next to her like we
did, I know we had a special bond with her.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah.
>> Richard Herron: Her and Tia Monie [spelled phonetically], we had a very special bond with her, and it
was nice because I kind of felt like whenever our other cousins would come visit from Riverside or from,
you know, Oceanside, you know, they wanted to get time with Grandma as much as possible because
they didn't get to see her that much, but I kind of felt privileged being right down the street from
Grandma, and I could go see her any time and she could come see us any time.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah.
>> Richard Herron: And she did, and we did too.
>> Graciela Martinez: Uh-huh.
>> Richard Herron: I remember going over to Grandma's house when she would make her special
cinnamon bunuelos.
>> Graciela Martinez: Oh, yeah.
>> Richard Herron: She would send me home with at least two dozen of them.
>> Graciela Martinez: Uh-huh.
>> Richard Herron: And every time I came home there was at least three or four missing.
>> Graciela Martinez: Oh, yeah.
>> Richard Herron: And I just took my time walking home.
>> Graciela Martinez: Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. We tried to live really close to my mom. And you
know, she, I know, at this point, she would really be proud. Even though at first she didn't really care for
me to go away from home and being what the old ladies in those days used to call a metiche. Metiche
means that you are sticking your nose in other people's business. And I remember telling her, because
we talked back to our parents, you know, when we're -- we're challenging our parents and trying to
establish ourselves, and I used to tell her that, yeah, I wanted to know what was going on around me,
that there were a lot of things. And since my mother had been a farm worker, I saw firsthand some of
the abuses the farm workers went through. I mean, your grandmother got fired from a lot of jobs. We
had a lot of jobs. And I say "we" because when they were working in the field, that was before we got
the child labor laws installed. We used to go work in the fields with her. I mean, I remember picking
cotton way back in Texas. And when we moved to California from Texas, heck, finally my mother settled
on -- she loved picking oranges. She loved getting on the trees and being able to look out, you know,
above and see the birds and the birds nests and, you know, instead of using the ladder to pick the
oranges from inside the trees, she would actually climb the trees. So I learned how to do all that. You
know, in those days, we didn't have the protection that farm workers have now. Like they didn't have
bathrooms, and water, you drank water out of the same containers. And they probably had water in
those containers for three days already. It tasted like it, but you needed water. The situation for farm
workers at that time was not good. If you were a woman and your supervisor came along and, you
know, wanted to brush your nalgas[foreign language], your butt, you know, you didn't complain because
you'd get fired. You know, it was easy to fire. There was all kinds of people waiting for jobs. So it was
really bad. And I think that's the only reason that my mother finally agreed and went along with me
joining the Farm Workers, but they used to be up there every weekend, every weekend. And every time
she went, she would take tacos and pan and, you know, anything that she happened to make. The first
typewriter that I ever used at the United Farm Workers in that old house is still sitting in my mother's
closet in our—in my bedroom.
>> Richard Herron: Wow.
>> Graciela Martinez: You can see it. It's one of those old, nothing with electric typewriters. These things
you had to really pound—
>>Richard Herron: Oh, mechanical. Yeah.
>>Graciela Martinez: you know, to be able to -- so, yeah, she got accustomed to it, and she used to
come -- you know, they used to come and do some volunteer work every now and then. And she would
donate, yeah.
>> Richard Herron: Now, Grandma was a farm worker for a really long time, and you growing up the way
you did around my father and around the whole United Farm Workers Movement, that started off your
career at a very young age. And as you grew up, you've had different jobs working with Visalia Legal
Typing Services, transcribing for different lawyers in the Tulare County area, come full circle. You end up
going back to American Friends Services Committee. And not only did you work as a farm worker, you
retired with the AFC advocating for farm workers.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, yeah.
>> Richard Herron: Did you know that was going to come full circle like that?
>> Graciela Martinez: No, of course not. I can't foresee the future. But actually my civil rights bug, I was
bitten earlier than the United Farm Workers, and that's when I was working with the AFSC, the
American Friends Service Committee, when an opportunity was given to some of the staff to go to
Montgomery, Alabama, to join the march that was going on at that time with Martin Luther King, Junior,
and so I was blessed to be in that. And that's where, you know, seeing that Mexicanos over here were
being oppressed in one way and the black people in a different way, being that we're all human beings
and we were all -- should have, you know, the same rights. Why couldn't the black people vote if I could
vote, or this other person, you know, what have you? So when I came back from Alabama, from that
march, which we didn't go all the way, because we were being sponsored by the AFSC, and early in the
day the march started, one of the other marshals—marshals—marchers—I need a drink of water. One
of the other marchers, James Reeb, from the Unitarians, was murdered. And so I imagine that the AFSC
was concerned about the liability should something happen to any of us. And it was dangerous, very,
very dangerous. It was a scary time in my life, being part of the march because of, you know, the things
that I saw and experienced. It was a whole brand new. So by the time I came to the United Farm
Workers, I already had this bug in me, this, you know, searching for justice in the workplace, and, you
know, in schools, segregation thing and all that. So I kind of, you know, I kind of went with the role and
worked towards helping to make things a little bit better.
>> Unidentified Speaker: Ms. Martinez, do you remember like what the march was like? Can you paint a
picture of being there?
>> Graciela Martinez: I don't know if I can. It was all very strange to me. I grew up here in Visalia on the
north side, and the only ones that lived in that area were us, the Chicanos, the Mexicanos, the native
Americans, and a few black people. So I really didn't have that much, you know, back and forth with the
black people, but for some reason, I don't know why, I was attracted to that, the fact that, you know,
they couldn't participate in civic things like we could. It was incomprehensible to me, being human
beings, you know, they should have the same rights as any other human beings. And to me, what rights
are we guaranteed under our Constitution is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That means being
treated well, wherever you go, to school, to work, at home, you know, so there's so much, so much to
get involved with. The American Friends Service Committee, to me, was a stepping stone, because that
was my very first job ever, fresh out of high school, and I wasn't expected to be a secretary. I was
expected to be a homemaker or maybe work in a clothing factory, which Bailey's, which used to be in
Visalia. And in those days the telephone systems were all handled by those push --
>> Richard Herron: Switch—switch operators.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, those were the kind of jobs we were looking for, we
were looking forward to. And I actually went and applied at all these things, but a friend of my mother's,
farm labor contractor, who was a member of the meeting of the Quakers that gathered together to
create Self Help Enterprises, he told me about this job opening and, lo and behold, I applied and I got
the job. I didn't expect to, but I did, and I learned a lot. You know, I think that AFSC was a stepping stone
for me and opened the door for me to be able to go out and experience these things, like the march in
Alabama and like being involved with Cesar Chavez, because Bard McAllister, who was a director of a
farm labor office at that day, he personally took me and introduced me to Cesar Chavez, and they were
just getting set up, and he needed someone to help him kind of organize things a little bit. So my job was
over with the AFSC, and that's when I transferred over to United Farm Workers. We were paid $5 a
week. But your dad and I became pretty important in the movement, not because I was out -- I wasn't
out picketing, and your dad wasn't out picketing a lot. We were involved—I was in the legal department.
At that time the farm workers were not covered under the National Labor Relations Board. They didn't
have the same kind of protections, so the UFW was working on what's now named the American Labor
Relations Board, which brings the farm workers in under the protections that we have now, like working
conditions, you know, making sure you have fresh water, and toilets and all that kind of stuff, and are
free of sexual harassment, or any kind of harassment, you know, which still goes on incidentally, but it's
an ongoing struggle. Yeah. It was -- my coming back to the AFSC was sort of -- that was a weird
experience. I never told you about that?
>> Richard Herron: Uh-uh, no you haven’t.
>> Graciela Martinez: All right. Well, I had been into business on my own in Goshen for about ten years.
>> Richard Herron: I was one of your associates.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, you were. I created a program called Martinez & Associates. I remember
sitting down with my children, they were very young, and saying, you know, that means I have to give a
great portion of my time to taking care of customers that came in. I began my service in my bedroom.
And I was very fortunate, because, like you say, I had worked with Legal Services, I had worked with
California Rural Legal Assistance. That was one of the first programs I worked with after the UFW, and
Cruz Reynoso, who became a big person, was my first boss at CRLA, and Legal Services here in Tulare
County, I learned a lot about the law. So my last job that I had was with a woman lawyer, Linda Luke. I
remember -- I'll always remember her because even though we parted, I walked out of the job because I
felt that she was asking way too much from me, you know, like being a legal secretary and interpreter
and then also having to make sure that her little girls got to practice or to the doctor and stuff like that,
and so I disagreed with that. And she didn't fire me. I walked out and didn't come back, even though we
wound up being really good friends. I still kept doing work for her. She trained me a lot. So when I
became independent, I opened up my own office. She made it possible in the loop for me to become a
notary public. So I was a professional typist, legal secretary, interpreter. I used to interpret a lot at
courts. I used to do a lot of work for court reporters. You guys, the lullabies that you went to sleep with
was a clack of my typewriter.
>> Richard Herron: Absolutely.
>> Graciela Martinez: After putting you to bed at night and I'd have to get to work on my -- you know,
and I was until 1 or 2:00 in the morning.
>> Richard Herron: It was just amazing that sometimes we would be in the living room, me, Hannah, and
Jenny, watching TV and there you were in the kitchen with your typewriter on the kitchen table and
your headphones on transcribing away. To us it sounded like you were typing 5,000 words per minute,
and you would look at the TV and sometimes carry on short conversations at the same time while you
would transcribe, and I always thought that was just amazing that you could do that.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, yeah.
>> Richard Herron: I know how to use a computer and type but not anywhere near you. I clack and I do
the finger pecking. But yeah, you had, still do, just your skills on the typewriter are amazing.
>> Graciela Martinez: I know when I was working at Legal Services, who became my compadre later on,
Lois String, she was supervisor at Legal Services at one time.
>> Richard Herron: I didn't know she was your supervisor.
>> Graciela Martinez: Uh-huh. I learned a lot from Lois. And she said that I was machine—she
nicknamed me Machine Gun Grace. And one time when I did a state test for typing, I was up to 150
some odd, almost 160 words a minute typing, with very few errors. That's why I was able to get the kind
of jobs that I could get. I was very proficient in language and grammar and punctuation. And some of the
attorneys I used to work for used to ask me to edit their appeal briefs. Richard Rumery, yeah, he used to
dictate the appeal briefs and I could edit and adjust and do whatever, and he always loved it. They
always encouraged me. I had great mentors. I had people that I guess saw potential in me I couldn't see
in myself, and they kind of fed it. So, you know, I got to be somebody, and it wasn't alone. In fact, I have
a bumper sticker on the back of my car that says, "If the people lead, the leaders will follow." I've been
called a leader, but a leader is nobody unless the people get together. The people have to ask you to
lead them. And I did. I did a lot. Not because I was a big leader or anything like that, because people
have always come to me. And when I was working at Proyecto Campesino with the AFSC, we were called
various times in newspaper articles a guiding light, where people of any background or social or
economic status could come in, and if we didn't have an answer to a question, we would find, try to find
an answer for them or try to help navigate them through some of these processes, like applying for
Social Security, applying for unemployment, applying for welfare, you know. Some people have -- they
need to have a middle man. Somebody that's getting evicted from their apartment, sometimes a
middleman can kind of settle things down a little bit and allow the people to continue to live there, you
know. So yeah, I was very successful, but it was because other people helped to build me up, and then
my children.
>> Unidentified Speaker: Do you remember when your mother kind of changed her tune as far as your
activism and that kind of thing? Was there a moment that she realized that your work was very worthy
or --
>> Graciela Martinez: Uh-huh, there was. Early on when I got involved, she really was totally against me
going to Alabama. Totally.
>> Richard Herron: Was it because—
>> Graciela Martinez: I went and I told her, I'm going without your permission, but I hope I go with your
blessings. And -- but with the United Farm Workers, again, I had come back and I was working and blah,
blah, and leaving again, but not too long after that, because we got to hear Cesar a lot. She actually got
to talk and meet face-to-face with Cesar, and as he was learning. Cesar is not, you know, I mean, great
man, but when I learned that, you know, oh, boy, you know, he was a leader, well, yeah, he was a
leader. He picked up the farm workers struggle from the Filipinos, who picked it up from the Japanese,
was it, with the internment camps way back and the Japanese wound up in our portion of the valley?
Yeah, no, the Japanese and the Chinese people are land owners, and they have big agricultural areas, so,
you know, it's -- My mother got in tune with the work that I was doing. I think she saw in me too the
potential that I had and tried to help me, you know, because she always stood up against injustices, and
I think it was, you know, that she used to tell me, [foreign language]. If that can happen to that person, it
can happen to you, you know, and don't let an abuse go by, not even animals. Not even animals. Don't
abuse. Don't abuse, period. So yeah, my mother accepted early on the United Farm Workers Movement.
She contributed to it. She probably spoke to people around here, because our part of the Central Valley
was one of the last areas to be actually arisen to farm worker. We had a few of Cesar's oldest organizers,
Pablo Espinoza was one of them, Eliseo Medina, Gilbert Padilla. Gilbert still lives here, I think, in Fresno.
They are the ones that organized the north -- South Valley. And yeah, the North Valley was somebody
else. So, you know, it's -- my mother knew, and she would go out when she was working because she
picked oranges until she fell down. Remember when she split her finger?
>> Richard Herron: No, I don’t.
>> Graciela Martinez: And yeah, that made her go into disability. She could no longer work, but she
could sure speak. And, you know, know that things were not quite right yet, but we were making
advances. And things are still not quite right, but we're making advances.
>> Richard Herron: She'd be very proud of you right now.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah. The minimum wage thing that we’ve been—I've been, you know, waging for
years, we should have already been making 15 bucks an hour. I don't believe in some of the people that
say that the $15 an hour is going to drive down -- they are going to have to fire their people, because if
you are making 15 bucks an hour, you're going to spend that money in your community. You know,
you're going to be buying better clothes and better shoes and better food and, you know, that will kind
of help to leverage communities. A lot of these communities are in great need, you know. So we had
intended to do good things. The struggle has to keep on. And people like me, at my age, we look to
people like you, younger people, that can know that there's a struggle going on, and just because I laid
down the string, I'm not marching anymore, I'm only marching from my bedroom to the kitchen and the
backyard. That's all I'm marching anymore. But, you know, there's people like you, young people, that
can pick up the string and remember. And remember that -- like you, for instance, remember that your
mother has waged a lifelong battle, beginning when she was a farm worker, a cotton picker back in
Texas. And one of your songs that I used to sing to you guys a lot was -- oh, what was the name? "You
are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when days are blue. You never know, dear,
how much I love you. Please don't take my sunshine away." Do you remember that?
>> Richard Herron: I remember that, Mom. I do.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah. It was -- yeah. For all of you, my children were my blessings.
>> Richard Herron: That song will always be stuck in my head.
>> Graciela Martinez: Well, we used to do that. I used to parade you guys. Come on, let's get moving.
Come on, let's march, march, march, march, not knowing that that was going to send my son into
military service, something I didn't want. But anyway, yeah.
>> Richard Herron: I came back alive four years later.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, thank God. Yes, thank God. That was a big worrisome time in my life. And
always. A mother is always a mother. You'll always worry about your children. They are over there living
their life and having fun and what have you, but a mother until the day she's gone will be there. I hope
like -- when we were coming, we ran into that big accident, oh, my gosh, you know, if that could happen
to them, that could happen to us. And love and tell people you love them while they're still alive. Bring
me flowers while I'm still alive because I'm not going to be buried anywhere. I am going to be pushing up
daisies. No way. You're going to burn me and then you're going to let my ashes fly, baby, uh-huh.
>> Richard Herron: What's some of the proudest accomplishments in your life, Mom?
>> Graciela Martinez: My children.
>> Richard Herron: I saw that one coming. I should have known.
>> Unidentified Speaker: Do you want to give Richard's father's name for the record?
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, yeah.
>> Unidentified Speaker: And your mother's.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah. Richard's father's name is Richard Martin Herron.
>> Richard Herron: Yeah.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah. And my mother, oh, my mother, her name was Paulita -- well, Paula Cavazos
Martinez, Paula C. Martinez. Cavazos is her maiden name. We come from a long line of Spanish people,
from Spain, and my Spanish grandfather met and married my really Indian looking little grandmother,
and the bloods mixed and there I am. I'm [foreign language]. And somewhat too, I brought you back a
little closer to the white line, though.
>> Richard Herron: Yeah. We do kind of, me and my sisters, my two older sisters, we ran a fine line
there.
>> Graciela Martinez: Do you guys feel like any deprivation by the fact that Jenny gets mad when people
say she's gringa?
>> Richard Herron: No. I don't feel any deprivation at all.
>> Graciela Martinez: No?
>> Richard Herron: I've kind of gone my life with just being happy with who I am and being happy of my
heritage and being proud of where I come from.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah. Yeah.
>> Richard Herron: And so I've had nothing but proud feelings of who I am and where I came from.
>> Graciela Martinez: Well, I hope each of you feel like that. I think so.
>> Richard Herron: I kind of feel like I had the best of both worlds.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, yeah.
>> Richard Herron: That's kind of the way I looked at it my entire life, so...
>> Graciela Martinez: Well, it's been a good life, mijo. I'm 71. I never thought I would get to this age. I
kept thinking, well, maybe -- because my brother died when he was 56. He had a massive heart attack.
He went like that. And I always thought that's the way I'd like to go, really fast, you know, have it hit me,
and I keep thinking, well, shoot, you know, if I die, my children, they're going to miss me a lot. But you
guys have to face that. I will be leaving here one day, and then I'm going to fly like an eagle, because
when your spirit leaves, it's free to roam. And then I'm really going to be free, free at least.
>> Unidentified Speaker: What are some of your favorite memories together from when you were a
child?
>> Richard Herron: Oh, wow. We were talking about that on the way over here. Some of my favorite
memories as a child with my mom and my sisters were Saturday -- it was usually a Sunday afternoon, we
would go to this little [foreign language] in Farmersville, which was like a Mexican meat market, and
we'd get a couple pounds of food, and usually Barbacoa and some corn tortillas and some frijoles
charros, and then there was a park we used to go to right next-door to the meat market and we'd sit
there all afternoon and have a picnic while me and my sisters played and Mom would be out there with
Grandma and Tia Monie [spelled phonetically], whoever else.
>> Graciela Martinez: Sleeping under a tree.
>> Richard Herron: Sleeping under a tree. You know, sometimes we had a little radio, sitting there
listening to some good music and just, you know, playing out in the park and just eating like a Mexican
lunch with my family. And not just that, at that park, there were plenty of parks that we did that, but the
memory of just being out there with my family when I was younger, being out there with you and
Grandma and hearing Grandma complain about something, don't let the kids off too far, make sure they
have shoes on.
>> Graciela Martinez: Always.
>> Richard Herron: You know, there were always goat heads in the park, so someone was always
stepping on a goat head, but those were my favorite memories as a kid.
>> Graciela Martinez: Okay. And do you want to know what my favorite memory is of you?
>> Richard Herron: Uh-huh.
>> Graciela Martinez: When I bought you that Big Wheel. You were probably about six, seven.
>> Richard Herron: I was about seven years old.
>> Graciela Martinez: Seven. Yeah, and that was the biggest thing for you, your Big Wheel, and I
remember you going around the corner and I was standing there -- you were on the sidewalk, and
thinking, oh, my God, he's going to go over right onto the freeway, roadway, and you never did.
>>Richard Herron: I just slide.
>> Graciela Martinez: And you would always, "Look at me, Mom." And your sisters convincing you that
you were Superman and could fly off of a telephone pole.
>> Richard Herron: Yeah. Well, I used to use the telephone pole to climb up to the carport, and I would
wrap my Superman towel around my neck and I would jump off the top of the carport, which was
probably a good 10, 12 feet off the ground, and land on the ground, not ever able to fly like Superman,
but I would always get up and try it again.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yep, you always did. You've got scars to prove it.
>> Richard Herron: I never broke any bones doing that. Now that I think about it in retrospect, I was a
very lucky boy.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yes, you were. And people that took care of you, like Stan.
>> Richard Herron: Stan illima [spelled phonetically].
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah, yeah. Coming to tell me that you were up at the telephone pole. Oh, my
gosh. Yeah.
>> Richard Herron: Those are good memories.
>> Graciela Martinez: They are good memories.
>> Richard Herron: Good memories.
>> Graciela Martinez: Yeah.
>> Unidentified Speaker: I was wondering too if you two wanted to paint a picture of your mother,
Graciela, just in looks and personality, and if you could just paint a picture of her?
>> Graciela Martinez: She -- well, of course, I remember her in her youth, in her vigor. My mother was a
very avid fisherwoman. Get her near any kind of a little puddle and she'd throw hook, line, and sinker in
there and fish. So we grew up eating a lot of fish because we -- she used to take -- that was where we
used to go, and, you know, and have fun, going fishing with your Grandma. And she was very strict. She
knew that if she said no, it meant no. And if the rule was broken -- I don't remember -- I only remember
one good spanking that my mother gave me when I ran off to the cemetery and I fell into a hole and I
came back all full of mud and everything, and she didn't know I'd been gone, so she gave me a good
whacking and sat me in the corner. I was kneeling in the corner for about an hour, and so I never went
near a cemetery anymore. That's why I don't want to be buried. So she was very strict, but also very
giving. My mother had a halfway house in Texas, when we lived in Texas. Her house was considered a
halfway house, and if you came knocking on her door and you said you were hungry, you never got sent
away without something to eat or drink or take a shower. Our shower thing used to be on the outside,
so people would stop on their way from Mexico, because we lived only about 40 miles from the border,
and that was a halfway house. People knew they could come in there and get a bowl of beans, a tortilla,
or something to help carry them to the norte, so my mother was very friendly. She had lots of people.
She was very opinionated. When she met a friend of mine that she didn't care for, she would definitely
let me know. And now looking back on it, the people that she said was not going to be a good influence,
they weren't. One of my friends, that we were really close together, got hooked up on cocaine and
finally overdosed and killed herself. So my mother was very strict and always kept really good tags on
especially me, because I was the only girl, her only girl, and always proud of me. Although she didn't -she was not the huggy, kissy, to come up and give me a hug just because, not any of that demonstration
of physical love. It was more, I don't know, a bonding, binding of the souls. So I didn't need to have my
mother tell me all the time, I love you, mija. I knew my mother loved me, even though she didn't tell it
to me all the time, so -- Yeah, and she loved to paint her hair. She never -- that's one thing that I find
kind of funny about my mom. She always had her hair, except for that white streak she had here, it was
always black. She was kind of vain. She liked to wear, you know, earrings, and she wore makeup and
lipstick all the time until she was -- she died of Alzheimer's. And until she was no longer able to take care
of herself, she always did. You know, she was very active. She was a baker. She's descended from a
family of bakers in Mexico and she was always baking things. Always bake. Yeah. And she would bake
pan that she would take out to the fields where she was working, so she could take out a piece of pan
and have with coffee and also offer it to everybody else that was sitting around, some pan and some
coffee.
>> Unidentified Speaker: Well, we just have a few minutes left. Was there any last things that you two
want to say to each other?
>> Richard Herron: Well, I've always -- I've always told myself, my friends and everyone else, that my
mom has always been my rock, and she still is. You still are my rock to this day. Everything I do in life, I
always think, you know how you see those bumper stickers, what would Jesus do? To me it's what
would mom do? And that kind of drives my sense of direction --
>> Graciela Martinez: Oh, Sweetheart.
>> Richard Herron: -- on what's right and what's wrong. So you've always been my rock, and you're
always going to be my rock. And I love you and thank you for everything you've done for me and my
sisters.
>> Graciela Martinez: Oh, Sweetheart. I'm so happy you told me that. That's been an aspiration of mine,
that you guys are comfortable in your own skin.
>> Richard Herron: Yeah.
>> Graciela Martinez: I love you.
>> Richard Herron: I love you too, Mom. Thanks for the time.
>> Graciela Martinez: Thank you.