Consuelo Rodriguez

Some people live with their heads; others with their hands. Rodriguez lived with her heart. She cried easily, smiled often, laughed a lot and was always willing to lend relatives an ear or a few dollars. Before they left, guests to her home were likely to receive a hug, a kiss on the cheek and some of her homemade flour tortillas. Rodriguez spent more than 11 years as a cafeteria worker for the Lamont School District, and 35 as a catechism teacher and clerical aide for her parish, St. Augustine Church in Lamont. Born in Laredo, Texas in 1940, Rodriguez grew up seeing whites-only water fountains and attended school at a campus where students got punished for speaking Spanish. Her small family struggled after the early death of her father. Rodriguez once fainted in school because she’d eaten nothing but oranges for three days. After her mother remarried, the growing family of migrant farm workers moved to California in 1958, where they picked grapes, pruned vine,s and did almost every kind of field work available. She once was lauded as the woman who hauled the heaviest bag of cotton out of the field in her work crew. She spent most of her early adulthood babysitting her nephews and nieces while their parents went to work. But in her late 30s, she learned to drive and years later got her first job outside farm work as a cafeteria aide. Rodriguez often said she was grateful to have lived long enough to see her three great-grandchildren, Joelene Garcia, 13, Ignacio Sarmiento, 8 and Emori Martinez, 1. She also had two grandchildren, Ramona, 31, and Francisco, 28. She is survived by a son, Leonel Martinez, of Bakersfield, daughter-in-law, Ester Martinez of Bakersfield, sister, Margarita Colon, of Lamont, sister-in-law Guadalupe Villalpando, of Arvin, and sister-in-law Jesusa Rodriguez, of Bakersfield as well as numerous nieces and nephews. She was predeceased by her mother, Sara Villalpando, father, Benjamin Villalpando Sr. brothers Leonardo Rodriguez and Benjamin Villalpando Jr. and sister, Sara Guerra.