My father once said we don’t get to choose the time and circumstances of our death. But it seems fitting that Gilbert died in the middle of this season commemorating my dad’s life and work.

Many people think of my father as a hero. He didn’t. My dad always felt very uncomfortable about being singled out. He refused most personal awards and almost never allowed anyone to name something after him.

He felt uncomfortable because he knew there were too many other people who made remarkable sacrifices and accomplished extraordinary things - that there were many Cesar Chavezes.

Learning that Gilbert passed away just five days before the state holiday honoring my father reminds us about those other heroes who my dad knew went unnoticed and unrecognized.

So as we bring Gilbert to his rest at the same time my dad is being remembered, it is also fitting to recall how much alike they were. They really shared the same life.

• They were both Chicanos. Their lives began and ended very close to one another: Gilbert was born and died in the Imperial Valley. My dad was born and died next door in the Yuma, Arizona area.
• They both shared the migrant experience in California: Gilbert was one of 11 kids who traveled the migrant trails with his parents to almost every corner of the state. My dad endured the same terrible conditions with his parents and brothers and sisters.

They both labored with the short-handled hoe in the worst weather and under the most miserable conditions.

• Each of them ended their formal schooling after the eighth grade. They were forced to quit in order to help support their families. They even attended some of the same schools in Brawley.

• Both men worked hard to get out of agriculture: My dad went to work for the Community Service Organization, learning how to organize. Gilbert became a truck driver and a loader in a warehouse before going to work for California Rural Legal Assistance.

Then they returned to their roots, working with the poorest of the poor the farm workers. It became a lifelong pursuit and gave meaning to both of their lives.

In a tape-recorded interview just two and a half months before his passing, Gilbert described how Manuel Chavez sought him out in 1972, during a big strike in the cantaloupes, and asked, “You think you can help us for two weeks working for the union in Arizona?”

“Sure,” Gilbert answered. His time with the union lasted longer than two weeks.

• For both Gilbert and my dad, their commitment to the union involved much more than acts of personal sacrifice. It demanded genuine sacrifices by the whole family:

Working long hours day after day, week after week, often being away from home and family for long periods. Not being there for important events when their kids were growing up.

Working for nearly no pay— for just five dollars a week back then. Forcing their children to go without many of the things other fathers provided their kids.
Both Gilbert and my dad were torn by guilt, especially over missing precious time with their children.

Some fathers are distant; they don’t really want to spend time with their sons and daughters. Gilbert and my dad weren’t like that.

When Gilbert was disabled in an accident at work, he spent five years at home raising his young kids.

When my dad couldn’t be there for an important family event— a birthday or graduation— he would sit down and explain why to the appropriate son or daughter. He would try and help us understand.

It was the same with Gilbert.
“At first it was kind of hard for my six kids and with my family,” Gilbert recalled. “I was away from my house for many, many, many months” at a time.

“But somebody had to do it. I would talk to my kids when they were smaller [trying] to convince them somebody has to do it.

I told them that I was a chosen person to help out with the union. I think they understood, Now that we talk about it later, so many years later.”

For my father just like Gilbert, the work was so important the need was so great that it just had to be done.

Gilbert answered the same call to service. He believed if he didn’t do it, no one else would. It was the ultimate form of sacrifice.

Just a few months ago, Gilbert said, “Now I feel the things I was doing was the right way … to better not only the farm workers but their families.”

• Both Gilbert and my dad faced threats of death because of their work.

The nine-month long Arizona lemon strike in 1974, that Gilbert helped run, cost the growers millions of dollars.

It was so successful, Gilbert recalled, that “the trees had so many [unpicked] lemons they were falling down because of the weight.”

One day, strike leaders learned someone put up thirty thousand dollars each to kill Manuel Chavez, Gilbert Rodriguez and some of the other picket captains.

“Manuel told me, ‘You want to go home, go home,’” Gilbert remembered. “I told Manuel I’m not afraid,” Gilbert said. “I’m staying until the end of the strike.”

In the midst of one assassination threat in 1971, my dad said if someone wanted to kill him, he wasn’t going to run and hide because he was doing the right thing and he wasn’t afraid.

• Both Gilbert and my dad also went to jail for their convictions. My father was jailed many times for violating anti-picketing or anti-boycotting injunctions.

Gilbert along with 17 picket captains spent three weeks in jail for striking in Yuma during the lemon walkouts in 1974.

Gilbert, my dad and I went to jail together — along with over 100 strikers —at Bertuccio Farms in Hollister in 1982. That summer we all went to jail together again at Steakmate in Morgan Hill.

• Gilbert spent two periods of time assigned to security for my father. They spent months together, driving and having long talks throughout California and Arizona.

• Finally, both Gilbert and my dad never thought of quitting or stopping.

Until the day he died, my dad never stopped working or struggling.

Gilbert was asked last January if he had retired. “I haven’t retired yet,” he replied. “But I think I’m getting close to it. I think I’m getting close to it.”

Gilbert also never stopped working or struggling. “They used to call me the fireman because [I] would put out the fires,” Gilbert said. He got the toughest, most difficult assignments: the hardest organizing campaigns.

Always modest, Gilbert would add, “I didn’t think it was something special. It was part of my job. It’s the way I took it as an organizer.”

* * *
After getting news my father had passed away, Gilbert immediately made the drive from Calexico to San Luis, Arizona, to the cinder-block house of a former farm worker where my dad had been staying.

He arrived in time to see my father being carried out of the home on a gurney and transported to the morgue in Yuma. Gilbert followed him to the morgue. “They put him in a little room,” Gilbert said.

Gilbert waited there for hours while arrangements were made to fly my dad back to Bakersfield.
It was just the two of them. Gilbert never left his side. Gilbert was asked why he did that. “I didn’t want him to be alone,” Gilbert replied.

He began to cry. “He was like a brother to me. We were very very close.”

I don’t know if my dad ever told Gilbert how he felt about him.

Sometimes such things never get said between men like Gilbert and my father.

But deeds speak far more powerfully than words. My dad spent decades assigning Gilbert the hardest jobs and most difficult challenges when the welfare and the very future of the union they both loved was at stake.

My dad once said, “True wealth is not measured in money or status or power. It is measured in the legacy that we leave behind for those we love and those we inspire.

In that sense, Gilbert is a truly wealthy man. God Bless Gilbert Rodriguez.