Chavez Honored at Service at Chapman University : Memorial: About 100 people attend and are urged to ‘finish the struggle’ the labor leader started.

Some of them had trailed after their parents in protests led by Cesar Chavez. Others had not heard of Chavez at all until recently.

On Friday, about 100 people from different backgrounds gathered at a memorial service at Chapman University to honor the farm labor leader who died on April 23.

Jacqueline Nevarez, 20, the president of the Macondo Club, a Hispanic group at the university, said that she knew that it was important to sponsor the memorial service for Chavez but that she was not sure how many people would attend.

“I was really happy to see many people here,” Nevarez said after the service at the Chapman University Chapel. “It was good to see that he had an impact on everyone who showed up.”

Chavez, 66, died in his sleep while visiting Yuma, Ariz. A crowd of more than 35,000 was at his funeral in Delano on Thursday.

In Friday’s welcoming speech, Macondo Club adviser Luis Ortiz-Franco urged people to continue the boycott on California grapes--a campaign that Chavez had started to protest work conditions of farm workers. Ortiz said he has not bought grapes since 1965.

“He did not finish the struggle he had started,” said Ortiz, 47, a mathematics professor at Chapman. “I hope you can dedicate our commitments to the cause that Cesar Chavez worked so hard for.”

Ortiz said he attended the funeral in Delano and heard of the effort to make Chavez’s birthday, March 31, a national holiday. “Please write your congressmen to support this idea,” he said to applause.

County Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez was in the audience. He said Friday’s memorial service was the only one he attended.

“I’ve been in Sacramento and made it a priority to come to this service,” he said.

The Rev. Shaunie Eminger, 31, said in her sermon that she had never heard of Chavez until after she graduated from the seminary and shared offices with the United Farm Workers Ministry.

“A middle-class, Wonder Bread world. That’s how I grew up, free from oppression and injustices,” Eminger said. “Did anyone expect me to know who Cesar Chavez was? Everyone should have.

“Injustices occur daily. We cannot continue to say, ‘It’s not my issue,’ or, ‘I’ve never been on a farm.’ ”.

Eminger closed her sermon with a quote from Chavez in a 1984 speech to San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club: “Regardless of what the future holds for our union, regardless of what the future holds for farm workers, our accomplishment cannot be undone. The consciousness and pride that were raised by our union are alive and thriving inside millions of young Hispanics who will never work on a farm.”

Nevarez said she never knew of Chavez and his struggle until she started attending Chapman University.

“I was so disappointed it took me so long to know about him,” she said after the service. “I learned through Dr. Ortiz and Macondo.”

Rudy Sanchez had a different experience. Born in Sacramento, he followed his parents from protest to protest as they followed Chavez.

“At 10, I was experienced at holding picket signs and asking friends not to buy grapes,” Sanchez, 29, said.

Sanchez, the director of community outreach and multicultural programs for Chapman University, also was at Thursday’s funeral for Chavez. “It was not a somber experience but a celebration,” he said. “A celebration of a life.”