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CommentsLong-time civic leader Joe E. Gonzales dies at 88
Gonzales, who in the late 1940s worked for U.S. Senator Carl Hayden of Arizona, died in Tucson last month from heart complications.
Gonzales, who in the late 1940s worked for U.S. Senator Carl Hayden of Arizona, and in the 1950s managed the Bracero Program for the U.S. Department of Labor, died in Tucson last month from heart complications.
Gonzales served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II as a radio operator and brevet navigator in various bombers. Subsequent to hostilities, he served as special assistant to the commanding general Joint U.S. Military Assistance Group in Spain, and as special assistant to the commanding general for plans and operations in the Pentagon. He retired as lieutenant colonel from the USAF.
Among other important accomplishments, he was the first Hispanic to serve as staff director of a U.S. Senate Appropriations subcommittee, where he oversaw 53 federal departments and agencies and their budgets, which annually totaled nearly $50 billion.
After more than three decades in Washington, he returned to Tucson as special assistant to the secretary of treasury. In 1975, Gonzales was appointed to the Arizona-Mexico Commission by then-Governor Raul H. Castro.
Gonzales cofounded the U.S. Senate Amateur Radio station along with U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater, and cofounded the Congressional Flying Club and the Washington Civil Air Patrol Wing. In Arizona, he served as president of the Pimeria Alta Historical Society Museum in Nogales, Ariz.; president of the Arizona State Society of Washington, D.C.; director and chairman for the Arizona Automobile Association; member of the Pima County Sheriff’s Aero Squadron, and chairman and director of the Arizona AAA.
Señor Gonzales will be missed.
