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My name is Maria R. Chavez. I came from the Rojas Family from Chandler. Looking back to my memories of Chandler, I have to look at my present life to see to see it clearly. Lots of memories. Let me share this, and you will see how it connects to the present.

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I went to kindergarten at Winn School. My teacher’s name was Mrs. Mendoza. She was young and pretty, but I cried every day that my mother left me there. You see I only knew Spanish.  Anyway, years later in 1991, when my youngest daughter started high school in Phoenix, we enrolled in a program called Hispanic Mothers and Daughters. ASU put this program on to encourage girls and mothers to go to college. We would have meetings at ASU, where they would have a guest speaker. Well, at the last meeting, guess who the speaker was?  Why, Mrs. Mendoza, who was sitting by me. I didn’t know who she was until she said that she that she started at Winn School, first job as a teacher. I literally interrupted her, and we hugged.

Another teacher I remember was my 7th grade teacher. I told him I wasn’t going to school anymore because my parents didn’t have enough money to send all of us kids to school. Years later, after I had my own family, I looked him up in the phone book. I found him and called him. In our conversations, he told me something I’ll never forget. He said that when I told him I couldn’t go to school anymore, he and his wife talked about adopting me. I just love teachers; they should be in the book, so their families know the great job they did for us.

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The families I remember while growing up in Southside from 1946-1960 were the Villas, Vidals, Morales and Granillos. My family lived on Washington and Elgin streets.

My other memory of food was that our mother used to pack our lunches. Well, my mother only cooked Mexican food at home. For our lunches, she had to learn how to make hamburgers. You see she couldn’t make us any burritos because the other kids would make fun and look down on us. How funny now everyone wants Mexican food.

In the Mexican culture, they didn’t use recipes -- not that I can remember. The popular dish at our house was albondigas soup. The meat used was oxtails and a lot of vegetables. I remember there was corn (on the cob), green beans and cabbage.