A woman who saw that the Hispanic community in the Four Corners was underrepresented in the media and did something about it has died. LaVerta Valdez-Johnson, founder of Aquí en El Valle, died Oct. 11 in Phoenix. She was 79.
“LaVerta had a lot of spunk,” said Shirena Trujillo Long, who worked as a reporter for the bilingual paper before becoming its managing editor. “She had a fire, an excitement that lasted until the very end of her life. When I met her, she had started a paper in her 60s.”
After taking journalism classes at San Juan College in Farmington, Valdez-Johnson became the first editor of the college newspaper in 1969. She took more writing courses during a 16-year period spent in Arizona before returning to the Farmington area in 1995.
She had been writing freelance stories about anything that “piqued her interest” for more than 30 years when she and her husband, Wesley Johnson, took a leap of faith. They cashed in a few thousand dollars worth of savings bonds to start the publication, which focused on Hispanic and minority issues around the Four Corners.
“I thought it was high time to bring this Hispanic population forward,” Valdez-Johnson told The Durango Herald on El Valle’s one-year anniversary in March 2001. “We’ve been here for hundreds of years, and nobody knows us.”
When the newspaper first hit the streets, people were concerned the monthly paper would be racial, political and controversial, the couple said. Instead, both Hispanic and Anglo readers found a newspaper that focused on the history of Hispanics in the area, culture and successful Hispanics from the Four Corners. One story featured the changing of the name of Gateway Park back to its original name, Santa Rita Park
In its first year, El Valle’s circulation rose from 1,000 to 5,000 subscribers. Schools in the area used the monthly paper as a teaching tool in Spanish and history classes. The paper was sold to the Pine River Times in 2003, after Wesley Johnson was diagnosed with mouth cancer. The Pine River Times stopped publishing El Valle in 2007.
In 1998, Valdez-Johnson helped organize the celebration of the 400th anniversary of Spanish settlement in the Four Corners. She was instrumental in the creation of the Northwest New Mexico Hispanic Association and Bloomfield Boys & Girls Club.
“She truly believed in connecting people with news coverage about all kinds of things,” Trujillo Long said. “I’m so honored to have followed in her footsteps.”
abutler@durangoherald.com
Memorial service
A service for LaVerta Valdez-Johnson will be held at 11 a.m. Friday, Oct. 30, 2015, at Templo Sinai Assembly of God Church, 800 McCormick School Road in Farmington.
She was born to Max and Margarita Valdez on March 28, 1936, in Lumberton, New Mexico.
Mrs. Valdez-Johnson was preceded in death by her husband of 48 years, Wesley Johnson, in 2007.
She is survived by her children, Van Johnson and Sandra Shirley, both of Phoenix, and Russ Johnson of San Diego; five grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
Memorial donations may be made to the Bloomfield Boys & Girls Club, 701 S. Second St., Bloomfield, NM, 87413.
