She was born on December 13, 1912 (the same year the Titanic sank) in Majistral del Oro, Durango, Mexico to Asunion Seanez (father) and Josefa Pereira de Seanez (mother).
One of eight children, Otilia had 3 brothers and 4 sisters (all deceased now) and was a survivor of the smallpox plague. As a child in La Boquilla, Chihuahua, Mexico, she witnessed Pancho Villa sweep into town to execute a "compadre" he believed was complicit in a plot to poison him. "All the children ran to the arroyo as Pancho Villa's men took his compadre there and shot him dead, then burned his house down," Granny told me some 25 years ago about her first-hand observation. She also told me that Pancho Villa would often come into a town or village and find the prettiest young lady and make her his wife (at the point of a rifle barrell to the girl's father). She recalls a friend, a beautiful green eyed girl named Manuela, that Pancho Villa took as his "bride." He had wives all over Mexico, Granny told me.
In 1944, she left Chihuahua with her 3 young children - Guadalupe (my mother), Salvador and Bertha - and immigrated to the U.S. to join her husband, Jose Morales, who had come north to Modesto to work. They settled in a barrio south of the Tuolumne River that was nicknamed "Little Juarez" because of the concentration of residents from the Mexican state of Chihuahua who settled there.
Otilia and Jose divorced in the early 1960's and she remarried Raymond Saunders - a man she'd met on a bus excursion to the casinos of Lake Tahoe - circa 1967.
Granny was an avid gambler and had great luck in getting the slot machines to pay off ("Unlucky in love, lucky in the game," was one of her sayings). Despite her religious devotion (or perhaps, because of it) she still held to a certain degree of superstition. She would often call me up (as an adult) and tell me, "Your horoscope says this" and she'd watch the daily predictions of the freakish Walter Mercado on Spanish language television.
She was, however, the sharpest wit of anyone I've ever known in my life. She remembered EVERYTHING and could give a perfect comeback without missing a beat. Once, I told her that I'd realized that she and her husband Ray reminded me very much (in looks and demeanor) of the "All In The Family" television show characters Archie and Edith Bunker. She responded immediately, "Oh yeah, you remind me of Meat Head!"
She loved and doted on her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She took me to get my social security number at the age of about 11 so I could work picking grapes, boysenberries and any host of other crops that grow in the rich agricultural land in California's Central Valley. She loved fishing, fiestas - an occasional beer - the Mexican pastry bunuelos that would be prepared for special occasions like New Years. Her favorite food was a chile relleno. And she LOVED Lupita's capirotada. A gnarled fig tree still grows in the yard of her home of 60 years and countless jars of fig jam were preserved in the black and white tiled-floor kitchen of her home.
She was a friend to all and was known throughout the community as "Granny" or "Dona Otilia."
May you rest in peace, my beautiful Guardian Angel. Amen...
Posted by: Adrian / 10:21 AM
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