Helen Fabela Chavez, wife of Cesar Chavez, dead at 88

A rosary and all-night vigil will be held Sunday in Keene for Helen Fabela Chavez, famed labor activist and wife of the late United Farm Workers union co-founder, Cesar Chavez. She was 88.

Her funeral service is scheduled for Monday morning in Tehachipi, followed by a burial service in Keene.

UFW officials said Helen Chavez played a vital role in supporting her husband’s work to organize and lead what would be come the first, enduring farm worker labor movement in the United States.

Chavez died Monday at San Joaquin Community Hospital in Bakersfield after being admitted about two weeks earlier for an infection, said Marc Grossman, a spokesman for the Cesar Chavez Foundation.

He said Chavez was fighting a number of ailments, including arthritis, heart problems and diabetes, but it was complications from the infection that appeared have ended her life.

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“She was surrounded by her surviving grandchildren and great grandchildren,” Grossman said.

Seven of the children she had with her husband, Cesar — who died in 1993 — are still alive, and the couple had a total of 31 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.

Helen Chavez was born in the Imperial Valley town of Brawley and later moved to a converted horse barn outside of McFarland and later to Delano, where she dropped out of high school and became a field worker after her mother died.

She met Cesar at a Delano malt shop in the mid-1940s, and the couple married in 1948 after his discharge from the Navy. They later moved to East Los Angeles, according to information provided by the UFW.

The couple moved back to Delano in 1962, and Cesar worked to organize field workers while Helen raised their eight children and returned to field work to help the family make ends meet.

“On weekends, Cesar and some of the older children joined her,” according to a UFW statement.

“Cesar and Helen Chavez dedicated their lives to improving the lives of the people who grow our food, many from California’s Central Coast. Not only did Helen Chavez raise eight children, she managed the union’s finances, attended meetings and signed new members up, and walked picket lines to support the fight for justice and equality,” Rep. Sam Farr said in a statement.

“Her strength, determination and commitment to their cause is the legacy that will endure,”

Farr’s statement continued. “My thoughts and prayers are with the entire Chavez family.”

“Quiet and humble, but fiercely determined and strong willed, Helen didn’t speak in public or talk with reporters, but she held deep convictions,” according to a UFW statement. “In September 1965, while members of Cesar’s young Latino union debated whether or not to join a grape strike begun that month by members of a largely Filipino union. Helen in her quiet, no-nonsense way, settled the debate by asking, ‘Are we a union or not?’

“Her consistent humility, selflessness, quiet heroism and fiery perseverance were at the heart of the movement she helped build,” the statement continued.

During the Delano grape strike, which lasted from 1965 to 1970, Helen Chavez was on vineyard picket lines before dawn and then worked all day running the Farm Workers Credit Union, a job she held for more than 25 years, until she retired.

That credit union loaned more than $20 million to UFW members over the years.

Besides raising her own children, union officials noted that Helen also became a sort of surrogate mother to many young volunteers who came to Delano and later to Villa La Paz Conference and Education Center, the UFW headquarters in Keene, to join the worker movement.

Helen Chavez lived at Villa La Paz with her husband and remained there after he died. Following the funeral service Monday, she will be laid to rest next to her husband’s grave in the memorial garden of the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument on the property.

“Helen was known for her prowess in the kitchen and good food. She cooked for countless union events and conventions, as well as weddings, baptisms and Thanksgiving and Christmas meals for movement volunteers who couldn’t make it home,” according to a statement from the Cesar Chavez Foundation.

“Like all union staff, including Cesar, Helen made $5 a week plus food and housing.”

After her husband’s passing, Helen Chavez continued as an activist, despite a growing list of health problems. She made her last public appearance in March at the 50th anniversary event for the 25-day, 340-mile march from Delano to Sacramento made by Latino and Filipino farm workers.

After that, she didn’t lose her activist streak, having mailed in her ballot for today’s California Presidential Primary Election the day after it arrived – marking Hilary Clinton as her choice to be the Democratic nominee for president.

And even in the hospital, Grossman said, “She told everybody about it and told everybody who came to visit her to register to vote.”

Helen Fabela Chavez vigil, funeral

Sunday — Rosary and all-night vigil will begin at 6 p.m. at the Villa La Paz Conference and Education Center, 29700 Woodford-Tehachapi Rd., Keene.

Monday — Funeral mass begins at 9 a.m. at St. Malachy Catholic Church, 407 West E St., Tehachapi.

Immediately following the mass, a burial ceremony will take place next to Cesar Chavez’s grave in the Memorial Garden of the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument at Villa La Paz.