Andres Gonzalez Sanchez

Andres married the love of his life, Andrea Mata Flores, in a quaint Catholic church in La Villa de Guadalupe, Mexico on a sunny day in 1958. They celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary last month with a blessing of their wedding vows, a seven-member mariachi band and the love of his family and friends. Andres raised his six sons, Juan Antonio, Andres Jr., Hector, Roberto, Mario Alberto, and Oscar with a firm and loving hand. His approach to discipline is legendary and there isn’t a grandchild who hasn’t heard the stories recounted many times. Thanks to his no-nonsense parenting style, all six men can change a glass window in under 10 minutes flat and haven’t lost a pair of glasses since the second grade. Most importantly, Andres taught his sons the value of character and integrity, the value of hard work, and the value of love. They hold him up as the quiet and gentle family leader and role model.

Andres was blessed with 14 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren who he cherished. His face would light up with a wide, happy smile and his eyes would shine when his grandchildren entered the room. He was the designated after-school driver for several of his grandchildren and the designated BBQ’er who ensure every child’s plate was full. He was a master welder by trade and master gardener by choice. He was not a prideful man, but you could always see a glimmer of appreciation when he harvested his myriad of peppers, avocados, papayas and roses. He planted seeds and his bounty was full. He will be missed but never forgotten. For more about Andres’ life, please see the report written by his granddaughter, Lauren Sanchez, for her University of Houston History class.

Andres Sanchez: An Immigrant Success Story

Houston is a large and thriving city with no signs of slowing down. It is diverse and densely populated, yet each individual who lives here holds a special place in the community. From the small-time laborer to the full-fledged businessman, their endless contributions, small and large, have helped create and establish the city of Houston in the nearly 200 years since its founding. Each individual is like a tiny pebble that adds to the mountain that is the city, without even one it would be incomplete. This is the life story of Andres Sanchez, a contributor to the city of Houston, a Houstonian by choice and the success story of a young man from Mexico who made it in the United States.

Childhood and Early Adult Life

Andres Sanchez was born on February 4, 1932, at a ranch called Estanzuela right outside of Monterrey, Mexico, to Refugio and Elifonza Sanchez. Refugio was a foreman at a local mining company for a while and later worked as a police officer until his death from natural causes at the age of eighty-seven. Elifonza, like most women at the time, stayed home and tended to the children and kept up with the household. She died rather young from complications that occurred after being attacked by one of the family bulls. Refugio and Elifonza had a total of thirteen children. Three of those children died very young from unknown childhood illnesses, which was a common occurrence at the time because doctors were not as accessible as they are today. Of the remaining ten children, five males and five females, Andres was the third born. As a child he had more responsibilities than most, he helped provide for his family in whatever ways he could. He attended a local elementary in Monterrey but had to drop out in the fourth grade because his family needed help around the ranch. He worked in the mountains surrounding Estanzuela collecting firewood to sell and hunting to provide food for his family, and often stayed overnight in the mountains by himself during his quests, even though he was just a child. When he was back at home, he looked after the animals that the family owned, such as horses, cows, chickens, and pigs, he also tended to the crops that the family grew which varied depending on the season.

In 1949 at the age of seventeen, Andres got his first official job when a Mexican brewery called Cervecería Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma, hired him. The brewery, which is still in business, was based out of Nuevo Leon, Monterrey, and jobs there were very hard to come by and even harder to get. At the brewery, where he worked for the next six or seven years, he filled kegs for different businesses that ordered beer.

Leaving Mexico for the States

During his time at the brewery, Andres met the love of his life, Andrea Mata. The pair met at a wedding where Andres asked Andrea to dance, and, well, the rest is history. Shortly, after meeting his future wife, Sanchez headed to Mexico City in hopes of getting his visa and passport so that he could legally cross into the United States and begin working there. While he held an elite and secure job at the brewery, he often wondered what more was out there waiting for him. He dreamed of the job opportunities that would be available to him in the states and what the future might hold. With the help of the brewery, he received his paperwork within the following month. At 7:00 a.m. on January 19, 1956, Sanchez crossed into the United States for the first time in his life and he did it the right way, legally. He travelled by car for hours on end to get there but it was well worth the wait—the land of opportunity was within his reach.

Upon his arrival in the United States, Sanchez settled in Houston for a few months where he worked as a laborer doing whatever jobs he could find here and there. He continued to earn a small living this way from January until April when he decided to head to California in search of more job opportunities. In California he found work in the picking fields and made his living picking the fruits and vegetables in season. A little over a year later in December 1957, he headed back home to Monterrey to marry the love of his life in May of 1958. Shortly after they married, Sanchez left his newlywed bride back at his family ranch in Mexico and once again headed for the states, where he stayed for six months while he worked on getting her visa and passport so they could begin their life together in the United States without having to worry about their immigration status. Separating temporarily was a tough decision for the young couple because they were in the beginning stages of their relationship and being in two completely different countries made it hard for them to stay in touch. However, the pair managed as best they could, and once Sanchez had his wife’s paperwork straightened out, he returned to Mexico once again to pick up his bride. The two then crossed into the United States in 1959 to begin their lives in a new country.

Raising a Family in Houston

The pair decided to start their lives in Houston. Sanchez had lived there previously for a short amount of time and thought it would be a great place to start a family. He was already comfortable with the area and he knew that he could find work and stability there. They settled in Houston’s Second Ward where the population was largely Hispanic, so they felt right at home within the community. In September of 1960, Andrea and Andres Sanchez welcomed their first child into the world, a baby boy that they named Juan. They had a second child in 1964 and then continued to expand their family throughout the remainder of the 1960s until they had a total of six boys, Juan, Andres Jr., Hector, Robert, Mario, and Oscar. While Sanchez was away at work during the day, Andrea was just as busy, if not more so, working at home. She was a stay-at-home wife who fed, cleaned, and raised six chaotic boys and made sure they stayed out of trouble. She definitely had her hands full. She made sure that all of her boys, including her husband had breakfast, lunch, and dinner everyday. She also cleaned and kept up with the house, did the laundry, and made sure the boys had rides to school. While the young couple kept a Spanish speaking household, they learned English however they could. Andres picked up the language from the various jobs he held and from being exposed to it frequently. Once the boys were of school age, Andrea volunteered as a teachers’ assistant, and from her work she was able to pick up the language. Although Andres and Andrea raised six boys in a rough neighborhood, they managed to keep their kids out of trouble and on the right path. Their eldest son graduated from Houston Technical Institute and the remaining five of the boys graduated from Milby High School in the Houston Independent School District. When they were of age the boys began working and helped contribute to the family in whatever ways that they could.

Career

While his wife was at home tending to the house and to the children, Sanchez was out trying to make a living to provide for them. One of the first jobs that Sanchez had in Houston was at the ship channel. The Houston Ship Channel was and is one of the biggest reasons that the city is what it is today. He worked there for three years during the late fifties for a cotton company unloading and loading bales of cotton from the ships. Cotton was a major export for the city and Houston once led U.S. ports in the cotton trade and ranked second in the world. Work at the ship channel was steady and good, but Sanchez wanted something different and knew that he was capable of more. After three years working at the ship channel, he decided to leave, floating from job to job for the next few years, never finding steady work. However, through the ship channel he made different connections and eventually got a chance to be a welder’s apprentice. Little did he know that this connection would yield whole new life for him and his family. An apprentice for about a year learning the ins and outs of welding, Sanchez quickly realized that he was a natural talent and began looking for jobs as a certified welder. Although he does to remember the name of the company that gave him his first job as a welder, he worked there for three years welding ship hulls. His skills as a welder greatly improved, causing demand for his talents to grow in the city of Houston. After a few years of welding, he joined Hunt Tool, where he continued to work as a welder for the next four years, and then Pritchett, welding for another nine years until 1982 when the company defaulted and he decided to retire at the age of young age of fifty. Nevertheless, he continued to be recruited to work on projects over the next four to five years, until he officially retired in 1987.

Contributions to the City

Over the many years that Sanchez worked as a welder, he worked on many varied projects in and around the city. While he was working for Hunt Tool, he welded fuel tanks for NASA. He is not certain whether or not those specific tanks were used in space, but regardless, contributed his efforts to a critical organization in the city and the country as a whole. Having started out working in the Port of Houston, which brought large amounts of cargo and business traffic into the city, it is incredible that he had the chance to work with NASA , which chose Houston as a destination in part because of the ship channel. The Houston Port Authority notes, “In 1961, the Port of Houston became a deciding factor in the government’s selection of Houston as NASA’s new headquarters.” Sanchez had worked at the port loading and unloading cotton, then he welded ship hulls, and finally he welded fuel tanks for NASA. It was as if his work grew with the city. He started working small jobs and as the city grew, his jobs grew with it.

Another notable contribution that Sanchez made to the City of Houston was his work on the team that welded one of the pieces of public art at the University of Houston. After he went into retirement when Pritchett failed, he continued to weld here and there whenever he was recruited. One of those jobs was to weld the rebar inside of the entrance markers to the university on Cullen Boulevard at I-45. He worked on the markers as part of a team for a total of four months until the foundation for the markers was complete.

Since completion, the markers have stood the test of time and continue to welcome incoming students and visitors at the University of Houston over thirty years later. Sanchez’s son, Hector, actually attended the university while his father was working on the markers. Hector has a specific memory of his dad and his team laying in the shade, taking a lunch break from working all day in the Houston heat. Hector remembers how emotional he felt realizing how far he was able to come because of all the hard work his father had done over the years to provide a bright future for his sons. He explained that the sight is forever burned into his memory as the day he realized all that his father sacrificed to provide for their family. Sanchez worked hard for the majority of his life to provide for his family and it has paid off as all of his sons have gone on to find success in their own lives. As of 2017, he is 85 years old and his family now takes turns providing and caring for him. He and his wife still live in the Houston’s Second Ward and have no plans to change that. They are still happily married and will celebrate their sixtieth wedding anniversary in May of 2018. Together they have created a large family which consists of their children, their grandchildren, and even a few great-grandchildren. I am one of Sanchez’s grandchildren and I am beyond honored to have gotten the opportunity to write about something so near to my heart. I am proud to be able to share the story of my grandfather and all of the hard work that he has done for the city of Houston throughout his life and I am forever grateful for the foundation he laid that has allowed me, my brothers and all of our family to live the lives that we do. As I grow older I have realized how hard it must have been to start over and establish oneself in a new place and I appreciate all of the effort that he put into creating a successful, close-knit family. Andres Sanchez is one of Houston’s many great success stories. He started as a child in a large family on a ranch in Mexico who came to the United States and established himself here and provided a bright future for his wife and family. At a time when it was probably easier to cross over into the United States illegally, his determination to do everything according to the law has kept his family safe and free from worry about their legal status. He returns to Mexico every so often and has often wondered what life would have been like had he stayed and continued working for the brewery, but he has no regrets and is proud of the life that he has made for himself and the life he was able to provide for his family. Sanchez’s contributions, while small, add to the city as a whole and are important to the foundations of its growth. Working in and around Houston he contributed to projects that are still around today, and his work with NASA demonstrates how he progressed throughout his life and the amazing opportunities he was able to create for himself. The family had saved clippings from a newspaper article that showed Sanchez welding and a brief excerpt about his work, but over the years it was lost. Sanchez’s story is just one small piece of evidence that shows that immigrants can make it in the United States legally. Though things are much different now and the process of gaining legality is no longer as simple or as quick as it once was, with the right determination anything is possible as long as you are willing to work for it.