Antonio "Tony" Gomez

Antonio "Tony" Gomez, 83, died peacefully at his Albuquerque home in October.

Antonio is survived by his wife Eloyda Gonzales Gomez, daughter Laura E. Gomez, son Miguel A. Gomez, grandsons: Cuauhtemoc, Alejandro, Emiliano and Benicio, all of Albuquerque; sister Virginia Romero (Sam) of Surprise, AZ; brother Willie Gomez (Linda) of Melvindale, MI; sisters-in-law: Naomi Gonzales Lafferty of Albuquerque, Norma Gigliotti of San Diego, CA, Elida Flores (Richard) of Albuquerque; and many nieces and nephews in New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, and Michigan.

He was born in 1941 in Roswell, the last of seven children to Aurora Carrillo Gomez of the Hondo Valley and Alfredo Rodriguez Gomez of Juarez, Mexico. He was baptized and served as an altar boy at St. John’s Church in Roswell. He attended public schools in Roswell from 1947 to 1955 and Melvindale High School in a Detroit suburb from 1955-1959. He received his B.A. from the University of New Mexico in 1969 (graduating in three years) and his M.A. in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1971 (he was A.B.D.—all but dissertation—for the Ph.D.).

He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1960, completing basic training and advanced training in radio communications at Ft. Knox, KY. He was then stationed in the Panama Canal Zone at Ft. Davis, where his tour of duty was extended due to the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was honorably discharged in 1962 at the rank of Specialist E-4. From 1962-1965, he served in the U.S. Army Reserves.

Antonio returned to Roswell in 1962 where he met his future wife of six decades, Eloyda Gonzales, and they had two children. In 1965, Antonio became Assistant Director of the Chaves County Community Action Program, part of President Johnson’s War on Poverty. A year later, he moved his young family to Albuquerque to begin full-time studies at UNM, where he continued organizing work with the UNM Center for Community Action Services until he graduated.

Antonio was a leader in the emerging Chicano civil rights movement, including as the co-founder in 1968 of the United Mexican American Students (UMAS), which pressured UNM to hire Mexican Americans into faculty and staff position (beyond the custodial and maintenance ranks where they were concentrated in 1968), to enroll and graduate more Chicano students, and to offer courses in the fledgling field of Chicano Studies (and he taught the first such course at UNM in the 1970 summer session).

Antonio was a devoted husband, father, and grandfather. When he finished his education, he encouraged his wife Eloyda to begin hers, and he always supported her 33-year career as an Oncology-certified R.N. at Presbyterian Hospital. He played a pivotal role in his children’s education, from elementary school through their college years at Harvard and Notre Dame.

Antonio and Eloyda loved cooking Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts for the extended family in Albuquerque. Antonio taught his kids to appreciate the state’s natural beauty, taking them to most of the state’s national and state parks. He organized dozens of huge camping trips to New Mexico fishing spots including Canjilon Lakes, Quemado Lake, Fenton Lake, and Bluewater Lake. He was the organizer-in-chief of these trips and the mess captain too, cooking egg and bacon breakfasts and steak dinners on the campfire and on his Coleman stove.

From 1972 to 1978, Antonio was the Associate Director of the UNM Medical School’s Basic Science Enrichment Program, a program for under-represented minority students in the summer before they began medical school at UNM and other medical schools in the Southwest. The program’s objective was to increase the ranks of physicians who would better serve New Mexico’s Indigenous and Hispanic communities, and hundreds of future doctors completed the program.

Antonio later worked at UNM’s Office of Graduate Studies where he oversaw a variety of programs, including a federally funded minority fellowship program and the Graduate Fellowship Act, funded by the State Legislature in 1988 and conceived by Antonio seven years earlier. Under his leadership, these programs helped thousands of Latino, Native American, and African American students complete their law, medical, nursing, pharmacy, and doctoral studies at UNM and other New Mexico universities.

Antonio retired from UNM in the early 1990s as Associate Dean of Graduate Studies. He embarked on a second career as the owner and broker of El Camino Real Real Estate Company. He loved the North Valley, where he had a large vegetable garden for many years and took frequent walks along the acequia trails. Antonio was a self-taught cook inspired by the culinary talents of his older sisters Virginia and Dorothy, especially their chile colorado and chile verde. Especially after his retirement, Antonio cooked thousands of meals for his family, all made with care and love. His grandsons especially adored his frijoles, made only from beans grown in the Estancia Valley.

Antonio was a news junkie who religiously watched CNN and MSNBC and read at least one daily paper from the time he was 19 until the day he died. He was a life-long Democrat and was a Chaves County Delegate to the state convention in 1964. Gov. Toney Anaya appointed him a Colonel Aide-De-Camp in 1986. Antonio was a full-time volunteer on Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign, and he and his wife attended the presidential inauguration in 1992. He marveled at how much American society had changed for the better during his lifetime, and at the fact that he had twice voted for a Black man who became President.

Antonio's memorial service will be held on Sunday, December 15, 2024, at 11:00am at the UNM Memorial Alumni Chapel located at 1889 Central Ave. NE, 87106, on UNM Campus in building 35. Free parking in Lot C.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made in Antonio’s memory to the Roadrunner Food Bank in Albuquerque (www.rrfb.org). For more information refer to the link.