Gloria M. Bejarano

Gloria M. Bejarano, passed away Wednesday evening November 21, 2018. She was a week past her 91st birthday. She was born November 13, 1927 in El Paso, Texas, the fourth child of Alfonso N. and Maria S. Mendez, her siblings including her older brother and sisters Alfonso, Jr., Mary, and Eva, and was followed in the family by Armando and Yolanda, and spent the first portion of her life in Texas, where she graduated from Loretto High School in El Paso. After high school graduation, she had met and then later married Tony J. Bejarano in 1951. The young couple were the first of her family to relocate to Los Angeles, eventually joined by her brother Armando and sisters Eva and Yolanda and finally her parents in 1962.

Early in the 1960s, she began working in the main office of the Los Angeles County Department of Roads and Transportation. She worked there for many years, rising to the position of Executive Administrative Assistant to the Director, finally retiring in 1987. With both living comfortably in retirement, Tony and Gloria returned to their native El Paso in 1992 where she remained until her death. No matter where they lived, Tony and Gloria loved entertaining and having family and friends over. Those gatherings and those days are indelible memories for anyone who knew them. She was the last of her generation and was the revered matriarch of several large families, among them the Mendez, Torres, and Lozano families in Los Angeles and El Paso, the Bejaranos of Southern California, as well as their own extended loving families and wide circle of friends. Services are planned in both El Paso and Los Angeles, with final internment at Calvary Catholic Cemetery Gethsemane Mausoleum in Los Angeles alongside her beloved husband of five decades. There, she joins hands with the loving family who preceded her in Eternity, including her maternal grandmother, parents, one brother, and two sisters, and into the hearts forever of those she leaves behind. Visitation will be Friday, December 7th from 5pm-9pm with a vigil at 7pm at Hillcrest Funeral Home-Carolina, 915-598-3332.