The Day Joseph V. Diaz Died, 50 years ago today.
By Larry J. Rodarte, The Diaz Observer Online
I remember the phone ringing in the kitchen that night on February 8, 1971. It was a yellow phone hanging on the wall, with a long chord,and my mother Anne rushed to answer it. After some emotional conversation in Spanish, I heard mom say, “Tell him I love him,” in English. Yes, I heard my mom say, “Tell him I love him!”, her last communication with her father suffering his third heart attack in Mexico.
Joseph V. Diaz had succumbed in a hospital bed in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, and I was an alert first grader that can vividly still remember that night my Grandpa Joe died.
I hear mom saying, “si” and worried few “no’s,” and I looked over to my older sister Joanne sitting in our family’s brown leather rocker in the corner, simply crying. She was 13, and I knew then it was something serious. The next thing I knew mom was running quickly down the hall to the bathroom slamming the door. She ran water to drown out her cries. I heard her repeatedly saying “Daddy, don’t leave me… please daddy don’t leave me!”
Another call from Mexico, and Mrs. Martinez, (my grandpa’s lady friend) relayed the bad news and said she knew he passed when the bible he was holding onto dropped to the floor.
Aunt Della, and her daughters Christina and Eleanor, was the first to come to comfort us, followed by Aunt Angela and Aunt Liz. I distinctly remember Chris hugging me telling me not to cry. Aunt Angela hugging my sister Nancy and holding her tightly.
José Vicente Precedes del Amparro Diaz, was gone. The civil rights leader, the union activist, the bilingual orator and writer who gave so much history to the Saginaw area Mexicanos, fighting for their rights, as citizens and sometimes immigrants was only 63.
He was the eldest of Senobio and Cecilia Diaz’s brood that spanned the immigrant trail of Huandacareo, Michoacán, Piñicuaro, Guanajuato, Houston Texas, and several cities in Michigan —Charlotte, Mt. Pleasant, Croswell and finally Saginaw. Before he returned to his beloved Mexico around 1968, he lived with us in Bridgeport. I remember he wasn’t there at the 1969 family reunion in Vassar, just him and Aunt Carmen were missing of the ten Diaz siblings.
Grandpa Joe was involved with the Union Civica Mexicana that he along with 10 other men founded in 1945. After the appointing of their first President Antonio Vasquez, something happened four months later, a dispute of some sort, and José V. Diaz became the president for the next four years.
Their mission was to: 1. Propagate their Mexican culture at the Civica, so that their children would know their heritage and pass it on to their grandchildren. As they assimilated in American culture they were losing their Spanish language. They wanted to: 2. Have educational attainment for their kids because they knew this was key for an American dream. And most importantly: 3. They fought for the civil rights of men and women, in the courts, and in the fields. Grandpa was usually their interpreter and scholar in human rights, and not just in Saginaw, but also for migrants throughout Mid-Michigan. His wife Odelia Diaz, also interpreted in the Saginaw Courthouse.
I have the letters to bear witness to this —folders taken when the Civica basement was flooding in 1995, and I had the gumption to save those historical documents, finding Grandpa’s calligraphy style of writing on many parchment papers.
It astounds me that he was so involved, because in those early years it must have been tough to settle in any Michigan city, with such blatant racism that exist still today.
Grandpa Joe’s involvement with the unions was also important. He along with Henry Nickleberry fought for the rights of men of color too not only be given the dirty jobs at the Grey Iron Plant. But employment equity as an employee of General Motors.
Grandpa Senobio Diaz was sickly with bronchitis and had to stop working at the plant, and my grandfather felt his lifelong sickness was aspirated by the extraction and use of coal that men like his father had to shovel into the flaming burners.
As a committee man, he would fly off to Washington D.C. for meetings of the unionist who fought for rights that many workers benefit from today. When Union Local 668 went on strike in 2019, I was proud to stand with them with the Civica’s banner in solidarity.
Some might say, “here we go again,” and some might not care of family history, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mark the 50th anniversary of his passing and propagate what Joe Diaz did in his lifetime. Good or bad, he was a pioneer. He cared enough for the Mexican people and worked diligently to make a difference.
I laugh sometimes when I work at the Civica kitchen and the lights are off in the main hall and I ask a worker to retrieve something from the office. Sometimes they’re scared, and I facetiously say: “Don’t worry, the spirit of the founders will protect you.”
But yeah, Grandpa Joe’s been watching over me, too. From my little boy’s mind to the man I am today, I’m proud to call Joseph V. Diaz my Grandfather, and I know all 15 of his other grandchildren are as well. His legacy will live on. Que Viva La Familia Diaz.
Joseph V. Diaz had succumbed in a hospital bed in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, and I was an alert first grader that can vividly still remember that night my Grandpa Joe died.
I hear mom saying, “si” and worried few “no’s,” and I looked over to my older sister Joanne sitting in our family’s brown leather rocker in the corner, simply crying. She was 13, and I knew then it was something serious. The next thing I knew mom was running quickly down the hall to the bathroom slamming the door. She ran water to drown out her cries. I heard her repeatedly saying “Daddy, don’t leave me… please daddy don’t leave me!”
Another call from Mexico, and Mrs. Martinez, (my grandpa’s lady friend) relayed the bad news and said she knew he passed when the bible he was holding onto dropped to the floor.
Aunt Della, and her daughters Christina and Eleanor, was the first to come to comfort us, followed by Aunt Angela and Aunt Liz. I distinctly remember Chris hugging me telling me not to cry. Aunt Angela hugging my sister Nancy and holding her tightly.
José Vicente Precedes del Amparro Diaz, was gone. The civil rights leader, the union activist, the bilingual orator and writer who gave so much history to the Saginaw area Mexicanos, fighting for their rights, as citizens and sometimes immigrants was only 63.
He was the eldest of Senobio and Cecilia Diaz’s brood that spanned the immigrant trail of Huandacareo, Michoacán, Piñicuaro, Guanajuato, Houston Texas, and several cities in Michigan —Charlotte, Mt. Pleasant, Croswell and finally Saginaw. Before he returned to his beloved Mexico around 1968, he lived with us in Bridgeport. I remember he wasn’t there at the 1969 family reunion in Vassar, just him and Aunt Carmen were missing of the ten Diaz siblings.
Grandpa Joe was involved with the Union Civica Mexicana that he along with 10 other men founded in 1945. After the appointing of their first President Antonio Vasquez, something happened four months later, a dispute of some sort, and José V. Diaz became the president for the next four years.
Their mission was to: 1. Propagate their Mexican culture at the Civica, so that their children would know their heritage and pass it on to their grandchildren. As they assimilated in American culture they were losing their Spanish language. They wanted to: 2. Have educational attainment for their kids because they knew this was key for an American dream. And most importantly: 3. They fought for the civil rights of men and women, in the courts, and in the fields. Grandpa was usually their interpreter and scholar in human rights, and not just in Saginaw, but also for migrants throughout Mid-Michigan. His wife Odelia Diaz, also interpreted in the Saginaw Courthouse.
I have the letters to bear witness to this —folders taken when the Civica basement was flooding in 1995, and I had the gumption to save those historical documents, finding Grandpa’s calligraphy style of writing on many parchment papers.
It astounds me that he was so involved, because in those early years it must have been tough to settle in any Michigan city, with such blatant racism that exist still today.
Grandpa Joe’s involvement with the unions was also important. He along with Henry Nickleberry fought for the rights of men of color too not only be given the dirty jobs at the Grey Iron Plant. But employment equity as an employee of General Motors.
Grandpa Senobio Diaz was sickly with bronchitis and had to stop working at the plant, and my grandfather felt his lifelong sickness was aspirated by the extraction and use of coal that men like his father had to shovel into the flaming burners.
As a committee man, he would fly off to Washington D.C. for meetings of the unionist who fought for rights that many workers benefit from today. When Union Local 668 went on strike in 2019, I was proud to stand with them with the Civica’s banner in solidarity.
Some might say, “here we go again,” and some might not care of family history, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mark the 50th anniversary of his passing and propagate what Joe Diaz did in his lifetime. Good or bad, he was a pioneer. He cared enough for the Mexican people and worked diligently to make a difference.
I laugh sometimes when I work at the Civica kitchen and the lights are off in the main hall and I ask a worker to retrieve something from the office. Sometimes they’re scared, and I facetiously say: “Don’t worry, the spirit of the founders will protect you.”
But yeah, Grandpa Joe’s been watching over me, too. From my little boy’s mind to the man I am today, I’m proud to call Joseph V. Diaz my Grandfather, and I know all 15 of his other grandchildren are as well. His legacy will live on. Que Viva La Familia Diaz.
