The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
“Richard, I see you and your love for us. I see your love for our pueblo, its traditions, la historia de nuestra gente, our land.”
This is how I started a love letter to Pima County Supervisor Richard Elías, whose sudden death Saturday shocked Tucsonans. Many people let out their collective grief on their social media pages, paying him homage and their respects. They expressed their despedidas, distraught goodbyes wrenched from their hearts. I was one of them.
Richard died in his home. He was 61 and had served on the Board of Supervisors for 18 years, representing District 5 which encompassed most of Tucson’s west side, part of the south side including the Pascua Yaqui Nation and a wedge of central Tucson.
I knew him my whole life. His family and my family grew up together. Our parents knew one another before we were born. I knew him as a husband, father, son and brother, and a profoundly rooted Tucsonense.
Images of him flooded my reeling mind. My tears carried my memories and pain.
Richard, I see you and your family, proud contributors to Tucson’s cultura, stretching back to your great-grandparents, Francisco Santos Moreno and Rosa Elías Moreno. He established El Tucsonense, a Spanish-language newspaper that chronicled and championed Tucson’s proud, hard-working yet rejected and scorned immigrant and Mexican-American communities from 1915 to the early 1960s. But it was your ganas-filled great-grandmother, a pioneering Mexicana businesswoman, and her sons’ steel who kept the newspaper alive after your great-grandfather’s premature death in 1929.
I see you and your late parents, Alberto M. Elías and Viola Banes Elías who imbued you and your siblings, Ana and Albert, and the grandchildren with bedrock values of compassion and corazón. I hear you talking about your father’s proud union membership and his commitment to workers, their families and to Tucson’s well-being. And I chuckle when I see your mother keeping you and your brother in line. Lucky for you she didn’t toss her chancla at cha.
I see your love for your wife Emily Velde and daughter Luz Elías, who sparked your zeal for life and gave you reason. I feel their support and sacrifice during your nearly two-decade political life when you unselfishly gave your evening and weekend hours to your city and its residents.
Richard, I hear you speak with clarity and conviction at rallies and marches in support of the many who have little. “Sí se puede,” I hear you call out, words of affirmation echoing our heroes of yesterday and always.
I see you running around on the asphalt playground at the old All Saints-Cathedral Catholic School on South Sixth Avenue. I see you at Salpointe Catholic High School where your core values were refined and your social activism was born through the clarion calls for justice and equality from your inspiring teachers Jane and Ron Cruz.
Later I see you at the University of Arizona where your eyes, ears and heart opened further and subsequently at Chicanos Por La Causa with the late Lorraine Lee, where your crusade for fair and affordable housing was shaped.
Richard, I hear you constantly laugh and see your goofy face crunch up over the silliest joke, giving us humor when we often most need it. I hear you reminisce and laugh about the escapades that you and your older brother enjoyed — and survived — as you hop scotched from city to city following The Grateful Dead. Your love of music, especially Santana, Los Lobos, reggae and soul/R&B, was endless.
Most importantly, what I admire you immensely for, I see you use your political platform for environmental and social justice to rectify the inequalities that are too pervasive.
I see you, Richard, a humble warrior who deflects attention so that the light is shined on the worthy. I see you, brother, with much love and respect. Resist, siempre.
