Woman Ahead of the Times Made Her Mark

The Mexican steamer Benito Juarez docked in San Diego on April 10, 1913. On board was a tiny passenger, a girl from Tepic, Nayarit, who during the rest of the century in her adopted country would quietly create a private fortune.

Maria Dolores Hernandez was only 6 when she arrived, one of 68 people aboard the ship that also carried 1,864 pieces of mahogany, 25 bags of coffee, 1,800 crates of tomatoes and 13 Magdalena Bay turtles.

The girl had sailed with her mother and her younger brother, Carlos. Like thousands of immigrant families before and since, they came to be reunited with their husband and father, Jose Hernandez. He had settled earlier in Fullerton, where he worked for years as a ranch foreman.

Dolores, as her friends called her, later liked to joke that she and her family were “the original boat people.” They were part of an early exodus of immigrants who fled the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and started new lives in Orange County and elsewhere. But far from struggling as a refugee, Dolores quickly learned English, studied nursing, entered the military during World War II and retired 20 years later as a model citizen--and a millionaire.

When she died at 90 in 1997, this successful but anonymous immigrant left a permanent, public legacy in her name. Hernandez bequeathed an endowment of $750,000 to the nursing program at Cal State Fullerton. The fund, which has now grown to more than $1 million, provides scholarship money for nurses committed to working with the poor.

In addition, Hernandez, who never married and had no children, left another $750,000 to St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton, the city where she was raised and where she retired.

“I think what she did with her money was very wise,” said Geraldine Hone of Encinitas, a niece who inherited $25,000 from Aunt Dolores. “She wanted her name to live in perpetuity, and I think it will.”

A Posthumous Honor

Hernandez, who retired in 1960 from the U.S. Air Force at the rank of major, will be honored Nov. 6 at a Veterans Day event titled “A Tribute to Mexican American Veterans.” It’s Orange County’s third annual commemoration of Latino contributions to the military, sponsored by Latino Advocates for Education, a nonprofit group dedicated to ensuring academic achievement by Latino students.

The celebration will also pay tribute to three other veterans: Christopher “Gus” Loria, a Marine Corps major and astronaut; Capt. Danny Castillo, a Green Beret who participated in covert actions in Central and South America; and Joe Morris, a World War II Marine who was a Navajo “code talker,” using his native language as secret code during the war.

The gates open at 11 a.m. and admission is free. The event starts at 1 p.m. sharp with a flyover by two F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets, the type used by the Blue Angels. At 2:30 p.m., a parachute demonstration jump is scheduled by the Aztec Skydiving Team, an outfit composed of veterans who are all Latinos and all grandfathers.

The patriotic theme would have pleased Hernandez.

“She just loved the United States and all the opportunities it afforded,” said Hone.

Dolores’ father could not read or write, Hone recalled. But he believed in education for his children. Fresh off the boat, literally, the family arrived in Fullerton on a Friday and Dolores was enrolled in school the following Monday.

She got good grades and excellent marks in comportment and application, according to her 4th-grade report card at Fullerton Grammar School during the 1916-17 academic year. But she didn’t get her high school diploma until 1933, 10 years after her expected graduation date.

Hone says she can’t explain the delay, but she notes that her aunt always worked. Among her several jobs, Hernandez was a housekeeper, a paid companion and a sales clerk in the hosiery section of a department store.

Her diploma from Santa Ana High School was earned at night. And, inexplicably once again, it was granted three years after the date of her nursing diploma from Orange County General Hospital, where she completed a 36-month course. Perhaps she studied for both degrees simultaneously.

She became a registered nurse in California in 1940, and in December of that year, with war raging in Europe, she was called into active duty by the Army Nurse Corps.

Hernandez remained in the service after the war. She switched to the Air Force and was stationed throughout the United States, the far East and Europe.

Though she never married, Hernandez was evidently involved in a serious romance during World War II. Hone said her aunt spoke of having met “the love of her life,” a serviceman who worked as a war correspondent. She didn’t mention his name but would compare him to Ernie Pyle, the renowned war reporter.

Hernandez lost her true love before the war was over. She would often say he died in action.

“She just never found anybody that ever measured up to him, and she was very particular,” Hone said.

Hernandez accumulated her wealth through savvy real estate investments while on the move in the military. She’d buy property wherever she was stationed and she’d sell when she moved to the next location. Her profits were wisely socked away in the stock market, her niece said.

Hernandez also inherited real estate from her father who, in typical immigrant fashion, had invested in several properties back home. When he died, he left the land along with a part of his green card. The residency document, for some reason, had been cut in half.

Hernandez would hold the surviving half in her hands and would often say she wished she had the other half of the crucial immigrant document.

Jose Hernandez never applied to be a U.S. citizen. The man who fled his homeland, said Hone, never wanted to relinquish his Mexican nationality.

His daughter, who considered herself a proud American, will now be honored as a Mexican-American veteran. Hone said her aunt never identified herself by her ethnicity and had mostly non-Mexican friends.

That’s no problem for Rick Aguirre, an attorney who organizes the event. He says the point of the tribute is to “try to mainstream our culture” by showing that Mexican Americans and other Latinos have made contributions to society like all other Americans.

Do Latinos have cause to be proud of Maj. Maria Dolores Hernandez, I asked her niece.

“Sure,” she said, “if they want to be.”