Profiles : JOSEPHINE ANDRADE: FAMILIAR FACE : Over the Many Years, Her Town Has Changed

Josephine Andrade lives in the same two-room Santa Ana bungalow where she was born 63 years ago. Yellowed photographs hang on the walls as reminders of Santa Ana’s past.

Andrade, nicknamed “Chapa,” is one of the most familiar faces in the Logan neighborhood, just south of the Santa Ana Freeway.

In the summertime, she drags a chair by her front gate and sits while chatting with neighbors and watching children walk by.

“It makes me feel good saying hello to all my friends,” she said. “It’s great. I can’t imagine doing that anywhere else.”

Six decades of life in Santa Ana hold both fond and bitter memories for Andrade.

Growing up in the neighborhood meant her childhood friends were like brothers and sisters to her. Her late husband, Joseph, lived a block away when she met him. Even now, all but one of her six children live in the city and often visit or drop off grandchildren for her to baby-sit.

But Andrade also recalls the days when city theaters and schools were segregated.

At Logan Elementary School, all her Latino classmates were bused from neighborhoods that had Anglo schools.

One day in geography class, Andrade remembers turning to a friend after the teacher pronounced “Czechoslovakia.”

“I said out loud that I thought it was like sobaco , the Spanish word for underarm,” Andrade said. “The next thing I know, the teacher is washing my mouth out with soap.”

Since then, Santa Ana has changed, but Andrade does not think all the changes have been good.

“In my day, you could walk to town. Everything you ever wanted was in town. It was safe. You can’t go into town now.”

But she still loves her hometown.

It is “the best. . . . I’d be lost outside Santa Ana.”