Two Dozen Years of Grace and Passion

Frank del Olmo, the associate editor of The Times, died Thursday at the age of 55. Del Olmo began at the paper nearly 34 years ago as an intern on the metro desk and went on to become a Metro reporter, a foreign correspondent and an editorial writer. In 1980, he began writing a column that appeared on the Op-Ed page ever since.

During the 24 years that followed, he wrote on a wide variety of subjects, including many issues affecting the Latino community. Below are excerpts from some of his columns, including one on the 10th anniversary of the death of his friend, Ruben Salazar, a Times columnist and television news director who was killed Aug. 29, 1970, during a Chicano Moratorium demonstration against the Vietnam War. Two columns excerpted are about his son, Frankie, who is autistic.

Additional columns can be found at latimes.com/delolmo.

Aug. 24, 1980

I am not saying Ruben had become an activist Chicano, but he was certainly not the same man he was when he left The Times’ reporting staff. I am convinced that in his own personality, Ruben was going through the same turmoil the entire Chicano community was dealing with in those days....

I think he often wrote his columns explaining things like “Who is a Chicano and what is it that Chicanos want” as much to clarify things in his own mind as he did to clarify them for his Anglo and other readers. And one of the saddest things about his death is that Ruben died never having fully answered many of those questions for himself or for the Chicano community....

I know he was not a Chicano saint. But I also know he was not just another Mexican American either. What he was, and what he might have become, can never be fully answered. And while that is not the greatest tragedy of the Aug. 29 riot, it remains, for me, the most profound.

May 1, 1981

In all my years of living and working in Latino communities, I’ve never heard a Latino refer to himself as a Hispanic.... Latino is preferable as the all-inclusive term for our various communities. Its derivation is straightforward. In Spanish, Latin America is Latinoamerica. Latin Americans consider everyone living from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego to be Americans, so that part of the word is easily dropped, leaving us with Latino.... But we have to face up to the fact that Hispanic will probably stick. As long as it is accepted in government, in the mass media and in the corporate boardrooms of this country, we’ll have to live with it.

But that doesn’t mean we have to like it.

In fact, if there is one positive thing about the emergence of “Hispanic,” it’s that both Chicanos and Mexican Americans finally agree on something: They don’t like being called Hispanics.

Aug. 28, 1986

Posted near my desk at The Times is a gag sign that reads, “Se Habla Ingles” (English Spoken Here). A Latino friend gave it to me because so many of the assignments that I have covered for this newspaper, from farm-labor strikes in the San Joaquin Valley to revolutions in Central America, have involved the use of Spanish.

I have come to treasure that silly sign more than ever in recent years as public concern has grown over the widespread use of Spanish and other foreign languages in this country, and the presumed threat that this trend represents to the dominance of English. That sign summarizes my feelings about the bilingual controversy: It’s a joke.

Oct. 31, 1994

The Times on Sunday published an editorial endorsing Gov. Pete Wilson for reelection, the first time this newspaper has endorsed a gubernatorial candidate in more than 20 years.

As deputy editor of the editorial page, I played a role in the deliberations that led up to its publication. Unfortunately, my deeply felt belief that Wilson does not deserve The Times’ endorsement did not carry the day. Under normal circumstances, I would quietly accept that decision and move on. This time I cannot. Because this is not just another political campaign. And the Wilson endorsement is not -- as a senior colleague whom I respect tried to convince me -- just another endorsement.

For me, a Mexican American born and reared in California and a journalist here for more than 20 years, this campaign is unprecedented in the harm it does -- permanent damage, I fear -- to an ethnic community I care deeply about and a state I love. The reason, of course, is its weapon of choice: the complex and emotional issue of illegal immigration.

In the form of Proposition 187 -- the mean-spirited and unconstitutional ballot initiative that would deprive “apparent illegal aliens” of public health services and immigrant children of public education -- the immigration issue has become the cornerstone of Wilson’s desperate and cynical effort to win a second term.

I say cynical because Wilson has taken the low road, using alarmist rhetoric and frightening television ads that portray illegal immigrants in the ugliest, most negative terms. He is making illegal immigrants scapegoats for larger economic problems, like the defense cutbacks that so devastated the California economy.

Dec. 20, 1995

It has been especially tough this holiday season -- the first in which we have been not just aware that something was troubling Frankie, but acutely aware of exactly what it was. It has been such a difficult time that I found myself avoiding holiday parties and decided I was in no mood to send out Christmas cards. I couldn’t even bring myself to help Magdalena trim our Christmas tree. I concentrated on Frankie instead, playing with him and trying to keep him focused on Christmas books and songs. He sings a pretty fair “Frosty the Snowman.”

That’s a good sign, of course. The therapies are helping. Frankie is speaking again, even if many words still are slurred. With encouragement and guidance from a skilled behavior therapist and the caregivers at his preschool, he is beginning to play with other children. That’s a breakthrough, since a symptom of classic autism is a tendency to withdraw from contact with people.

March 19, 2000

Like many other Chicanos who grew up here, I’ve never considered the Chandler family, owners of the Los Angeles Times, to be the paragons of civic leadership that some other Angelenos do.

I know all too well the sometimes ugly history of their newspaper, and have tried never to forget it even as that same newspaper treated me as well as any journalist could ask.

Until she died, my dear mother would never subscribe to The Times -- even as her son prospered here. “Tell me when you write something, mijo,” she’d say. “I’ll buy it at the store.”

Like many other Latinos of her generation, she never forgot the yellow-journalism campaign this newspaper and Hearst’s now-defunct Los Angeles papers waged against “zoot suiters” in the 1940s. Minority youngsters wore the outlandish clothes to flaunt their differences, but the local press helped turn that term into an anti-Mexican pejorative. In the process, it also helped spawn the Zoot Suit Riots of 1944.

Granted, in those days, The Times may not have been much different from many other papers and institutions in this country, but the alienation was nonetheless strongly felt in Pacoima, where I grew up, on the Eastside, and in other local barrios.

I know better than most Latinos just how much The Times has changed since then.

Nov. 9, 2003

In my years of reporting along the border, it always troubled me how some Mexicans and even a few immigrants-rights activists romanticized coyotes as Robin Hood figures. What naivete. Coyotes are criminal scum, right down there with drug smugglers. They take advantage of desperate people, then abandon them when danger -- whether in the form of other criminals or the Border Patrol -- appears. One of the failures of U.S. border enforcement is that federal agencies rarely put as much effort into breaking up people-smuggling rings as they do into anti-drug enforcement.

Given the economic forces that lure poor Mexicans to risk so much to find work in this country, though, the flow of migrants will not stop. So it must be regulated.

Dec. 21, 2003

Pondering the changes Frankie is undergoing, I recalled conversations I had with some of the autism specialists who treated Frankie. As they helped him learn to speak again or to make eye contact with other people, I would celebrate his progress. But they would wisely try to temper my expectations, warning me to be prepared for a difficult adolescence; that the confusion and angst even normal youngsters face at that awkward age would be compounded by Frankie’s awareness of his disability.

I have dreaded Frankie’s adolescence. But there is no postponing it. My little boy is becoming a young man. He’s going to need more of my time, which is one reason I will write less frequently for this page. He’s also going to need more privacy than I have allowed him. He’ll need it to decide how he prefers to cope with autism.

So the two great gifts I can give Frankie this Christmas, and in years to come, are my presence and his privacy. And he shall have them both.