Submitted by Brett Murphy

For The Orange County Register

Her name is Esther Mejia. She is the one who taught me how to cook, how to be find good chiles in the garden, how to be a good husband, and hopefully one day, to be a great father.

She is my Grandma, and this year she turned 94 years old. She still lives in the house she grew up in, next door to where she was born 94 years ago in Los Alamitos, surrounded by large buildings that she says once used to be beet fields that her family and friends worked in.

She was recently inducted into the Los Alamitos museum as a historical figure for the city, having the mayor explain the link that our elders have to the past.

After she was born into that small house off Katella Avenue, her Mexican immigrant parents began to take in and board Mexican workers who came across the border looking for work in the area.

Knowing how many workers were coming from Mexico looking for work, it was not uncommon for an immigrant to stay at the house for days on end, even weeks. This is how my grandmother met and fell in love with a strapping young Mexican worker from Jalisco named Jose Refugio.

They married soon after and had four daughters who still visit their mother everyday in the very house that they were raised in. And each visit brings another story from Esther — about the time when Howard Hughes crashed his experimental plane in the beet fields outside of town, to the story of the early missionaries who served menudo from St.Isidore’s Church just down the street that she was baptized, confirmed, and married in some years later.

Every time she tells these stories you can see the black and white still photos on the walls and desks start to move and come alive with the history that is held in their stone faces and motionless scenes.

The portraits of cousins long past dressed in bandito clothing in Jalisco, to the wedding photos of young Mexican workers that are older than the city itself. The stories of how Mexicans just like her came to this country knowing that it could turn the simplest of workers into something great. That a simple job here could feed more mouths in one week of work than maybe a month back in Mexico.

But along with her 94 years of love and triumph stories, there are the inevitable stories of struggle and hardship. Stories of prejudice and disdain for this new immigrant worker that indigenous Americans had learned to hate. Even though it was these very workers who made life easy for commoners, while still trying to be unseen and unheard.

But once I saw the article on The OC Register about sending in stories of Mexican Americans that deserve to be in print, I could think of no one else than my Grandma. She has had so many stories and tales in her 94 years that sometimes I think God has kept her on this earth as long as he has so she can give us as much of a look into the past as possible.

And in a world where nothing is sacred any more, where a historic building will be leveled so we can make room for another Starbucks or strip mall, there is Esther. Sitting in her living room, a crochet needle in each hand making another quilt or blanket for her many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

She has never driven a car, never had a computer, and never had any regrets. Her husband Jose has long since passed away, but her stories remain.

Out of that frail and cracked face comes historical and family information that is sharp and precise, not leaving any detail out despite how small. I still sit in amazement every time I visit her, being transported from this metropolitan city back to a time when Mexican workers walked the beet fields, bartered for goods, and families grew from the very soil that I walk on every day.

I know that one day my Grandma will leave this world, and her stories will go with her. I just hope that we can somehow capture a little bit of that magic, and keep it here with us for a while.

I am not only a grandchild any more, but a successful businessman, a loving husband, and God willing, a grandfather one day. And I know that one day I will be the one with the stories to tell. I just hope that when that day comes I can strive to be as filled with history as my grandma. That when I open my mouth people actually listen, not just wait for their turn to talk.

I am proud of my Latino heritage, I am proud of my family, and I am proud of where I came from. And I am proud to know that I came from my Grandma, and that story is one that I will never let die.