Valley trailblazers get their story told on TV

YAKIMA, Wash. -- The song came to Jesus Sanchez as he watched farm workers one early fall morning: "It's been a long, long time coming, and Lord it's been so hard."

The lyrics just poured into the amateur musician's mind as he drove State Route 22 from his home in Toppenish to his job as Mabton day care coordinator. He put it to music later that night in the mid-1970s.

"It all kind of just went," recalls Sanchez, now 59.

But the soulful guitar ballad he calls simply "The Farmworker Song" is where this story ends. It's the backwards glance on a saga of field work, social change and opportunities that he and his friends once believed were out of reach.

Sanchez's solo provides the epilogue of a public television's KCTS documentary "Students of Change: Los del '68."

The 30-minute film, which airs in Spanish and English tonight, follows the stories of Sanchez and four other University of Washington alumni who were among the first wave of Latino students at the college in 1968.

Most of them came from migrant farm families in the Yakima Valley. They went on to careers in city administration, health care management and higher education.

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Sanchez, for example, now is the operations manager for the city of Shoreline.

But he grew up living the life he sings about. He and his nine siblings worked the fields near Toppenish, first living in a migrant labor camp, then in a small home his family renovated. His mother, Isabel Sanchez, still owns in the same home.

He wanted out, but he never dreamed of a college degree.

"My biggest goal was to be a gas station attendant instead of working in the fields," he says.

Also featured are Anita Morales, Seattle Public Schools teacher and social studies specialist; Erasmo Gamboa, professor of history and American ethnic studies at the University of Washington; Bertha Ortega, assistant vice president for academic affairs and one of the founders of Heritage University; and Rogelio Riojas, executive director of SEA MAR Community Health Center.

Riojas grew up in Othello; the rest are from the Yakima Valley.

A total of 30 Yakima Valley Latinos first attended Washington in 1968. The producers collected profiles of more than a dozen, but they selected these five to give a cross section of communities and professions.

The students also participated in the farm labor movement of the 1960s and helped persuade the university to add college courses on Chicano studies.

"They not only were changed by the university, they changed higher learning," said Tony Gomez, executive producer of the documentary.

Gamboa, who grew up in Sunnyside, helped found the University of Washington chapter of MEChA, a national nonprofit organization that promotes higher education for Chicanos, and chaired a campus student committee supporting the United Farm Workers' boycott of nonunion grapes.

He and the others recall picketing outside Safeway stores and attending night meetings when farm labor activist Cesar Chavez visited. Some got so caught up in the movement they fell behind on their studies.

Gamboa conceived the idea for the project in 2008, the 40th anniversary of the group's arrival at the college.

"It was just an incredible class," Gamboa says.

According to the documentary, black student activists prompted the recruitment of Sanchez, Gamboa and the others.

In January 1968, leaders of the Black Student Union announced that of the university's 32,500 students, 63 were black and only four were Latino. Virtually none was from the Yakima Valley.

They demanded college administrators provide money for the recruitment of more diversity.

Larry Gosset, now a King County Council member, was a member of the union then. He visited Eastern Washington on a recruiting trip that summer and helped persuade 30 young Latinos to register.

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College was not a completely novel idea to all of them, the way it was for Sanchez.

Gamboa, now 67, who graduated in 1960 from Sunnyside High School, had already spent four years in the U.S. Navy and a year at Yakima Valley Community College.

The child of Mexican immigrant parents, Gamboa was born in Texas and spent his youth in the Yakima Valley. He's written several books on the history of Latinos in the Pacific Northwest, including "Mexican Labor and World War II: Braceros in the Pacific Northwest, 1942-1947." He has published essays about the students in the film.

Ortega, who had graduated Toppenish High School, recalls having college goals, as well. She had been working as an administrative assistant for labor rights organizations in the Valley.

Ortega, now 60, grew up with a father who worked in manual labor for a fabrication business.

She said the film, "captured the essence of what was going on back then."

However, it also points the future, she says during in the film. Teachers and parents still need to encourage all children to consider college an achievable dream, she said.

Today, the university has a Latino undergraduate enrollment of about 5 percent, Gomez said. But the state population is more than 9 percent.

"Our responsibilities don't stop there," she says. "They keep going until the day we die."

* Ross Courtney can be reached at 509-930-8798 or rcourtney@yakimaherald.com.

Tune in

WHAT: "Students of Change: Los del '68." Produced by the Seattle PBS affiliate KCTS, the documentary follows the stories of five University of Washington alumni who were among the first wave of Latino students at the college in 1968. Most of them were from the Yakima Valley.

WHEN: The 30-minute documentary will air simultaneously at 7:30 tonight on KYVE-TV in English and V-me in Spanish. It will repeat at 7:30 p.m. Saturday on V-me.

WHERE TO FIND IT: In English, on KYVE-TV (over-the-air digital channel 47, Charter cable channel 8). In Spanish, V-me, the Spanish-language digital public television network (over-the-air digital channel 47.2, Charter cable channel 297).

MORE INFO: www.kcts9.org.