"Bullitt" Actor Don Gordon 2017 Westwood Village Cemetery

Don Gordon (born Donald Walter Guadagno; November 13, 1926 – April 24, 2017)[2] was an American film and television actor, who was sometimes billed as Donald Gordon.

Career

Gordon's television successes began with a starring role in the 1960–1961 syndicated series The Blue Angels, based on the elite precision flight demonstration pilots of the United States Navy Blue Angels.[3]

In 1962, Gordon was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for his role as Joey Tassili on CBS's legal drama, The Defenders,[4] starring E.G. Marshall. During 1977–1978, he co-starred in the television show Lucan,[3]:632 and he played Harry in the CBS drama The Contender (1980).[3]:207

His most notable film roles were those in which he appeared alongside his friend Steve McQueen: 

Bullitt, 

Papillon, 

and The Towering Inferno.

Additional television appearances

Gordon appeared in the 1959 episode "In a Deadly Fashion" of the syndicated television series Border Patrol, starring Richard Webb. He also guest starred in John Bromfield's syndicated crime drama, U.S. Marshal. Another early appearance from Gordon was in a memorable supporting role in CBS's The Twilight Zone episodes 

"The Four of Us Are Dying" 

and "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross."

During 1959 and 1960, Gordon twice guest starred on McQueen's CBS western series, Wanted: Dead or Alive. In 1962, he appeared in "The Ginny Littlesmith Story" of ABC's The Untouchables. In 1963, he appeared in the episode "Without Wheat, There is No Bread" of the CBS anthology series, The Lloyd Bridges Show. That same year, he appeared on NBC's medical drama, The Eleventh Hour. In the 1963–64 season, he played a soldier returning from South Vietnam in the ABC drama, Channing, set on the fictitious Channing College campus.

Still another 1963 performance was as Quinn Serrato, with Harry Dean Stanton as Nick Crider and William Schallert as Sully Mason, in the episode "Nobody Dies on Saturday" of the NBC modern western series, Empire. Gordon appeared in two episodes of The Outer Limits entitled 

"The Invisibles" 

and "Second Chance."

In 1964, Gordon appeared as deputy sheriff Morgan Fallon in "Tug Of War" an episode of The Fugitive series. 

In 1967, he appeared as Charlie Gilman in "The Trial," an episode in the second season of "The Invaders" series, and appeared in an episode of The Wild Wild West. 

In 1974, he played a former convict who is set up and murdered by the character played by Dick Van Dyke in the Columbo episode "Negative Reaction," starring Peter Falk.

Gordon played the U.S. Navy diving expert brother of Seaview crewman Kowalski in the Voyage to the Botton of the Sea episode "Deadly Waters." In 1983, Gordon appeared on CBS's The Dukes Of Hazzard as hit man Frank Scanlon, in the sixth season episode "Enos' Last Chance."

Later career

Gordon's last credited film work was the 2005 documentary, Steve McQueen – The Essence of Cool. Gordon was interviewed along with several others who had worked with McQueen, with whom he was a close friend and colleague.

Personal life

On February 18, 1948, Gordon married actress Helen Westcott in Oxnard, California.[5] They divorced in 1953.[6][7] He married actress Bek Nelson on December 31, 1959, in Los Angeles. They adopted a daughter in 1966, and they divorced on May 23, 1979.[8]

Gordon died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center[2] in Los Angeles on April 24 2017, aged 90, survived by a wife and daughter from a previous marriage.[9] He is interred at Westwood Village Memorial Park. 

Selected filmography

Twelve O'Clock High (1949) - First Patient in Base Hospital (uncredited)
Halls of Montezuma (1951) - Marine (uncredited)
Let's Go Navy! (1951) - Sailor (uncredited)
Force of Arms (1951) - Sgt. Webber (uncredited)
It's a Big Country: An American Anthology (1951) - Mervin (uncredited)

Girls in the Night (1953) - Irv Kellener

Law and Order (1953) - Bart Durling (uncredited)
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) - Soldier (uncredited)
Revolt at Fort Laramie (1956) - Jean Salignac
The Benny Goodman Story (1956) - Tough Boy in Gang (uncredited)
The Walter Winchell File "The Bargain" (1958) - Deek
Cry Tough (1959) - Incho
The Outer Limits (Season 1, Episode 19, The Invisibles) (1964) - Agent Luis B. Spain
Combat! (Season 4, Episode 8, Crossfire) (1965) - Pvt. Stevens

The Lollipop Cover (1965) - Nick Bartaloni

Bullitt (1968) - Delgetti
The Gamblers (1970) - Rooney

WUSA (1970) - Bogdanovich

Cannon for Cordoba (1971) - Jackson Harkness

The Last Movie (1971) - Neville Robey

Z.P.G. (1972) - George Borden

Fuzz (1972) - Anthony La Bresca

Slaughter (1972) - Harry
The Mack (1973) - Hank
The Return of Charlie Chan (1973) - Lambert
Papillon (1973) - Julot
The Education of Sonny Carson (1974) - Pigliani
The Towering Inferno (1974) - Kappy

Out of the Blue (1980) - Charlie

Omen III: The Final Conflict (1981) - Harvey Dean, assistant of the Antichrist Damien Thorn
The Beast Within (1982) - Judge Curwin
The Dukes of Hazzard (1983) - Frank Scanlon
Lethal Weapon (1987) - Cop #2
Code Name Vengeance (1987) - Harry Applegate
Skin Deep (1989) - Curt

The Exorcist III (1990) - Ryan

The Borrower (1991) - Charles Krieger

References

1. https://archive.is/20170726002143/http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/don-gordon-dead-character-actor-steve-mcqueen-friend-was-90-1000092
2. Barnes, Mike (May 5, 2017). "Don Gordon, Top-Notch Character Actor and Pal of Steve McQueen, Dies at 90". The Hollywood Reporter.
3. Terrace, Vincent (2011). Encyclopedia of Television Shows, 1925 through 2010 (2nd ed.). Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Company, Inc., Publishers. p. 116. ISBN 978-0-7864-6477-7.
4. "("Don Gordon" search results)". EMMYS. Television Academy. Archived from the original on 26 July 2017.
5. "Marriages". Billboard. March 20, 1948. p. 48.
6. https://archive.is/20170726002143/http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/don-gordon-dead-character-actor-steve-mcqueen-friend-was-90-1000092
7. Wagner, Laura (Fall 2016). "Helen Westcott: "A Very Gifted Actress"". Films of the Golden Age (86): 74–76.
8. Aaker, Everett (2017). Television Western Players, 1960–1975: A Biographical Dictionary. McFarland. p. 318. ISBN 9781476628561.
9. Don Gordon, Steve McQueen’s Sidekick Onscreen and in Life, Dies at 90 The New York Times, May 7 2017.

"The Hiding Place" Author Corrie ten Boom 1983 Fairhaven Cemetery

Cornelia Arnolda Johanna "Corrie" ten Boom (April 15, 1892 – April 15, 1983) was a Dutch watchmaker and Christian who, along with her father and other family members, helped many Jews escape the Nazi Holocaust during World War II by hiding them in her closet. She was imprisoned for her actions. Her most famous book, The Hiding Place, is a biography that recounts the story of her family's efforts.

Early life

Corrie ten Boom was born on April 15, 1892 to a working class family in Haarlem, Netherlands, near Amsterdam. Named after her mother but known as "Corrie" all her life, she was the youngest child, of Casper ten Boom, a jeweler and watchmaker.[1] Her father was so fascinated by the craft of watchmaking that he often became so engrossed in his own work he would forget to charge customers for the services.[2]

Corrie trained to be a watchmaker herself and in 1922 became the first woman licensed as a watchmaker in Holland. Over the next decade, in addition to working in her father's shop, she established a youth club for teenage girls, which provided religious instruction as well as classes in the performing arts, sewing and handicrafts.[1] She, along with her family, was a strict Calvinist in the Dutch Reformed Church. Faith inspired the family to serve society, offering shelter, food and money to those in need.[1]

World War II

In May 1940, the Nazis invaded the Netherlands. Among their restrictions was banning the youth club.[3] In May 1942, a well-dressed woman came to the ten Booms' with a suitcase in hand and told them that she was a Jew, her husband had been arrested several months before, her son had gone into hiding, and Occupation authorities had recently visited her, so she was afraid to go back. She had heard that the ten Booms had helped their Jewish neighbors, the Weils, and asked if they might help her too. Casper ten Boom, Corrie's father, readily agreed that she could stay with them, despite the police headquarters being only half a block away.[4] A devoted reader of the Old Testament, he believed that the Jews were the 'chosen people', and he told the woman, "In this household, God's people are always welcome."[5] The family then became very active in the Dutch underground hiding refugees; they honored the Jewish Sabbath.[6] The family never sought to convert any of the Jews who stayed with them.[7]

Thus the ten Booms began "The Hiding Place," or "De Schuilplaats," as it was known in Dutch (also known as "de Béjé," pronounced in Dutch as 'bayay,' an abbreviation of their street address, the Barteljorisstraat). Corrie and her sister Betsie opened their home to refugees — both Jews and others who were members of the resistance movement — being sought by the Gestapo and its Dutch counterpart. They had plenty of room, although wartime shortages meant that food was scarce. Every non-Jewish Dutch person had received a ration card, the requirement for obtaining weekly food coupons. Through her charitable work, Ten Boom knew many people in Haarlem and remembered a couple who had a disabled daughter. The father was a civil servant who by then was in charge of the local ration-card office.[4] She went to his house one evening, and when he asked how many ration cards she needed, "I opened my mouth to say, 'Five,'" ten Boom wrote in The Hiding Place. "But the number that unexpectedly and astonishingly came out instead was: 'One hundred.'"[8] He gave them to her and she provided cards to every Jew she met.

The refugee work done at the Beje by ten Boom and her sister became known by the Dutch Resistance. The Resistance sent an architect to the ten Boom home to build a secret room adjacent to ten Boom's room for the Jews in hiding, as well as an alert buzzer to warn the refugees to get into the room as quickly as possible.[7]

Arrest, detention, and release

On February 28, 1944, a Dutch informant named Jan Vogel told the Nazis about the ten Booms' work; at around 12:30 P.M. the Nazis arrested the entire ten Boom family. They were sent to Scheveningen prison when Resistance materials and extra ration cards were found at the home.[9] Nollie and Willem were released immediately along with Corrie's nephew Peter; Casper died 10 days later. The six people hidden by the ten Booms, among them both Jews and resistance workers, remained undiscovered: Corrie ten Boom received a letter one day in prison reading "All the watches in your cabinet are safe," meaning the refugees had managed to escape and were safe.[9] Four days after the raid, resistance workers transferred them to other locations. Altogether, the Gestapo arrested some 30 people in the ten Boom family home that day.[10]

Ten Boom was initially held in solitary confinement. After three months, she was taken to her first hearing. On trial, ten Boom spoke about her work with the mentally disabled; the Nazi lieutenant scoffed, as the Nazis had been killing mentally disabled individuals for years based on their eugenics ideologies.[11] Ten Boom defended her work, saying that in the eyes of God, a mentally disabled person might be more valuable "than a watchmaker. Or a lieutenant."[11]

Corrie and Betsie were sent from Scheveningen to Herzogenbusch political concentration camp (also known as Kamp Vught), and finally to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, a women's labor camp in Germany. There they held worship services, after the hard days at work, using a Bible that they had managed to sneak in.[11] While at Ravensbruck, Betsie ten Boom began to discuss plans with her sister after the war for a place of healing. Betsie's health continued to deteriorate and she died on December 16, 1944 at the age of 59.[12] Before she died, she told Corrie, "There is no pit so deep that He [God] is not deeper still." Fifteen days later, Corrie was released. Afterwards, she was told that her release was due to a clerical error and that a week later, all the women in her age group were sent to the gas chambers.[13]

Corrie ten Boom returned home in the midst of the "hunger winter." She opened her doors still to the mentally disabled who were in hiding for fear of execution.[14]

Life after the war

After the war, ten Boom returned to The Netherlands to set up a rehabilitation center in Bloemendaal. The refugee houses consisted of concentration-camp survivors and sheltered the jobless Dutch who previously collaborated with Germans during the Occupation exclusively until 1950, when it accepted anyone in need of care. She returned to Germany in 1946, and met with and forgave two Germans who had been employed at Ravensbruck, one of whom was particularly cruel to Betsie.[14] Ten Boom went on to travel the world as a public speaker, appearing in more than 60 countries. She wrote many books during this time.[15]

Ten Boom told the story of her family members and their World War II work in her best-selling book, The Hiding Place (1971), which was made into a 1975 World Wide Pictures film, The Hiding Place, starring Jeannette Clift as Corrie and Julie Harris as Betsie. 

In 1977, 85-year-old Corrie emigrated to Placentia, California. In 1978, she suffered two strokes, the first rendering her unable to speak, and the second resulting in paralysis. She died on her 91st birthday, 15 April 1983, after a third stroke. She is buried at Fairhaven Memorial Park in Santa Ana, California. 

A sequel film, Return to the Hiding Place (War of Resistance), was released in 2011 in the United Kingdom, with its United States release in 2013, based on Hans Poley's book, which painted a wider picture of the circle of which she was a part.

Honors

Israel honored ten Boom by naming her Righteous Among the Nations. Ten Boom was knighted by the Queen of the Netherlands in recognition of her work during the war. The Ten Boom Museum in Haarlem is dedicated to her and her family for their work. The King's College in New York City named a new women's house in her honor.

Further reading

Backhouse, Halcyon C. (1992), Corrie ten Boom: Faith Triumphs, Heroes of The Faith, Alton: Hunt and Thorpe, ISBN 1-85608-007-2.
Baez, Kjersti Hoff; Bohl, Al (2008) [1989], Corrie ten Boom, Chronicles of Faith, Ulrichsville, Ohio: Barbour Pub, ISBN 1-59789-967-4.
Benge, Janet; Benge, Geoffrey ‘Geoff’ (1999), Corrie ten Boom: Keeper of the Angels' Den, Seattle, WA: YWAM Pub, ISBN 1-57658-136-5.
Briscoe, Jill (1991), Paint the Prisons Bright: Corrie ten Boom, Dallas: Word Pub, ISBN 0-8499-3308-0.
Brown, Joan Winmill (1979), Corrie, the Lives She's Touched, Old Tappan, N.J: F.H. Revell Co, ISBN 0-8007-1049-5.
Carlson, Carole C. (1983), Corrie ten Boom, Her Life, Her Faith: A Biography, Old Tappan, N.J: F.H. Revell Co, ISBN 0-8007-1293-5.
Couchman, Judith (1997), Corrie ten Boom: Anywhere He Leads Me.
Mainse, David (1976), The Corrie ten Boom Story: Turning Point.
McKenzie, Catherine (2006), Corrie ten Boom: Are All The Watches Safe.
Meloche, Renée; Pollard, Bryan (2002), Corrie ten Boom: Shining In The Darkness.
Metaxas, Eric (2015), Seven Women And The Secret To Their Greatness, Nashville, TN: Nelson Books.
Moore, Pamela Rosewell (1986), The Five Silent Years of Corrie ten Boom.
Moore, Pamela Rosewell (2004), Life Lessons From The Hiding Place: Discovering The Heart of Corrie ten Boom.
Poley, Hans (1993), Return to The Hiding Place.
Ray, Chaplain (1985), Corrie ten Boom Speaks To Prisoners.
Shaw, Sue (1996), Corrie ten Boom: Faith In Dark Places.
Smith, Emily S, A Visit To The Hiding Place: The Life Changing Experiences of Corrie ten Boom.
Stamps, Ellen de Kroon (1978), My Years with Corrie, Old Tappan, N.J: F.H. Revell Co.
Wallington, David (1981), The Secret Room: The Story of Corrie ten Boom, Exeter: Religious Education Press.
Watson, Jean (1994), Corrie ten Boom: The Watchmaker's Daughter.
Wellman, Samuel ‘Sam’ (1984), Corrie ten Boom: The Heroine of Haarlem.
Wellman, Samuel ‘Sam’ (2004), Corrie ten Boom: Heroes of The Faith.
White, Kathleen (1991), Corrie ten Boom.

References

1. Corrie ten Boom Biography, AandE Television Networks, LLC.
2. Atwood, Kathryn J. Women Heroes of World War II. Chicago: Chicago Review Press. p. 117. ISBN 9781556529610.
3. Boom, Corrie ten. The Hiding Place. Peabody Massachusetts Hendrickson Publishers, 2009
4. Atwood, Kathryn J. Women Heroes of World War II. Chicago: Chicago Review Press. p. 118. ISBN 9781556529610.
5. Boom, Corrie ten. The Hiding Place. Peabody Massachusetts Hendrickson Publishers, 2009, p. 88
6. "H2G2", DNA, The British Broadcasting Company.
7. Atwood, Kathryn J. Women Heroes of World War II. Chicago: Chicago Review Press. p. 119. ISBN 9781556529610.
8. Boom, Corrie ten. The Hiding Place. Peabody Massachusetts Hendrickson Publishers, 2009, p. 92
9. Atwood, Kathryn J. Women Heroes of World War II. Chicago: Chicago Review Press. p. 120. ISBN 9781556529610.
10. Holocaust Memorial - Corrie ten Boom, The Holocaust Memorial
11. Atwood, Kathryn J. Women Heroes of World War II. Chicago: Chicago Review Press. p. 121. ISBN 9781556529610.
12. Atwood, Kathryn J. Women Heroes of World War II. Chicago: Chicago Review Press. pp. 121–122. ISBN 9781556529610.
13. Boom, Corrie ten. The Hiding Place. Peabody Massachusetts Hendrickson Publishers, 2009, p 240
14. Atwood, Kathryn J. Women Heroes of World War II. Chicago: Chicago Review Press. p. 122. ISBN 9781556529610.
15. Lessard, William O. The Complete Book of Bananas. Place of Publication Not Identified: W.O. Lessard, 1992. Print.

Civil Right Activist Felicitas Mendez 1998 Rose Hills Cemetery

Felicitas Mendez (1916 – April 12, 1998) was a Puerto Rican who was a pioneer of the American civil rights movement. In 1946, Mendez and her husband led an educational civil rights battle that changed California and set an important legal precedent for ending de jure segregation in the United States. Their landmark desegregation case, known as Mendez v. Westminster, paved the way for meaningful integration, public school reform, and the American civil rights movement.[1][2]

Early years

Mendez (birth name: Felicitas Gomez) was born in the town of Juncos in Puerto Rico. The Gomez family moved from Puerto Rico to Arizona. There they faced, and were subject to, the discrimination which was then-rampant throughout the United States. Mendez and her siblings were racialized as "black."

When she was 12 years old, the family moved to Southern California to work the fields - where they were racialized as "Mexican."[3] In 1936, she married Gonzalo Mendez, an immigrant from Mexico who had become a naturalized citizen of the United States. They opened a bar and grill called La Prieta in Santa Ana.[4] They had three children and moved from Santa Ana to Westminster and leased a 40-acre asparagus farm from the Munemitsus, a Japanese-American family that had been sent to an internment camp during World War II. Although the farm was a successful agricultural business venture, it was still a period in history when racial discrimination against Hispanics, and minorities in general, was widespread throughout the United States.[5][6]

School segregation in California

In the 1940s, there were only two schools in Westminster: Hoover Elementary and 17th Street Elementary. Orange County schools were segregated and the Westminster school district was no exception. The district mandated separate campuses for Hispanics and Whites. Mendez's three children Sylvia, Gonzalo Jr. and Jerome Mendez, attended Hoover Elementary, a two-room wooden shack in the middle of the city's Mexican neighborhood, along with the other Hispanics. 17th Street Elementary, which was a "Whites-only" segregated school, was located about a mile away. Unlike Hoover, the 17th Street Elementary school was amongst a row of palm and pine trees and had a lawn lining the school's brick and concrete facade.[7]

Realizing that the 17th Street Elementary school provided better books and educational benefits, Mendez and her husband Gonzalo, decided that they would like to have their children and nephews enrolled in there. Thus, in 1943, when her daughter Sylvia Mendez was only eight years old, she accompanied her aunt Sally Vidaurri, her brothers and cousins to enroll at the 17th Street Elementary School. Her aunt was told by school officials that her children, who had light skin, would be permitted to enroll - but that neither Sylvia Mendez nor her brothers would be allowed because they were dark-skinned and had a Hispanic surname. Mrs. Vidaurri stormed out of the school with her children, niece and nephews, and recounted her experience to her brother Gonzalo and her sister-in-law.[8]

Mendez v. Westminster

Mendez and her husband Gonzalo took upon themselves the task of leading a community battle which would change the California public education system, and set an important legal precedent for ending segregation in the United States. Mendez tended the family's agricultural business, giving her husband the much-needed time to meet with community leaders to discuss the injustices of the segregated school system. He also spoke to other parents, with the intention of recruiting families from the four Orange County communities into a massive, countywide lawsuit. Initially, Gonzalo received little support from the local Latino organizations - but finally, on March 2, 1945, he and four other Mexican-American fathers from the Gomez, Palomino, Estrada, and Ramirez families filed a lawsuit in federal court in Los Angeles against four Orange County school districts — Westminster, Santa Ana, Garden Grove, and El Modena (now eastern Orange) — on behalf of about 5,000 Hispanic-American schoolchildren.[9] During the trial, the Westminster school board insisted that there was a "language issue," however their claim fell apart when one of the children was asked to testify. She testified in a highly articulate English - thus demonstrating that there was no "language issue," because most of the Hispanic-American children spoke English and had the same capacity for learning as their white counterparts.

On February 18, 1946, Judge Paul J. McCormick ruled in favor of Mendez and his co-plaintiffs. However, the school district appealed. Several organizations joined the appellate case as amicus curiae, including the ACLU, American Jewish Congress, Japanese American Citizens League, and the NAACP which was represented by Thurgood Marshall. More than a year later, on April 14, 1947, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court's ruling in favor of the Mexican families. After the ruling was upheld on appeal, then-Governor Earl Warren moved to desegregate all public schools and other public spaces as well.[10]

Aftermath

Thurgood Marshall

Mendez's children were finally allowed to attend the 17th Street Elementary school, thus becoming one of the first Hispanics to attend an all-white school in California. However, the situation was not easy for their daughter Sylvia. Her white peers called her names and treated her poorly. She knew that she had to succeed after her parents fought for her to attend the school.[7]

Mendez v. Westminster set a crucial precedent for ending segregation in the United States. Thurgood Marshall, who was later appointed a Supreme Court justice in 1967, became the lead NAACP attorney in the 1954 Brown case. Marshall's amicus brief filed for Mendez on behalf of the NAACP contained the arguments he would later use in the Brown case.

The Mendez case also deeply influenced the thinking of the California governor at the time, Earl Warren. This proved to be critical because eight years later in 1954, when the Brown case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, Earl Warren was its presiding member as the Chief Justice, and Thurgood Marshall argued the case before him. [11]

Legacy

Gonzalo Mendez died in 1964 at the age of 51, unaware of the enormous long-term impact that Mendez v. Westminster would ultimately have on the U.S.[7]

On Sunday, April 12, 1998, Felicitas Mendez died of heart failure at her daughter's home in Fullerton, California.[12] She was buried at Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, California. She is survived by four sons: Victor, Gonzalo, Jerome and Phillip; two daughters, Silvia Mendez and Sandra Duran; 21 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.[4]

The success of the Mendez v. Westminster case made California the first state in the nation to end segregation in school. This paved the way for the better-known Brown v. Board of Education seven years later, which would bring an end to school segregation in the entire country.

Sandra Robbie wrote and produced the documentary Mendez v. Westminster: For all the Children / Para Todos los Ninos, which debuted on KOCE-TV in Orange County on September 24, 2002 as part of their Hispanic Heritage Month celebration. The documentary, which also aired on PBS, won an Emmy award and a Golden Mike Award.[13]

A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held in the Los Angeles County Law Library for the opening of a new exhibit in the law library display case titled "Mendez to Brown: A Celebration." The exhibit features photos from both the Mendez and Brown cases, in addition to original documents. In 1998, the district of Santa Ana, California honored the Mendez family by naming a new school the "Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez Fundamental Intermediate School".[14]

Sylvia Mendez waiting in the Green Room of the White House as recipients of the 2010 Presidential Medal of Freedom are introduced.

In 2004, Sylvia Mendez was invited to the White House for the celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month. She met with President George W. Bush, who shared her story with key Democrats, including U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton of New York.[15]

On April 14, 2007, the U.S. Postal Service unveiled a stamp commemorating the Mendez v. Westminster case.[16][17] The unveiling took take place during an event at Chapman University School of Education, Orange County, California commemorating the 60th anniversary of the landmark case.[18]

On September 9, 2009 a second school opened in the Los Angeles community of Boyle Heights bearing the name "Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez Learning Center." The dual school campus commemorated the efforts of the Mendez and other families from the Westminster case.

In September 2011, an exhibit honoring the Mendez v. Westminster case was presented at the Old Courthouse Museum in Santa Ana. This exhibit known as "A Class Act" is sponsored by the Museum of Teaching and Learning. Sylvia Mendez was a member of the exhibit planning committee along with her brother, Gonzalo.

Sylvia Mendez became a nurse and retired after working for thirty years in her field. She travels and gives lectures to educate others on the historic contributions made by her parents and the co-plaintiffs to the desegregation effort in the United States. On February 15, 2011, Sylvia Mendez was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.[19] In 2012, Brooklyn College awarded Sylvia Mendez an honorary degree.[20]

Further reading

Blackwell Companion to Social Inequalities. Editors Eric Margolis and Mary Romero, Blackwell Companions to Sociology. Blackwell Publishing. 2005.
Gonzalez, Gilbert G. (1994). Labor and Community: Mexican Citrus Worker Villages in a Southern California County, 1900-1950. University of Illinois Press.
Gordon, June (2000). Color Of Teaching. Educational Change and Development Series. RoutledgeFalmer.
Matsuda, Michael and Sandra Robbie (2006). Mendez vs. Westminster: For All the Children – An American Civil Rights Victory.
Meier, Matt S. and Margo Gutierrez (2000). Encyclopedia of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement. Greenwood Press.
Oropeza, Lorena (2005). Raza Sí! Guerra No!: Chicano Protest and Patriotism during the Viet Nam War Era. University of California Press.
David S. Ettinger, The History of School Desegregation in the Ninth Circuit, 12 Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 481, 484-487 (1979).

References

1. Geisler, Lindsey (September 11, 2006). "Mendez case paved way for Brown v. Board". Topeka Capital-Journal. 
2. "Sauceda, Isis (March 28, 2007). "Cambio Historico (Historic Change)". People en Espanol (in Spanish): 111–112.
3. Felícita La Prieta Méndez (1916-1998) and the end of Latino school segregation in California
4. Los Angeles Times; Daughter: Mendez Died Content That Accomplishments Will Live
5. "Discrimination". History.com. 
6. Jennings, Lisa (May 2004). "The End of the "Mexican School"". Hispanic Business Magazine. 
7. Leal, Fermin (March 21, 2007). "Desegregation landmark has O.C. ties". Orange Country Register.  The post office in April will unveil a stamp commemorating the 1947 Mendez v. Westminster case.
8. Robbie, Sandra (September 16, 2002). "Mendez v. Westminster: Landmark Latino history finally to be told on PBS". Latino Hollywood. 
9. "Mendez v. Westminster, A Look At Our Latino Heritage". mendezvwestminster.com. 
10. Laing, Mallery (October 21, 2004). "Woman Recalls Poor Treatment by White Students After Father's Lawsuit Integrated California Schools". College of Arts and Humanities, University of Central Florida. 
11. Munoz, Carlos Jr. (May 20, 2004). "50 years after Brown: Latinos paved way for historic school desegregation". In Motion Magazine. 
12. Los Angeles Times; Felicitas Mendez; Filed Key School Desegregation Suit
13. "Mendez v Westminster". KOCE-TV press release. Archived from the original on 2007-02-17. 
14. Acuña, Gilbert (April 21, 2004). "On Display: Mendez to Brown". THE NEWSLETTER OF THE Los Angeles County Law Library. III (7). Archived from the original (– Scholar search) on March 9, 2007. 
15. "Hispanic Heritage Month Celebrated" (Press release). Office of the Press Secretary, The White House. September 15, 2004. 
16. "The 2007 Commemorative Stamp Program" (Press release). United States Postal Service. October 25, 2006. Stamp News Release #06-050. 
17. "Chapman University Commemorates Mendez v. Westminster 60th Anniversary and U.S. Postage Stamp Unveiling". Special Events. Chapman University.
18. "Chapman Commemorates 60th Anniversary of Mendez v. Westminster Case on April 14". Chapman University. March 26, 2007. 
19. "O.C. civil rights icon Mendez awarded Medal of Freedom" (Press release). Orange County Register. February 15, 2011. 
20. CUNY

Fred Oesterreich Death House in Silver Lake 2015

Fred William Oesterreich

December 8, 1877 – August 22, 1922