Once we had assured her that Virginia was not pregnant, she took it well. When the day came to deliver the news to our families, I dressed in a gray suit and wore my finest shirt: a pink number with ruffles down the middle. Virginia and I enrolled at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, and, in 1971, after our first year there, I asked her to marry me. He died in a work accident when I was fifteen, but Virginia, unfailingly kind, was a great comfort to me. He liked to gamble and to fight, which often made life chaotic.
My father, a Mexican immigrant, was as macho as they come. Cabbies avoided the area, and the gas company often refused to deliver the propane tanks we needed for our stove. My neighborhood, Vegas Heights, was much rougher than hers. Of the two of us, Virginia was probably the “fancier,” despite the crowded living quarters. I suspect many other couples would benefit from such an effective filter. Virginia relished telling people that, as she put it, “José had to put up with a lot” to win her hand. This old-fashioned insistence on chaperones conveyed the importance of respect for a woman. But after we were married we looked back at it as part of what made our relationship special. We knew to expect a younger brother or sister or a visiting aunt to join us.Īt the time, we chafed at the oversight, and I wouldn’t advise a return to chaperoning as a means to strengthening marriage. When I finally got my driver’s license, Virginia’s parents allowed me to take the wheel-but not alone with their daughter. Don Sixto and Doña Virginia intended to protect their daughters from the looser mores of American culture, and that meant chaperones. Staples of Mexican daily life, like tortillas, were nowhere to be found, at least not unless you made them yourself.ĭating Virginia was not like dating other girls. F-105s from Nellis Air Force Base streaked across the sky and rattled neighborhood windows with sonic booms. Living quarters consisted of three bedrooms and one bath to accommodate what soon became a family of nine children and two adults. Gone was the balmy climate of central Mexico, replaced by the scorching desert of Southern Nevada. The homes in Virginia’s new neighborhood were tidy and well kept, but life in this new world was harder. Vela and her six children caught a northbound train and moved into a small house in North Las Vegas. Don Sixto eventually went to work at an automotive plating plant in Las Vegas. But when her father, Don Sixto, a railway man, began making noise about corruption within his labor union, someone tried to kill him, and he left Mexico for safety in the United States. They lived in a large house with servants, and Virginia was surrounded by extended family. Life in Mexico was comfortable for the Vela family. She was the third child and the oldest daughter of Sixto Vela and Virginia Lara de Vela. María Virginia Eugenia Vela Lara was born in 1952 in Apizaco, a small town about 65 miles east of Mexico City. Maybe her tolerance for my dancing demonstrated one ingredient of a successful marriage: you don’t expect perfection. And I spent the entire evening dancing with Virginia. Still, that day, I didn’t mess up the waltz. “All Latins have dancing in their blood!” Perhaps my blood had misplaced it.
Jiménez, our teacher, had yelled at me in a panic. That day I was going to have to dance a waltz, and preparations had gone badly. For decades afterwards, Virginia liked to tease that she’d been my second choice.Ī week or two after the prom, my younger brother and I were ushers at Virginia’s Quinceañera, the coming-out party that traditionally marks a Mexican girl’s 15th birthday. She had beautiful eyes, a magical smile, and a laugh so ringing and appealing that it made other people laugh. I think I fell in love with Virginia that night. My cousin Esther told me to ask her best friend, Virginia, instead. I’d bought a 20-dollar sport coat for the occasion and had my prom invitation rebuffed by another girl. My first date with Virginia took place at the ninth-grade prom at Jim Bridger Junior High School in North Las Vegas in 1967. What makes a marriage work? What keeps two people together for over 40 years? The odds are against young matrimony, but we never looked back. But, after 40 days of hellish separation, she was back in my life, and I in hers. To this day, I’m not sure Virginia’s motive was entirely religious. “You’re supposed to give up something you really like.” “I can’t see you for a while,” she told me on the phone. I didn’t appreciate how odd our courtship was until Virginia gave me up for Lent.