Latino Civic Leader Villa Dies at 74

Raymond A. Villa, the first Latino city councilman of Santa Ana and an advocate for the poor and Latino communities, has died. He was 74.

Villa, a retired Santa Ana insurance agent, died Friday of complications of diabetes at Charter Community Hospital in Hawaiian Gardens, said his son, Steve Gomez of Anaheim.

Santa Ana Mayor Daniel H. Young adjourned Monday night’s City Council meeting in memory of Villa, who served on that panel from 1969 to 1973. Councilman John Acosta recalled Villa’s all-out style of working for causes he believed in.

“The Latino community looked up to Ray Villa as one who was the very first to represent the community on the council,” Acosta said. “When he had a cause, he would go to the mat for it when he believed it was the thing to do. We are going to miss him.”

Villa, who ran his own auto insurance business for many years, was a member of the so-called Bristol Street Gang, a Santa Ana-based group of about two dozen influential Latino civic leaders in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The men, meeting informally and irregularly, banded together to support Latino causes and individuals.

Villa was known for his generosity, his sometimes abrasive style and his big appetite. One friend noted fondly that he could “pack away eight enchiladas in one meal.”

Villa grew up in Los Angeles, graduated from UCLA and worked as a customhouse broker. He moved to Fullerton in 1956 and became an insurance salesman, later joining political organizations that led him to become the first Mexican-American appointed to the county’s Democratic Central Committee.

He spearheaded drives to bring anti-poverty and bilingual job-training programs into the county. The Bristol Street Gang’s first organized fund-raising effort to place Latinos in government positions, in 1968, landed a spot on the Santa Ana City Council for Villa and also saw several other Latinos elected locally.

One of those, Gilbert Arbiso, who served as mayor of Stanton in the mid-1960s and early 1970s, recalls Villa as “a crusader, a nice human being. He was always for the underdog.”

Lorin Griset, 73, who was mayor of Santa Ana in 1969, Villa’s first year on the council, said Villa “had a heart for people” and “really gave the Hispanics in our community the kind of representation they were needing.”

Villa is survived by his wife, Ruth, and four children: Gomez, Monica Flusche of Long Beach, Phil Villa of Santa Fe Springs and Linda Guerrero of San Diego. Services will be at 3 p.m. Thursday at Fairhaven Memorial Park in Santa Ana.

Times correspondent Jon Nalick contributed to this report.