John Lizarraga and Lynn Lizarraga

00:02 My name is John lizarraga. Sometimes pronounce lizarraga and in Spanish. It's Lisa Vega.

00:10 I am 63 years old.

00:13 Today is Saturday, November 23rd 2019 and we are in Yuma Arizona the name of my interview partner is Lynn who is my wife?

00:26 My name is Lindley sciatica. I'm 64 years old today is Saturday, November 23rd 2019. We're here in Yuma, Arizona, and I'm here with my husband John.

00:47 Then I was going to ask you some questions about your life being different than what you imagined. How has your life been different? I'm from upstate New York and I always thought that I would live in cold country and have snow and never dreamed that I would end up here in Yuma, Arizona, but when I was a child, I always dreamed I would be a missionary to Mexico. So I'm I'm pretty close. I got pretty close to that.

01:17 And what kind of student were you in New York? It's interesting that I ended up being a teacher because I was probably not my teacher's favorite student. I was always talking. I'm very gregarious in the classroom. I was always

01:38 Like we would have rubber cement in a jar and I would follow it up and throw it across the room to my classmates behind the teachers back. We passed notes because I was bored. I was a very good student. I finished my work before anybody else. I'm very proud of myself that I could do 60 multiplication questions in less than a minute. I

02:06 Want a scholarship to college because I was so good at my Regents exams in New York state you have to take in order to graduate. You have to take what they call Regents exams and I scored 100% on my geometry and algebra exams and I was offered a scholarship to go to college because of those scores. So I'm I'm pretty proud of the fact that although I was fairly outgoing student. I was also a very diligent love doing homework. Love to learn and I think that's why I became a teacher

02:47 Was there a teacher or teachers who had particularly strong influence in your life tell me about them. I can tell you stories about every single one of my teachers. I loved all of them because in third grade Mrs. Jasper lettuce, make butter out of whole milk fresh milk and we passed it around the room and shook it tow. It made butter. And then we put it on saltine crackers and I still love that as a snack because of that experience in third grade and fourth grade Mrs. Florence Wagner was one of my very favorite teacher because she allowed me. She knew that I was a very

03:30 Could you could you my work quickly much more quickly than most of the other students so she made up a place in the back of the room and put encyclopedias back there and she let me go back there and draw.

03:45 And that was a difficult time because my parents were getting divorced that year.

03:52 And she really took the time to care.

03:58 How about a little girl who had a lot of issues going on?

04:06 In 7th grade, I had a teacher mrs. Miller.

04:12 I think I got more gregarious as I got into my teen years. You could ask my mother about that but mrs. Miller was the first person to ever. Give me an unsatisfactory on my report card.

04:28 And to teach me a lesson that wasn't really fair to the other students to keep being gregarious.

04:41 And taking attention away from the learning that was supposed to be going on.

04:49 And then in high school, I had died answer monkey and Sally Rider and they were mine to PE teachers and I love them dearly because they both let me be a teacher aide and

05:05 So I got instead of having to go to study hall and watch people throw spit wads around I got to go and help out in the PE classes.

05:15 That was really a lot of fun and I was a good athlete so cuz I played field hockey and then lot of things.

05:27 So those are those are my very favorite teachers.

05:32 So when did you decide to become a teacher yourself?

05:36 My mom and my dad are both teachers were both teachers and my mom.

05:46 Trump migrant summer school and so she allowed me. She knew that I had an interest in Chelsea like the free help. So I went with her everyday, but she taught summer school and helped with the the migrants. They were workers who came up from Florida every year to New York and worked in the onion fields, and she she brought some of the students home with her and it was interesting to me that was quite an eye-opener to how other people lived because the children had a brand new suitcase brand new toothbrush a brand new pair of pajamas, and I don't know how much of their salary that must have taken to be able to go to teachers house.

06:36 So I think my mom was the biggest influence on me becoming a teacher because she let me start when I was 13 teaching Sunday school and helping her in her classroom during the summer time in a course after school, you know, we walked over and we had things to do in her classroom to help her so we can go home.

06:58 How is teaching different from how you imagined it to be? Well, I thought that teaching was going to be fun. But I found out that teaching is a lot of work to lot of preparation. It's a very thankless job because in a lot of ways because

07:17 The students a lot of the students don't want to take responsibility for learning. I always wanted to learn so I just couldn't understand why they didn't want to learn for learning's say good night. Tired of answering the question. Why do we have to know this because I was teaching algebra then why do we have to know this but why not? You know, how do you know when you're going to use a squared plus b squared equals c squared. You never know what your life is going to bring my not be ready for everything.

07:50 There's in the as as we became more technologically using technology in our classrooms. There was a lot more emailing with the parents. We had to start posting grades every two weeks and it was if a parent wanted a grade check we had to run to the computer and print a grade check at any time and everything always had to be kept up-to-date and we had to post lesson plans online and their salaries didn't go up but the workload certainly did so it it

08:25 Too bad because I really feel like students are not artistic and creative and Musical and they don't have all those life skills anymore. And I I miss that.

08:40 Tell me about a time when teaching made you feel hopeful.

08:46 Which one you and I were working together at McCabe and I had a student named Frank Azar and he was a troubled kid. Like I had been probably had a lot going on in his life and I was the only teacher who stood up for him against the principal doctor black and it didn't do any good but you still got kicked out of the school, but can you bring me a poem and I still have the poem?

09:21 What is the most challenging but rewarding moments you've experienced in the classroom?

09:28 I loved the fact that I got to teach gate students that I was able to talk to. I felt like on a good level that they understood some of the concepts that I wanted them the connections. I wanted them to make between art and math and music and math and life and meth and I think that the most rewarding teaching job I had was when I was selected to teach at San Diego State with Doctor phone say and I was the only non-hispanic staff members selected to work with Hispanic students migrant students and it took me back to working with my mom on the first teaching job that I I had besides Sunday school was working with her with my current students and I really loved that job and it was you could be very creative and we used a lot of

10:28 And games and food to teach math.

10:34 How would you like your students to remember you as someone with high expectations, but for myself just as much as for them and that I always appreciated their hard work. So thanks John.

10:50 Good pretty good trip down memory lane.

10:54 Yeah, a lot of emotions of tied to it, but good emotions to happy memories.

11:00 I wasn't expecting that.

11:05 What about your childhood? I know that you have had some very interesting experiences. I'd sure like to hear about what happened to you as a child a lot of what I know about. My childhood was shared with me by older siblings. So my life began in Mexicali and our family was very poor.

11:30 And of course very close to the Border. My dad was a mechanic and he staying was Isaac.

11:39 And he wanted to better have a better life for his family. So he had a good friend on the US side who helped him get a job in Brawley at the Ford dealership.

11:52 And at that time you needed you.

11:55 The person who wanted to Immigrant like my dad in order for him to bring the rest of the family. He had to have an established job. And so he he was fortunate enough to get a mechanic's job for Ford in Brawley, California.

12:13 And again, this is all information that was shared with me by my older siblings because I have no recollection of that but

12:24 When

12:26 There were eight children. My mother whose name is Isabella. She had a children by the time all the paperwork was ready for the immigration to take place. And I was the eighth child there were five sisters and two brothers in myself who immigrated to Brawley we lived in Brawley and my dad worked and my mother was about a year-and-a-half later pregnant again for the number 9 and then went into the Brawley hospital to give birth.

13:03 Tu VI daughter whose name is Mary.

13:09 And it was again. There's really no understanding of what really took place other than my mother had a lot of breathing problems. You was asthmatic and during childbirth, there's complications that that happened and the only way that they could I guess the doctors were trying to figure out what to do with the nurses and they were able to save Mary but my mother died in childbirth

13:42 At that point this was in the mid 50's.

13:47 We were you know living in a small house.

13:51 And my dad could afford to a rented in Brawley and the older siblings with my sister Phyllis and

14:01 She in the next sister who is the oldest would take turns Rosemary and Phyllis we take turns staying home with myself who is still a toddler and then the baby Mary and that went on for a while. The other siblings went to school.

14:24 In the meantime our neighbor found out that that's what's going on and turn this turn the family into truancy and the truancy officer then took a home visit and it was decided that the children would be taken away from my father and a court order that put us all in foster homes. So at

14:53 The way they did it is the boys the three boys were first moved to Niland California under one family. The girls were paired up. The oldest sister Phyllis was paired up with the youngest baby Mary and Mary got adopted by the family. That was the foster parent for fellows.

15:14 And the only communication we had because that was in El Centro the boys were an island 30 miles away at least and I don't know what happened. But we then moved out of that the boys were against split up and for some reason I think my oldest brother said he didn't want us to be there anymore.

15:36 And the social worker put us all in all the boys in separate foster homes. My brother went to Calexico right next to Mexicali On the Border my brother the Middle Brother Isaac and myself were in separate homes in El Centro.

15:55 I was with a family called the chapmans. Mr. And mrs. Chapman had already had some foster children and I was two-and-a-half at the time that that that happened evidently the middle by Middle Brother Isaac was asking about whores Johnny where you know, he was concerned and he told his social worker and even though he was with another family the palominos across town.

16:24 They asked mrs. Chapman if she would take Isaac and she said of course so Isaac and I grew up together and we went to elementary school in a brand-new Elementary School desert Gardens in a new neighborhood. And what's interesting about it is that I look back now I can see that the town was very divided by what economic abilities of family had most of the black families in Hispanic families were on one side of the town. But I was being raised by our keys the chapmans and so the most of the neighborhood was white and glow in the school and I literally can look back and remember on my hands the the other Hispanic family they were too and then my best friend who was black on the other who is my neighbor.

17:21 His name is Aaron. Aaron Johnson. He was the other black family in the whole neighborhood.

17:30 And at that point

17:34 It was interesting. I can look back now and see that. I knew I was different but I didn't feel any different. I remember mrs. Chapman act actually telling me.

17:43 That I said, well somebody was saying something and I said, well he is as white as me and I was referring to myself. I really my identity was Anglo and so I didn't have the Spanish language. I may have had a little bit, you know when I was an infant in until I moved into this family.

18:05 And so at that point

18:08 I went through 6th grade and it wasn't until I went to Junior High and we had all the elementary schools merging into one from all sites of the city that I realized that there were other people that look like me and unfortunately, you know again your kid.

18:27 Children will be children. They saw that I didn't speak Spanish on the Hispanic side, and they would tease me.

18:35 At the same time the I had my white friends and my black friend who would you know defend me and then other white friends that I became friends with and in the junior high with then say, well, you shouldn't be friends. He's a Mexican and so there was this back and forth trying to understand my identity through High School.

19:01 And about the age of 14.

19:04 My parents, mr. And mrs. Chapman. I went home and actually happened when I was in seventh grade went home and she was not there and I had this intuition that there was something wrong when I came home cuz I would come home for you no milk and cookies and then one was there and so I thought something must be wrong. So I don't know why but I open the closet of their room and looked up in the luggage was gone.

19:34 And I knew my mother had left.

19:37 And long story short, she had left and with a family friend and he was in the Navy and they were up in Oakland area. And so this was a huge change that was about to happen in my life. Was that lie on his name is Leroy. So at that point I didn't hear from my mom for a little bit. I mean there was some communication the social worker got involved. They interviewed my mr. Chapman. He was also a mechanic and for the Imperial County Road Department, and he then, you know, we were just men, you know twice batching it in a kind of sort of thing and we were there so I guess we had to take up cooking and taking care of the house and the lawn and things that normal families would do but without a mother for a Time

20:36 Approximately a year later mrs. Chapman married Leroy and they came back and they were visiting and thinks it's settled down somewhat. There was another daughter who is my foster sister Donna and my older brother.

20:56 That Eldon Chapman who was already in in the military.

21:02 And she then they they had some communication and my mother and Leroy asked me if they if I wanted to move them to Memphis. So I said yes cuz I was mad at my mr. Chapman at the time Isaac, you know was 3 years older than me. He was already in high school and he was already ready to enough to do what he was going to do and he wasn't happy about it. He never really said anything to me, but I went off and move to Memphis with Leroy and mrs. Chapman who is now Mrs Burgess.

21:40 And it was night in the early 70s and what I remember is I went to a military Community called Millington outside of Memphis. And what I noticed is that we went to a a country school there at that country high school cuz I was a freshman at the time.

22:01 They had separate there was an old three-story building and they had separate walkways to stairs to get up into the first floor and I did noticed by looking at the water to get water. It did say the coloreds water fountain and the white skull water fountain. This is a few years after Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis. So there definitely was this big ship that was going on in America and civil rights, and I was a freshman in high school at the time not really understanding a lot of what was going on. So I had a Navy brat they called him best friend who who told me well,

22:51 Since you're going to a lot of people thought that I was Native American so I could I could drink water at either water fountain. How did that go? It didn't matter that. They really like the fact that I was from California. And the first thing they ask me is have you been to Hollywood? Are you close to Hollywood that was there their concept of California? And of course I use that and said, yeah, I've been to Hollywood and not really hadn't but it made me popular because I didn't know where to fit in there were no Hispanics at the school that I remember they were only blacks and whites and some Native Americans.

23:36 Locals so that I attempted to live with the Burgess for about six months, but then I found out that my my that her husband was didn't like me. I was in a teenager lashing out at that you have upset saying the wrong things and getting in trouble and then at that time day because of the it was a friction on their marriage and they said that we're going to send you back when it said you back to El Centro. How did you travel back to well my mother took the Greyhound with me she traveled with me took me all the way back after was a had been a lot of fighting, you know and upset but they thought that was the best thing to do because of their marriage. I'm sure.

24:29 And when I came back I came back to the same. It was actually a juvenile hall in Imperial was the same building all of us had been in before when we were transitioning when we were very young after take taking us out of the

24:46 Out of my dad's family and putting us into foster homes. That's where we were for a time until we were distributed into foster homes with it Los Ninos. No it was but it was because it was part of juvenile hall. It was just another section of juvenile hall. So and I never understood why they would mix, you know children who didn't have a home with children who were in trouble. So it was not evidently very pleasant. Especially when I went back as it ninth-grader, but it didn't last long fortunately. Another family was looking for foster care and they had owned a laundry business Rub-a-Dub-Dub and they were the duffs and they took me in and they had three other brother's sons and a daughter so I was raised in another family. So I've call in my third mother and father.

25:42 Just going back a little bit. My dad my real dad with by name. We saw that I got whom I only remember one visit when I was maybe five or six.

25:53 At the age of eight I found out from the social worker that he had died and my middle brother Isaac said I don't want to go to the funeral. So I agreed with him. I just looked a little brother. I don't want to go so we didn't go the other siblings went we found out later that their foster parents, you know allowed them to go if they wanted to go but I didn't get to go to the funeral. So the duff having all that information knowing that I had been, you know, the big for the social worker giving them the history of myself in the trouble that I was going through in as a teenager. They took me in any way they had teenage boys who were into trouble just getting into drugs not all of them, but the two older ones and they were very strong people because they held their marriage together through very difficult time.

26:51 And it was an early time when?

26:55 Parents were judged by their kids drug problem and no one understood it, but they would say well then it must be the parents fault that they took started experimenting with drugs.

27:05 It's on my parents who were had been raised in the Presbyterian Church. They once their friends found out that their kids were, you know in juvenile hall and having all these problems they began to kind of ostracize them. And so they didn't feel comfortable in the church that they were head attendant for years and they were literally my mother's mother was one of the first people of families that were in Imperial Valley and she's come over in a covered wagon from San Diego and worked in the cheese factory in Holtville, and eventually she threw her hard work and her and her name was torrents. Mr. And mrs. Torrance started the farm implements and my mother was very hard-working. She married, mr. Duff.

27:59 And at that time they ate again took took me and made me part of the family raised me and encourage me they keep you from feeling the ostracism that they were facing when from the community they then went into another type of church. It was a new church forming a new I was called new thought Church of religious science and they had some family. They had some friends that formed the church in Imperial in El Centro. And so they were the founding people or families that started that church and it was a very open-minded church that accepted everyone's background, whatever you wherever you came and and always encouraged the good in the positive. So it was at that time that they also are transferred that knowledge to me.

28:57 And by the time I went to college the laundry business was something that they wanted to get out of they were dry cleaning and washing where items were fewer people were using dry cleaning. So they went back to college the same year. I went back to college and they did a fast-track and became a new careers when it to both my dad became a counselor at the junior college my mom became executive secretary for the Housing Authority also.

29:33 Weird that they would eventually be ran for the board for the Junior College Imperial Valley College. And ironically then that takes me to where I decided to to continue to go to school and one of the things they notice that I wasn't fitting in in in the high school setting having come back having all the trouble that I had. So again, they made another shift they had friends and they formed a new school the news are you just for me literally because the other the other brothers the other brother, my brother Pat was already very into sports and he was comfortable in the high school. I wasn't comfortable in the high school light started to feel discriminated by a high school geography teacher because he never picked on me. He he would say some things under his breath about Mexicans and here I am

30:33 Growing up not really having an identity of who I was I was offended by and I told my counselor the counselor told my parents and that's when they started the free school in Imperial Valley. It was based off of Summerfield in England. It was learn what you want to learn and there were two teachers that they that took the job and they converted at Old restaurant near the Naval facility called the flight line which used to be a bar and they converted into a K-12 school and they were about 20 families who've sent their kids there. So that was a whole different experience to be in that setting.

31:17 Might the couple that took it was Ross who was the guitar player musician and his wife was an artist. So the art and music in me, which I it was always in me was able to be expressed in my junior year and that then inspired me to want to take up Marty music. So I took up the guitar and started learning and one of the my graduating requirements was to take a political science class, and I got to choose the other class and it was a Ceramics class at the junior college. So I started my senior year actually taking college courses and then just graduated in the end of my junior year and just went on to college and that took me into becoming wanting to become an art teacher.

32:10 I became an art teacher my music music increased and when I graduated from San Diego State, I actually had an art degree went to try to find a job and couldn't find a job. They were laying off all the art teachers and music teachers thought there wasn't there was a superintendent who knew that I was an art major and said, hey, I know you have all this art background. I know, you know all about the our history. We need to 7th and 8th grade social studies teacher. So that would be great. You also play the guitar. You can start it's Tuesday and Tina. So I was the art teacher / music teacher / social studies teacher for that school district for about 4 years.

32:57 And then life went on I got married to my first wife and we had two daughters and then we both met at a school that I was at, you know teacher you thinking about you and me. Yes. Yes at that by that time. I had already been into education probably 15 years and you were starting your teaching position and I was your Mentor teacher is a we got to know each other work with each other your music side of what you integrated in mathematics with complimentary to a my music and art that I integrated into language arts.

33:37 We had that in common, but we were both married at the time and it wouldn't be for 10 years that we would meet up again at a coffee shop near the Brawley Junior High where you were that we would meet and neither of us were married at the time and I invited you to a carne asada and that was near your town that you were leaving are in the town you were living in in Calipatria. And at that time we just fell in love and we decided to get married about two years later and we've been married now for 12 years. We just celebrated our 12th anniversary on November 10th. So we have always had.

34:25 The education part of us. I got out of Education after I got laid off at like I was teaching a language development and Imperial Valley College for about 15 years in the budget crashed and a lot of the language arts and other teachers were laid off. So that's when I got into marketing.

34:45 And so I got into Marketing sales that takes me to where I'm at today where I work for the IHG hotels Candlewood Suites in Holiday Inns in which an interesting is that their own by Canadians and Yuma is a snowbird town and that was a great place for them to build hotels.