Joe Gonzales: He learned the value of hard work, service early on

His mother told him to build a shoeshine box and make use of it. She wanted him to learn "you have to work for what you want," he recalled in 2002 when he was honored by the University of Arizona Hispanic Alumni Club.

As a young man, he earned little more than $3 a day doing backbreaking work as a pick-and-shovel man for Magma Copper, but he saved enough to pay his college tuition.

His military service led to civilian jobs in Washington, D.C., where he worked for the government and oversaw agencies with multibillion-dollar budgets.

Hard work, he knew, equaled success. It was a simple formula he planned to pass along to future generations through his memoirs. Gonzales had spent his retirement years in Tucson and Pinetop writing about his family's history, which was entwined with the history of the state, the mining industry and changing cultural views.

It is a book left unfinished. Gonzales died Sept. 16 from heart failure. He was 88.

Gonzales will be remembered at a funeral Mass at 11 a.m. today at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church, 8650 N. Shannon Road. Graveside services with full military honors begin at 10:30 a.m. Saturday at Holy Hope Cemetery, 3555 N. Oracle Road.

Gonzales was one of five children born in Bowie to Frank, an entrepreneur, and Louisa, a real estate and insurance broker.

His paternal grandfather had a concession with a freight company in Tucson, hauling silver ore in 20-mule-team wagons between Pinal City and Florence. The usual trail along Queen Creek washed out with each heavy rain, so Gonzales' grandfather carved out a safer, shorter route, which later was named Gonzales Pass and incorporated into the U.S. Highway 60-70 route.

After graduating from Superior High School, Joe Gonzales worked for a mine, earning $3.10 a day, saving enough money to enroll at Arizona State College in Tempe.

Growing up in Superior, Gonzales remembered his mother feeding the unemployed drifters who passed through town looking for work, and his father, who ran a small grocery store, giving away food to those in need. It was this concern for the well-being of others that they instilled in their children.

When Gonzales' own parents fell on hard times, he dropped out of college to help support the family.

Once their fortunes improved, Gonzales joined the Citizen Military Training Corps instead of returning to college. He was stationed at Fort Huachuca, and a year later he enlisted in the Army Air Corps. He served on bomber flight crews in the early months of World War II before being recruited by the Air Force and sent to Yale University for communications training. During his years of military service, Gonzales was special assistant to commanders in Spain and at the Pentagon. After the war, he earned degrees in foreign service and public administration from the UA.

While awaiting his security clearance in Washington, D.C., after passing the two-day written foreign-service exam, he took a job with U.S. Sen. Carl Hayden, D-Ariz., as a legislative assistant. By the time his clearance came through, Gonzales had decided to turn down the foreign-service job.

Hayden wasn't just Gonzales' boss. He was the young man's matchmaker, encouraging Opal Johnson, a receptionist from Alabama, to go on a date with Gonzales.

She was working — and living — in the United Methodist Building in Washington, where many congressmen and justices stayed. Initially, Johnson wasn't interested in the legislative assistant.

"He would sometimes come by my desk going to the senator's apartment and he'd say hello and ask me on dates, but I was busy," said Opal Gonzales. "I mainly dated FBI agents because they made me feel safe."

As she got to know Gonzales, she realized he was "a salt of the earth person. I came from solid stock, and I needed a solid rock," said his wife of 57 years. And it didn't hurt that he had the endorsement of the senator.

In 1950, two years after joining Hayden's staff, Gonzales was sent to Mexico City to manage the bracero program for the U.S. Department of Labor and Employment. He and Johnson were engaged by then, and they wed a year later in Mexico, where their only child, Thomas, was born.

Gonzales facilitated the movement of up to 6,000 people a day from small Mexican villages to farms in the United States as part of the bracero program, according to a 2006 Tucson Citizen article. The program provided a legalized path for much-needed workers and allowed U.S. administrators to track who was coming into the country, Gonzales said.

"When a guy would come, we'd look at their hands. If they had calluses and were rough, we knew that they were workers," Gonzales said. "But if their hands were soft and supple, we knew this guy was a secretary. 'Afuera! Out!' We rejected them."

After five years, Gonzales was called back to Washington for a new appointment. He was the first Hispanic to serve as staff director of a U.S. Senate Appropriations subcommittee, where he oversaw 53 federal departments and agencies and their budgets, which totaled nearly $50 billion annually. Because he was fluent in Spanish, Gonzales escorted members of Congress when they made trips to Latin America, and he served as a translator for President John F. Kennedy during his 1962 trip to Mexico.

Gonzales, who learned to fly planes as a teen, joined the 9999th Combined Air Force (Reserve) Squadron made up of congressmen and staffers that was established on Capitol Hill in 1961 by U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz. Gonzales co-founded the Congressional Flying Club and the Washington Civil Air Patrol Wing and established the Senate radio station W3USS with Goldwater.

It was while working for the subcommittee that Gonzales met U.S. Sen. Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz.

"This guy was so influential as a staff member," said DeConcini. "This guy is just a perfect example of the American system working if you're willing to work at it. He was willing to work at it and paid his price with his military service, made contributions, was a generous person."

Gonzales left Washington in 1974 after 34 years, returning to Tucson to become special assistant secretary of the treasury for law enforcement, operations and tariff affairs, coordinating the activities of the U.S. Customs Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms with other federal, state, local and Mexico agencies.

In 1975, Gonzales was appointed to the Arizona-Mexico Commission by then-Gov. Raul H. Castro.

Over the years, he continued his service work in Southern Arizona and Mexico — as president of the Pimeria Alta Historical Society Museum in Nogales, Ariz.; president of the Arizona State Society of Washington, D.C.; co-founder of the University of the Americas in Mexico; director and chairman for the Arizona Automobile Association; and member of the Pima County Sheriff's Aero Squadron.

"He was a dear person," said his wife. "Not flashy or anything. He was a self-made man."

the series

This feature chronicles the lives of recently deceased Tucsonans. Some were well-known across the community. Others had an impact on a smaller sphere of friends, family and acquaintances. Many of these people led interesting — and sometimes extraordinary — lives with little or no fanfare. Now you'll hear their stories.

On StarNet

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