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Vernon W. Salvador, 65, died in his home on February 13, 2007. A man of extraordinary strength of will, he courageously battled cancer and successfully thwarted predictions that he would not walk again. Vernon was born in Hanford, CA, on May 25, 1941. He attended the University of California, Berkeley, earning a degree in history in 1963, and then went on to attain a law degree at the University of California, Hastings in San Francisco in 1966. After a stint in the Peace Corps in Panama, Vernon practiced poverty and civil rights law, becoming the first attorney to stop the building of a freeway in California (geological fault lines dictated against the planned freeway, and many more lives would have been lost in the Oakland earthquake of 1989, had the freeway been built). The son of Portuguese immigrants, Vernon traveled to and lived in the Azores, where he performed academic research and documented ritual systems through published ethnographic photography. After moving to Albuquerque, Vernon served as the Special Master for the Tome Land Grant litigation and focused his legal practice on civil rights, First Amendment law, and False Claims Act litigation. All the while, he pursued his photography, delighting in the technical aspects of the craft, resurrecting and experimenting with older processes, and discovering the expanded horizons offered by photogravure. His photographic work has appeared in numerous publications, as well as exhibitions and galleries in New Mexico, Arizona, California, New York, Panama, and France. Vernon is survived by his wife, Elizabeth J. Church; his son Sergio Salvador; grandsons Griffin and Foster; daughter Melina Salvador-Nethery; grandson Oliver; his siblings Tony, Aldine, Albert, Abel, and Annabela; and numerous beloved nieces, nephews, grandnieces and grandnephews, and other "California family" members. He was preceded in death by his siblings Ida, John, and Frank. A private Memorial Service will be held in his honor for those who honored him in life. His wife will take his ashes to California. Arrangements by Direct Funeral Services, 2919 4th St. NW. ABQ. 505-3423-8008
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