Obituary of Sylvester Mireles
Sylvester Raymond Mireles, age 96, passed away on June 1, 2026 at his home in Whittier, California.
Born on November 14, 1929 to Silvestre Mireles and Feliciana Telles in Tularosa, New Mexico, Sylvester never expected to live the long, full life that he did. Six months before he was born, his father died of an untreated stomach ulcer. As a child, Sonny, his nickname among family and friends, grew up in severe rural poverty that resulted in the family’s lack of food and his malnutrition. At one point, his nose bleeds persisted so badly that the local priest was called in to pray the last rites.
Sonny survived – only to travel with his mother to live with an impoverished coal miner in Cardin, Oklahoma. Surviving some bitterly cold weather and an abusive step-father, they escaped back to Tularosa - where his sister Dorothy was born.
Several years later, the skinny teenager signed on for a job working on the railroad in the nearby mountains. It was while waiting for a ride on the early morning of July 16, 1945 that he witnessed a bright glow coming from the nearby town of Carrizozo. He later learned that light he’d seen came from the first atomic explosion at the Trinity test site.
In 1944, Ray moved to Los Angeles with his mother and sister. After working for several years in pipeline construction and serving in the Air Force during the Korean war, he decided to return to school at East Los Angeles College. He subsequently transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles where he received his bachelors and masters degrees. Along the way, in 1956, he became only the second west coast Latino to receive a John Hay Whitney fellowship. This award for $5,000 was no small academic feat for this small town student.
In 1962, he returned to East LA College - this time as the first Latino professor to work at the college. There he created new learning techniques to help improve the academic performance of the increasingly Mexican-American student body at the school. This program, entitled USTED, was a revolutionary attempt to improve self-esteem and learning opportunities for students from all educational backgrounds and economic statuses.
More than a teacher, Ray worked to bring in other Latinos into the East LA College faculty, brought in the first Chicano Studies program to any community college into the country, paved the way for the college’s first Latino president and developed a scholarship program to finance the education of countless students.
In 1963, he married Brigida Chiavassa of Cordoba, Argentina. Together they moved to Whittier, California where they raised four children. They remained married until her passing in 2023.
After retiring from teaching in the mid-90’s, Ray pursued his interests of research and writing. He deeply investigated and wrote about the life of Billy the Kid, the shooting death of Chicano writer and activist Ruben Salazar, and his own life experiences as a child growing up in rural New Mexico continuing on to his later career as an educator at East LA College.
Ray is survived by his four children, John Raymond, Kevin, Sylvia and Matthew, and his four grandchildren, Analea, Pauline, Paloma and Luca. A memorial will be held on June 20th at the Mireles household with funeral services at St. Bruno’s Catholic church in Whittier on June 25th. Full details can be found at www.sylvestermireles.com.