I was born late in the evening of May 12, 1955, in the small medical facility that then served the Salinas Valley town of King City, California. The town is located in Southern Monterey County (Somoco, to the locals), in a part of the state generally referred to as Central Coastal California. The Salinas Valley, of course, is familiar to many from the writings of John Steinbeck (we never met).
I was born into a Mexican family and was raised in what was essentially a Mexican village. We lived in a small, crude house in the labor camp owned by the California Orchard Company (COCO), which farmed 2,000 acres on the western side of the Salinas Valley, about midway between King City to the South and Greenfield to the North. (Neither of these two towns was very large--King City's population was around 3,000 and Greenfield's about 2,000, and anyway we were at least five miles from either one.) Because of the farm's size and the nature of its operations--raising both row crops and tending various kinds of fruit trees--it was necessary to maintain a good-sized workforce year round, so unlike many of the labor camps found elsewhere in the Valley (and even California), ours was a rather stable community, where most families stayed for years instead of months, and in a number of instances families were able to raise their children to adulthood during their residency. (Before leaving home, I thought this was the norm rather than the exception for Mexican farm families.)
Our neighbors--somewhere between 50 and 70 people, I've never been too sure--were Mexicans, and came from all over the country. That is, the parents came from different parts of Mexico, some from the desert North, others from the hilly interior, a few from around the capitol, and a few from the Tex-Mex borderland. Their children, however, were generally born in the U.S., and quite often right there in the Salinas Valley. So our parents were Mexican and we, their children, were something else altogether: while our parents spent the majority of their time interacting with other Mexicans, we youngsters split our time between our Spanish-speaking homes and the English-speaking schools in King City. Though probably few of us realized it at the time, we were following an old pattern and becoming Americans right before our parents' eyes.
[][][][][]
My family consisted of my parents, Rogelio Mendez Verduzco and Maria Elena Garnica Manriquez. My father was born and raised in a small town near Zamora, Michoacan, and came to the U.S. as a bracero in the 1940s. He worked in the fields and orchards of the western states until his travels brought him to the California Orchard Company in the Salinas Valley, which reminded him of his boyhood home. There he met and eventually married my mother.
My mother was born in Fillmore, California, a small town in the Santa Paula Valley of Ventura County. Her parents were migrant workers who had come to the U.S. from Guanajuato, Mexico, fleeing the turmoil of the Mexican civil wars of the early decades of the century. Alejo and Antonia Garnica followed the crops, raising their family as best they could.
Unlike their own parents, my parents were able to see all of their (nine) children reach adulthood. The first was born in the first year of their marriage, in 1947, and the last was born in 1962. I was born in squarely in the middle of the group, both in terms of years and place in line. My oldest brother was named Rogelio, after my father; however, his anglIcized name is Roger. Then came Marta Elena (Martha); Maurilio (Moody); Raquel (Rachel); myself; Antonio (Anto); Sara (Grillo); Ruben (Ben); and finally Beatriz (Nana). All but two of my siblings survive to this day; Moody, a U.S. Marine, was killed in Vietnam in 1970, and Nana took her own life in 1997.
[][][][][]
I attended the local schools in King City from first grade through high school, graduating in 1973. After high school, I went off to Fresno State University, spending my freshman year in the dorms (Holman Hall); my major was Political Science--which I never really took to. At the end of the Spring semester, I left the university and moved to the Santa Barbara area, where I found a job in a local electronics factory and an apartment in Isla Vista. After a year of independent living, however, it became clear to me that it was time to get back to school. I left Santa Barbara and returned to my family home in the Salinas Valley, where I worked a bit in the fields and registered for the Spring '76 semester back at (now) CSU Fresno.
I stayed at CSUF for the next three semesters, leaving to begin studies in the x-ray program at Fresno City College. Midway through my first year at FCC, I had to have an operation to correct a chronic dislocation of the left shoulder. The operation was a success; however, the disruption to my studies, and especially to my ability to work to support myself, caused me to take a leave of absence after the Spring semester. I again returned to my family in King City and found work in the local fields, saving money towards a return to my studies.
After a year of labor on the farm, I returned to FCC and the x-ray program. I finished two more semesters with the program before becoming disillusioned with the course--I think all those sick people got to me. I thus left the program and was at loose ends when it occurred to me that I might as well join the Army. So I did.
In late 1980 I contacted the local Army recruiter and began the process of enlistment. I took the usual battery of tests and asked to take the Defense Language Aptitude Battery as well, scoring well enough to qualify for admitance to the military's language school at the Presidio of Monterey. I was thus able to choose my MOS (rather than have it chosen for me), as well as the language I wanted to study. I chose Russian, thinking I could use it to find a well-paying job after my military service.
In 1983, while in the Army, George was diagnosed as suffering from chronic ulcerative colitis, as well as associated rheumatoid arthritis, mostly localized in his lower back.
After being discharged from the Army in October 1983, he came back to Fresno and started school again at CSUFresno, including a second-semester Russian class. (!) He finished with a major in Russian and minor in Spanish, and eventually applied for and was granted his BA, in December 1987.
He moved to Davis, CA in the fall of 1987, then to Maryland in late 1988, where he found a job in Washington, DC with the National Park Service, starting as a clerk-typist, then working his way up to computer monkey and word processor, especially for the National Historic Landmark nominations. He eventually became a contractor, and continued to fulfill these duties. One of the neatest things he did during his employment with the NPS was to work on a list of casualties during the Liberation of Guam. This was eventually incorporated into the memorial wall at Asan Bay Overlook at the War in the Pacific National Historical Park on Guam. After he was downsized (ah, that buzzword!) in late 1996, he found a job as a helpdesk operator with Baltimore Aircoil, eventually leaving it because of the stressful working conditions.
He found the lump that turned out to be his cancer in mid-June 1998, and went to the VA with it. He had surgery on 16 July, and chemotherapy from early October to early December. That was stopped when he developed a known toxic side effect - one which goes away when the chemo is stopped for a bit. By the time he would have restarted it, another problem had arisen which postponed that, and then they decided to wait until after the Christmas holidays.
Starting in late December, George began developing another problem, was hospitalized for it for 12 days in mid-January 1999, and re-hospitalized for the same thing on 5 February. The cause of the problem was a recurrence - and the cancer had spread - and he underwent a second surgery on 12 February. Although he initially seemed to be recovering after the surgery, he subsequently developed a series of complications, and because of the extent to which the cancer had spread, his weakened condition, and the nature of the complications, he was not able to overcome them.
He died quietly at 10:40 a.m. on Friday, 5 March 1999. As he had requested, he was cremated. He was buried in the cemetery in King City, California, on 16 March 1999. It was a beautiful day, clear and sunny, after the rains of the previous couple of days.