Catalog ID:
ORH-006-0014
Creator:
Cruz, Lee
Archives Field 21:
AUDIO Click to Play
Scope & Content:
Date of interview: October 12, 2023
Location of interview: Fair Haven Branch Library (New Haven Free Public Library)
Duration: 1 hour, 49 minutes, 13 seconds
Eliezer "Lee" Cruz was born on May 12, 1959 in Manhattan, New York, to a lower-middle class evangelical Christian, Puerto Rican family. Lee is the second of four brothers (Paul, Gamaliel, Samuel, and Daniel) and a sister (Damaris). He spent his time moving back and forth between the mainland United States, spending most of his early childhood in the South Bronx before moving to the cities of Naguabo and Caguas in Puerto Rico when he was in the fifth grade (roughly 1969).
Lee's mother, Hilda Cruz Matos Alberle, originally from Naguabo, was primarily a homemaker in Cruz's childhood, though she worked with Head Start and taught Sunday School when the children were older. His father, Pablo Cruz Hernandez, originally from Aguas Buenas, worked a variety of jobs. While raised on a farm by a local family who took him in after his mother's passing, he moved to New York in 1953 with aspirations of becoming a horse jockey. He ultimately transitioned into work in the agricultural, food, and manufacturing industries after converting to evangelical Christianity, meeting Doña Hilda, and starting a family.
The family finally moved to Connecticut on the recommendation of an evangelical minister, Juan Esteban Torres, in Wallingford who reported an influx of Puerto Ricans to the state (the early 1970s). The family eventually settled in Meriden when Don Pablo found work with International Silver, having had some manufacturing experience as a diamond cutter in midtown Manhattan.
Lee attended high school at Wilcox Technical School and attended Barrington College for his undergraduate studies. He briefly joined the Marine Corps in his sophomore year of college to receive financial assistance for his tuition, missing only a semester and managing to graduate within four years. Lee received his masters from Brandeis University in Management of Human Services. In 1983, Lee moved to New Haven to direct the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) Educational Service Center, beginning his time in New Haven and a career in nonprofit management that would span some forty years.
Lee provides fascinating insights into the messy history of bilingual education, both stateside and in Puerto Rico. When he left New York in the fifth grade (~1969), he'd placed into the gifted and talented program. However, upon moving back to Puerto Rico, school officials there wanted to place him back a grade, for him to catch up on his reading skills in Spanish. Lee's mother, with roughly a ninth-grade education herself, spent the summer building her son's Spanish reading comprehension through reading a New Testament Bible with side-by-side Spanish and English translations. When Lee returned stateside (this time, to Meriden, Connecticut) in the 7th grade (~1971), school officials assumed he lacked English language skills and placed him in a separate trailer at the back of Jefferson Middle School in Meriden, where, he learned, all students coming "from another country" were placed. Lee successfully tested out, and once the Bilingual Education Act was successfully passed in 1972, his younger siblings were able to benefit from more formalized bilingual education.
Lee also provides important insights about life in New Haven. Having lived in the Elm City on and off since 1983 (with a brief 11 year stint in León, Nicaragua doing community work, from 1986-1997), Lee considers the Fair Haven neighborhood, specifically, home. He appreciates the neighborhood's diversity, appreciating that his children can walk down their block and hear "English, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Hebrew, and French." He runs food tours with the Neighborhood Association, primarily on Grand Avenue, both to drum up business and help dispel misconceptions about Fair Haven.
Other themes of Lee's oral history include: the racialized and classed mobility of his family (having become middle class in his childhood when his father, who could "pass" for Jewish, was taken in and trained by Jewish diamond cutters in the Diamond District of New York); the importance of religion and faith to Puerto Rican community building; as well as the role nonprofit work has played in his own life and activism, both here in New Haven and in Nicaragua.
Location of interview: Fair Haven Branch Library (New Haven Free Public Library)
Duration: 1 hour, 49 minutes, 13 seconds
Eliezer "Lee" Cruz was born on May 12, 1959 in Manhattan, New York, to a lower-middle class evangelical Christian, Puerto Rican family. Lee is the second of four brothers (Paul, Gamaliel, Samuel, and Daniel) and a sister (Damaris). He spent his time moving back and forth between the mainland United States, spending most of his early childhood in the South Bronx before moving to the cities of Naguabo and Caguas in Puerto Rico when he was in the fifth grade (roughly 1969).
Lee's mother, Hilda Cruz Matos Alberle, originally from Naguabo, was primarily a homemaker in Cruz's childhood, though she worked with Head Start and taught Sunday School when the children were older. His father, Pablo Cruz Hernandez, originally from Aguas Buenas, worked a variety of jobs. While raised on a farm by a local family who took him in after his mother's passing, he moved to New York in 1953 with aspirations of becoming a horse jockey. He ultimately transitioned into work in the agricultural, food, and manufacturing industries after converting to evangelical Christianity, meeting Doña Hilda, and starting a family.
The family finally moved to Connecticut on the recommendation of an evangelical minister, Juan Esteban Torres, in Wallingford who reported an influx of Puerto Ricans to the state (the early 1970s). The family eventually settled in Meriden when Don Pablo found work with International Silver, having had some manufacturing experience as a diamond cutter in midtown Manhattan.
Lee attended high school at Wilcox Technical School and attended Barrington College for his undergraduate studies. He briefly joined the Marine Corps in his sophomore year of college to receive financial assistance for his tuition, missing only a semester and managing to graduate within four years. Lee received his masters from Brandeis University in Management of Human Services. In 1983, Lee moved to New Haven to direct the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) Educational Service Center, beginning his time in New Haven and a career in nonprofit management that would span some forty years.
Lee provides fascinating insights into the messy history of bilingual education, both stateside and in Puerto Rico. When he left New York in the fifth grade (~1969), he'd placed into the gifted and talented program. However, upon moving back to Puerto Rico, school officials there wanted to place him back a grade, for him to catch up on his reading skills in Spanish. Lee's mother, with roughly a ninth-grade education herself, spent the summer building her son's Spanish reading comprehension through reading a New Testament Bible with side-by-side Spanish and English translations. When Lee returned stateside (this time, to Meriden, Connecticut) in the 7th grade (~1971), school officials assumed he lacked English language skills and placed him in a separate trailer at the back of Jefferson Middle School in Meriden, where, he learned, all students coming "from another country" were placed. Lee successfully tested out, and once the Bilingual Education Act was successfully passed in 1972, his younger siblings were able to benefit from more formalized bilingual education.
Lee also provides important insights about life in New Haven. Having lived in the Elm City on and off since 1983 (with a brief 11 year stint in León, Nicaragua doing community work, from 1986-1997), Lee considers the Fair Haven neighborhood, specifically, home. He appreciates the neighborhood's diversity, appreciating that his children can walk down their block and hear "English, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Hebrew, and French." He runs food tours with the Neighborhood Association, primarily on Grand Avenue, both to drum up business and help dispel misconceptions about Fair Haven.
Other themes of Lee's oral history include: the racialized and classed mobility of his family (having become middle class in his childhood when his father, who could "pass" for Jewish, was taken in and trained by Jewish diamond cutters in the Diamond District of New York); the importance of religion and faith to Puerto Rican community building; as well as the role nonprofit work has played in his own life and activism, both here in New Haven and in Nicaragua.
Interviewer:
Amanda Rivera
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