Alamosa – Florentina T. “Florence” Ortega, who died at 97 on Nov. 12 at San Luis Valley Regional Medical Center, got her driver’s license at age 65, shortly after buying her first car, and went full-throttle into a new, independent life.
The eldest of eight children, her childhood began in Montrose and abruptly changed when her parents, Jose and Teresita Castro Tellez, bought a ranch in Garcia.
She considered herself a city girl and was revolted upon discovering just how cows produce milk. She learned to milk the beasts and went on to teach her siblings. Eventually, she enjoyed being around the ranch’s chickens, pigs, horses, cattle and other livestock.
Her urban background, combined with a country family’s reliance on its community, led to a lifelong interest in local government. She married Jose Alex Ortega, a judge in Amalia, N.M., just across the Colorado-New Mexico border, and developed a reputation as a volunteer even while raising her own brood of eight.
During the Great Depression, Florence and Jose Ortega served as translators for scores of local residents who struggled with U.S. government missives that even native English speakers often found incomprehensible. Florence Ortega also served as the local vital-statistics keeper, chronicling local births and deaths for the government.
“Someday, you won’t have us, and you’ll have to work,” she told her children as she taught them to can vegetables, make jelly, work in the fields and care for livestock.
“When you know how to work, you can at least earn your plate of food.”
Until she became a widow in 1966, most people saw Florence Ortega as her husband’s subordinate – a capable but dependent volunteer. Despite her relentless energy, the lack of a driver’s license left Ortega relying on others to ferry her to meetings and other activities.
This presented an increasingly considerable logistical problem.
Ortega kept joining more and more organizations. By the mid-1970s, she belonged to director’s boards and committees including Community Action, the Costilla County Democratic Party, Costilla and Conejos County Action Planning, the San Luis Valley Seniors, San Luis Valley Hispanic League, Colorado Health Board of Directors, Vista/Colorado Seniors Organization, Garcia Domestic Water Users, the Rio Costilla Livestock Association, the Migrant Council, the San Luis Valley Food Coop, the Crucillo of San Luis, and the San Luis Valley Rural Electric Cooperative Feedback Board.
Sometimes, daughter Evangeline Leyba drove from her home in Colorado Springs to Garcia, a 174-mile trip each way, to chauffeur her mother to distant meetings in Montrose and Durango.
In 1976, Ortega got sick of begging for rides. Ten years after becoming a widow, she bought a secondhand Dodge Duster and took driving lessons from Leyba and son Fred Ortega. She was 65 when the Department of Motor Vehicles clerk handed Ortega her newly minted driver’s license.
“She became more active after she got her license,” Leyba said.
“Because then nobody could say, ‘We can’t take you.’ She wasn’t looking for a ride anymore. She just got going.”
Ortega became the valley’s de facto chauffeur. She shuttled seniors to church, community centers, medical appointments, funerals and the supermarket. She bought and delivered groceries and other commodities to shut-ins. During Holy Week, she drove daily, with a friend, to services at Sangre de Cristo church in San Luis.
“One time, she called in and said she was bringing guests to the feedback board meeting,” recalled Heather Sanchez of the San Luis Valley Rural Electrical Cooperative, where Ortega served for 22 years.
“She was bringing two people from San Acacio to the Social Security office so she could get them signed up for benefits. She didn’t want to drive all the way home and then come back to Monte Vista, so she just brought them along.”
During her driving career, Ortega went through four cars and a handful of tickets, including one for speeding through downtown Manassa. When her son laughed, she tartly said that if it was so cute, then he ought to pay the fine.
Well into her 90s, Ortega reluctantly surrendered her license when she totaled her last car after rear-ending an indecisive driver she felt hesitated overlong at an intersection. She maintained her innocence to her dubious children.
“She was just crazy that he wouldn’t move,” Leyba said. “He just wouldn’t turn. So she plowed right into him.”
Survivors include daughters Alice Martinez of Questa, N.M., Lillian Torrez of Denver and Evangeline Leyba of Garcia; sons Oligario Ortega of Amalia, N.M., George Ortega of Casa Grande, Ariz., and Fred Ortega of Garcia; brothers Amando Cordova of Colorado Springs and Pete Cordova of Denver; 48 grandchildren, 42 great-grandchildren; and 23 great-great grandchildren.
Besides her husband, she was preceded in death by a daughter, a son, three brothers, two sisters, eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-820-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
