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, also known as Sonny by his family and friends, never expected to live the long, full life that he did. Six months before he was born, his young father tragically died of an bleeding ulcer. As a child, Sonny grew up in the rural, Great Depression era poverty endemic to the Tularosa valley. With no jobs available, his extended family scraped by to the point that he sought charity from the local church to stave off malnutrition. At one point, his nose bleeds persisted so badly that the local priest was called in to recite 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 Cunningham was born only days after returning.
Several years later, the skinny teenager signed on for a job working on the railroad in the nearby mountains. While waiting for a ride on the early morning of July 16, 1945, 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. Because he worked in the more distant mountains, he escaped the radiation that soon befell most of the town’s residents.
In 1946, Ray moved to Los Angeles with his mother and sister. First they lived with his aunt Chonita; then they moved into the public housing projects at Bonnie Beach in East Los Angeles. A few years later, they moved into their own home in Boyle Heights on Girardo Street.
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 mean academic feat for this student who had to fight to succeed both academically and financially.
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. After meeting at a UCLA dance at the Catholic Newman Center, they eventually married happily surrounded by Brigida’s family in Argentina. Together they moved to Whittier, California where they raised four children. They remained married until her passing in 2023.
Throughout his career, Ray enjoyed bringing satire and a playful humor into even his serious work. Ruthlessly honest, Ray trusted his peers and neighbors and even sat back as others took credit for his efforts. To diffuse tensions on the campus, he created a book entitled "Click These Balls" which he distributed to administrators and power brokers associated with the college. The book included humorous illustrations and a set of steel balls for the reader to play with. The book included humorous illustrations and a set of steel balls for the reader to play with. Having survived tough times, Ray laughed at the everyday foibles of professional life.
During his college years, he took fun in naming the scholarship fund that he founded "The Loyal Order of the Bush" wherein he presented speakers with a small section of bush that he dug out of his mother's backyard. Later, as his career took hold, this program went on to become known as the "The Mexican-American Business and Professional Men's Scholarship Association." From sophmoric beginnings grew a lifeline of financial support to stuggling students.
After retiring from teaching in the mid-90’s, Ray pursued his interests of research and writing. With painstaking investigation and detetmination, he 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 on through 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.