Jose Othon Posadas

Jose Othon Posadas, our father, was an incredible family man. His highest ambition was to exceed his own expectations of what it means to be a husband and a father. He was born in Mexico in 1931. There in his small town of Acambaro he married his wife, our amazing mother, Martha Aguilar. In Acambaro he owned his own business, started his family but our parents lost their second daughter to illness and it is there that she was buried. After a local flood that inundated his small grocery store and bar he made the decision to leave Mexico and find work in the United States. He traveled first alone to various states as a migrant laborer and worked there for months at a time before finally being told by friends to find work in California. So, at the still young age of 35 he immigrated to San Jose but this time with his entire family of now eight children. In San Jose they would have their tenth child.

He purchased his family home in the late 1960s and there he would raise his family. He would become a laborer in the construction industry and learned how to be a cement mason. He was a member of the Cement Mason Local 400 and his skilled-work helped to build many of the homes and office parks that would eventually become Silicon Valley. In the same manner that he built his family house in San Jose, and other construction projects he worked on, starting with a strong foundation, he made sure that his own family had an equally strong foundation. In San Jose he raised his family of 8 daughters and 1 son.

During the 1970s he would take them annually back to Mexico and El Paso, Texas to visit their relatives and see their roots as Mexican-Americans. He loved to drive and to show his children the Mexico he grew up in and they would travel the entire country. Over the years in San Jose he saw his daughters get married, start their own families, became a grandfather and a great-grandfather. He celebrated over 60 years of marriage to his wife. He was proud of his family and all their accomplishments both academically and professionally. He was a generous man and would do what he could to support his children and grandchildren. He also was a founding member of the Holy Cross Church Guadalupanos and contributed his time and skills to the community.

He retired after nearly 30 years in the trade. In his retirement he would continue to visit Mexico, to the place of his birth. As he grew in age he would travel less but always enjoyed home visits from the new generation of grandchildren and would be proud of the dreams of a better life that he had made possible for all of us by making the sacrifice to leave his home country to settle here in the Santa Clara Valley.

Our father will forever be in our hearts and in our thoughts where he will be forever loved, remembered and extremely missed.