Earlier this summer we sat down with a former camper, camp counselor, and longtime friend of Hidden Villa, Tom Lederer. Tom knew Josephine, Frank, and Cesar Chavez. The following is a retelling of one of the many vibrant stories he shared with us.

Dan Dana, married to Liz, one of the Duvenneck’s daughters, did a lot of work in Delano, California. Delano is in the heart of California’s Central Valley and became known for being home to the ‘Delano Grape Strike and Boycott’. Dan built housing for the farmworker families and helped with organizing the community. And typical of Josephine, that meant that she had some of the farm workers’ kids come to Hidden Villa Camp.  

One year, when I was a camp counselor, Caesar Chavez came to drop off his son Paul, and several other kids from Delano to attend Camp. I remember this vividly…

Paul and the other kids from Delano were utterly amazing! First of all, they got along with absolutely everybody in the camp. They were real leaders. They were active. They participated. They were nice. They were just great kids. 

I remember Josephine told me to take that group of kids into town to the shoe store and get shoes for them. This was a very typical request of Josephine. If they needed shoes, she was going to make sure they received them. So, I drove Paul and the other kids down to the shoe store. When we got there, we saw a strike was going on. They were picketing right in front of the shoe store.

I thought, well, Josephine told me to go to the store, so I started in that direction. Paul looked at me and said, “Tom, I’m sorry, we can’t go into that store.” A 12 year old kid taught me to stick by my principles and never cross a picket line. It was a pretty powerful lesson. I’ve never crossed a picket line since. It’s that sort of stuff, those lessons, that happen at Hidden Villa.