| Aurora (Paez) Benavidez |
| Aurora (Paez) Benavidez taken in 1944 |
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| Aurora (Paez) Benavidez Taken about 1983 |
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| My mother, Aurora (Paez) Benavidez was born August 10, 1920 in Edna, (Jackson County), Texas to Franciso and Mary (Hilliard) Paez. Her eleven brothers and sisters are Francisco, Maria, Alicia, Juan, Anna, Eva, Eugenio, Nellie, David, Ernestina, and William. Her birthplace, Edna, is the gateway to Lake Texana and is named for the daughter of Italian Count Joseph Telfener, who helped establish it. My mother was the child of a migrant family. Her parents traveled across South Texas where her father worked as a laborer and musician. She received only a ninth grade education. She lived in Eagle Pass, Laredo, and Saginaw, Michigan. She worked in the fields picking cotton and vegetables and later was a waitress. She was a hard worker, and could work as hard as any man I know. She was married at an early age to a man by the name of Romeo Hinojosa from Pharr, Texas. They divorced and she later married Henry J. Staten. They had two children, Henry and David. That marriage ended in divorce, with the children staying in Eagle Pass with their father. She met my father, Nasario, in Eagle Pass and married in 1959 in Seguin, Guadalupe County, Texas. They lived in San Antonio, and started a family in 1960, when she was 40, and he was 38. My mother was a devoted housewife and dedicated mother. Even after my father died in 1977 she continued to stay home looking after us. The body shop that my father had built was now rented out, and that income helped to sustain our family. She made extra money by having yard sales or selling odds and ends at the flea market. My mother was very strong, in body and spirit. She was widowed at the age of 57, with three children ages 16, 15, and 10. She did whatever it took to make sure we were taken care of, and did it without help from anyone. My mother loved music. Our house was filled with the music of B.J. Thomas, Neil Diamond, James Taylor, and even Creedence Clearwater Revival. She especially loved the albums of her gospel-singing nephews, the Latin Messengers. They were the sons of her sister, Alicia. Late in 1984, having been diagnosed with ovarian cancer two years prior, my mother's health took a bad turn. Her last days were filled with images of a snow that covered San Antonio that December and the next January. Aurora (Paez) Benavidez died January 23, 1985 at Medical Center Hospital in San Antonio, Texas and is buried with my father at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio. |