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MANUEL Sr. A 12th generation New Mexican who loved his family, the ocean, politics and history, died on Thursday, July 7, 2011 at noon. He was 86 years old. Never happy with aging, he liked to think of himself as "more than a half a century old." Chavez was the founder of the Cincinnati-based Parking Company of America and Chavez Properties. He was born in 1925 in Pajarito (little bird), a farming community in the South Valley just outside of Albuquerque. The fourth child in a family of nine boys and one girl, he was taken to his first day of school in a horse drawn wagon. Like his older brothers and sister, he knew only Spanish until the first grade. It's a language his family had spoken at home and retained since the mid 1600's when they arrived from Spain. During high school Chavez began working summers in Los Angeles. He would stand on Sepulveda Blvd to pick up day jobs and told his children how he was always a prized worker - whether it was pruning trees on a farm or parking cars in a downtown lot. His visits to Los Angeles began a lifelong love for the ocean. Chavez served briefly in the U.S. Navy and returned to Albuquerque where he attended college on the GI Bill. It was at the University of New Mexico where he met his future wife, Geraldine Vigil and started a family. He graduated with a degree in Economics and started teaching Civics and Geography at Ernie Pyle Jr. High School. In 1955 he went into real estate with his brother Ben Chaves. In the summer of 1967, he took a trip to Sacramento California where his brother Richard introduced him to the parking business. Chavez saw a world of opportunity for himself and his family. He picked up his family of six children, his wife and moved to Los Angeles to be part of a business with five of his brothers. In 1972, he separated from his brothers and joined forces with his oldest son Manuel. As they finished college, five of his six children followed them into the business. Chavez traveled extensively with his wife as well as with his children and their families visiting Europe, Mexico, Africa, Vietnam, Cuba, Argentina, Chile and back to New Mexico. He had a love hate relationship with the latter. It was the landscape and the people deep in his soul, but it also represented a place where he felt young latinos struggled against racism. It was in California that he felt freer and then eventually, he found his ocean in Miami Beach where he lived for part of the year. In the latter years of his life, Chavez struggled with depression. It was a disease particularly difficult for someone who had always been passionate about life. He is survived by his wife of 64 years, Geraldine of Cincinnati and Miami; his six children, Manuel and his wife, Cynthia, Robert and his wife, Debra, Martin and his wife, Kim of Cincinnati, Andrea and her husband, John Dietz of Indianapolis, Susana of Atlanta, and Lydia and her husband, Mark Rabine of San Francisco. Of his nine brothers and one sister, all but two are still alive. Nick, Dan, Richard, Ben and Avelina of Albuquerque. Alex and Frank of Los Angeles and Orange County. He is also survived by 19 grandchildren and at last count there were 14 great-grandchildren and one on the way. A Memorial Service will be held Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at the Queen City Club, 331 East 4th Street, Cincinnati, OH, 45202. The Service will begin at 6:00 p.m. and run until 7:30 p.m. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you make a donation in Manuel Chavez Sr.'s name to the Freestore Food or the Cincinnati Children's Dental Care Foundation. Tributes and condolences at rohdefuneral.com
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