Helping others a way of life for Marcelllina Munoz, MACE’s Woman
of the Year
Early in her marriage, Marcellina Mu
ñoz found herself spending a lot of time in the kitchen.
Helping others a way of life for Marcelllina Munoz, MACE’s Woman of the Year
Early in her marriage, Marcellina Muñoz found herself spending a lot of time in the kitchen.
Her husband, Joe, would often walk down to the old warehouses on South Street, striking up conversations with the occasional homeless person he stumbled across. Invariably, Joe would invite that person to his and Marcellina’s little house on Railroad Avenue for a warm, home-cooked meal. He wouldn’t bring the men into their home, but would sit with them outside as they ate fresh, hot food – and Marcellina’s homemade tortillas – on clean plates.
“My mom and dad have always helped out people who needed it,” said George Muñoz, the couple’s second child. “My dad had a soft spot for those who were down on his luck, because he had been down on his luck early in life. He would bring these men home and make sure Mom gave them good food.”
“We would always help others. My grandmother taught me it was the right thing to do,” Marcellina agrees. “She told me once ‘someday you will have children, and you aren’t going to know if there will be a day when they need help. And you will want someone to help them.'”
Marcellina, 85, has kept her grandmother’s words close to her heart throughout the years, and found in Joe a man who felt the same way she did about the need to help others. The couple raised their six children steeped in generosity, while stressing the importance of a good education – something both Marcellina and Joe did not have growing up.
Today, the Muñoz children have become teachers and lawyers, have served in the military and become community activists, helping to found one of San Benito County’s largest scholarship contributors, the Mexican-American Committee on Education (MACE), which has distributed almost $350,000 since its inception in 1970. They credit their successes to their parents, and recently found a very public way of thanking Marcellina by nominating her for MACE’s Woman of the Year honor, which she will receive Saturday, May 3 during the group’s annual banquet fundraiser.
“It’s nice,” is all Marcellina says about the recognition of the work she has done for MACE, which includes cooking for every banquet the group has had in its 38-year history – she once prepared enough rice to feed 800 people all by herself – as well as helping decorate and set up for the banquet and supporting her children in the various roles within MACE.
The life Marcellina shared with her husband and children has differed greatly from her own childhood experience. One of 11 children, Marcellina was born in Oxnard in 1923 to Apolinar and Felisa Solano, but was raised primarily by her maternal grandparents, Cipriano and Maria Gonzalez. Marcellina’s mother had married when she was just 13 years old and was not quite ready for the challenges of being a young wife and mother, so she sent Marcellina to live with her grandparents. Her grandparents were seasonal farm laborers who worked picking grapes, apricots and walnuts. Marcellina remembers picking up walnuts with her grandmother when she was about 5 years old.
“I’ve worked my whole life,” she said. “When I first started to cut apricots I had to stand on a box because I was so small I couldn’t reach the table.”
The family came to Hollister in 1930, settling in the Cienega Valley area to work in the orchards.
“My grandparents had come in 1928 to work for a season, and then they came back,” Marcellina said. “We went together in 1930, and we were supposed to go back to Oxnard but they loved it here. It was very small then.”
Her grandparents sent Marcellina to the old Cienega Grammar School, but because she was expected to work in the fields it was hard for her to attend class regularly. Then, a few months before starting the seventh grade, Marcellina was sent back to her mother, who was living in southern California and had decided she wanted Marcellina with her. She had been with her mother just six months when tragedy struck – Felisa died suddenly, a day after Marcellina’s youngest brother’s third birthday. Marcellina and her brothers and sisters went back to her grandparents, but she never went back to school.
“It was too hard,” she said. “We did not stay long enough in one place. We would start school and then have to go. We lived in San Jose, Milipitas, San Leandro. We went to where there was work.”
It was not an easy life – the family moved constantly and their homes were often tiny and cold – but Marcellina recalls those times fondly.
“Our houses would not have electricity, and sometimes they didn’t have bathrooms and we would have to go outside. We had to heat water to cook and to wash,” she said. “But we were happy. My grandmother had a horse and buggy and she would hitch it up and take me all over. It was like ‘Little House on the Prairie.’ We were like pioneers.”
Marcellina and her family moved back to Hollister when she was a teenager, and it was then she met Joe Muñoz. Marcellina was babysitting May Jaime, and the girls had walked to the post office to mail a letter.
“We were coming out as he was going in,” Marcellina remembered with a smile. “He held the door open for me and said hello. That was all.”
The couple ran into each other a few months later, and began talking. “He asked me if I would go to a show with him, and I said yes,” Marcellina said. “That started a friendship that lasted 62 years and eight months.”
Marcellina and Joe were married in 1941, eloping to Reno with another couple. Joe was working at Fairview Cannery (it later became Tri-Valley Foods), and Marcellina started working there shortly after their wedding. They moved into a tiny apartment on San Benito Street above what is now Java Bagels. Their first child, a son, Joseph, was born soon after.
Just a year after their marriage, the couple moved into the small Railroad Avenue house, paying $16 a month rent while saving up money for their own home. Joe would take his walks down South Street, and one day came across a tiny house for sale. He came home and told his wife he had found the perfect house for them to buy.
“He told me he thought it was a nice house and he took me to look at it,” she said. “It turned out to be the house my brother had lived in for a while.”
The family moved in, and continued to grow. Joseph was followed by George, Peter, Tony, Mary and Virginia. The devoutly Catholic family went to church each Sunday, and the children attended Sacred Heart Parish School. Even though she was working, Marcellina spent as much time as she could helping out at the school, cooking lunches, watching students during lunchtime and taking part in the school’s Mothers Club.
Because of her own lack of education, Marcellina says she and Joe stressed the importance of going to school, and set a goal to make sure that all of their children had the opportunity to go to college.
“That was No. 1 for my husband and me,” she said. “Nothing else mattered. We never took them out of school for work or vacations or anything. If they wanted to work, they did so in the summer.”
Along with the focus on education, Marcellina and Joe also taught their children the importance of respecting others. This manifested itself in many ways, from the homemade meals the couple would serve to volunteering within the church or even loaning money to someone in need. Marcellina also taught cooking with Sunnyslope 4-H and belonged to the La Club de Damas and the Young Ladies Institute.
“A lot of what we are today is because of the example they set,” said Mary Muñoz Martinez, Marcellina and Joe’s oldest daughter. “Mom and Dad were always giving out food, or helping someone with a little bit of money or time, because sometimes that’s what a person really needs. We always saw that. They had a very strong faith, but it was more than that. It was living the faith, living what you believe.”
Life has tossed a few curveballs to the family – son Joseph, who was enlisted in the U.S. Army, was killed by a drunk driver about 10 years ago; Joe died in 2003 after a lengthy illness. Through it all, however, the family has stayed close. Marcellina’s children, 10 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren come to her house for every holiday, and not a day goes by without her kids coming by or giving her a call. And she remembers each baptism, graduation or wedding as if it were yesterday.
“I remember watching our oldest, Joe, walking to get his diploma,” Marcellina said. “We were so proud; of all of them.”
Marcellina stays busy – she rides the bus to Mass at Sacred Heart each day, serves as a Eucharistic minister and is a member of the church’s Altar Society. She is an active member of MACE, is a big fan of Cal football and belongs to the Friends 4 Ever tour group, with whom she will go on a cruise to Scandanavia and Russia in June. She enjoys spending time with her family and friends, and is always ready to listen to someone’s problems or offer a helping hand.
“I thank the one upstairs every day,” Marcellina says quietly, pointing to the ceiling of the home she shared with Joe, a home now filled with a lifetime’s worth of family photos. “We did this all with God’s help, and it’s something wonderful. God is the one who keeps us together.”
