Aida Olachea Carter

Dear Friends and Family,

My mom, Aida Olachea Carter, passed away Friday, July 27, 2012, at her home in Van Nuys after a nearly year-long battle with cancer.
She was 73.

My mom was surrounded with love all along in this journey, and it was no different in her final days.
The night before she died, her room was full of music – the music she loved.
Friends sang "Silent Night" and we listened to her own voice recordings of hymns and a favorite of hers, "Ave Maria."
Friends held her hand.
She smiled.

She smiled many times on this journey, even as illness took its toll.
That was just how she was – always ready to give a smile – even a kiss or a hug when she connected with someone.
But my mom – an extremely private person – did not want her family and her friends to remember her in the context of this illness.
These last months were only a tiny fraction of a life of giving, sacrifice, compassion and devotion to her family.

That life began on Sept. 27, 1938, in San Jose del Cabo – a town on the southern tip of Baja California, Mexico, not far from Cabo San Lucas.
It was a childhood of modest means and a primary education at a convent – a strict one, she would remind me.
Eventually, the family would move north. And by the early 1960s, the family – including my mom's younger bothers and sisters, had settled in Buena Park, Calif.
Just down the street from their neighborhood was Disneyland, where my mom found an opportunity at the fledgling theme park.

With a beaming smile and cheerful attitude, my mom found a job there as a "cast member," a tour guide – you know, the ones who wore those colorful uniforms, the high socks, the red vests and plaid skirts, and showed visitors and VIPs the park.
Only one problem. My mom knew little English.
Still, she saw it as an opportunity, and embraced the chance.
She memorized a script, which she would always say helped her learn English. Full of spirit and energy, she made it work, always cheerful.

She didn't talk much outside of her family about her work at Disneyland.
But when she reluctantly did, it was captivating.
One story she didn't have to tell was this one:
She was giving a tour near the Jungle Cruise, and not far away a little girl had somehow gotten into the waters of Rivers of America – the river the Mark Twain boat motors around every day.
Seeing the child was in distress, she left her tour, jumped in – fully clothed – and snatched the child from the water and brought her back to shore safely.
After she got the child out and made sure there was first-aid, she went back to work, drenched, as if it was just part of her job. No fanfare. Just a smile and thank you to her visitors.
But her visitors took note. One of them wrote a letter to Walt Disney about the incident. In turn, Disney wrote my mom, thanking her for her service.
"If we had a Disney medal of bravery beyond the call of duty it would, indeed, be yours," he wrote.

My mom kept this story so private all these years, I'm not even sure she'd want me to tell it.
But that was my mom – selfless and very reluctant to talk about examples of that selflessness.

Later in the 1960s, she would move to the San Fernando Valley, and for a time worked at Universal Studios.
She saw tragedy in those years with the loss of her beloved younger brother Mario in a car accident.
But she also got married, and had a son – and went along with Reagan as his middle name – Reagan was the governor of California at the time.
She always said, "it could have been Nixon."

After she and my father parted, she did everything she could to make sure her son had good teachers and good health.
Tennis and violin lessons, private school…whatever it took to give her family a better life. That included financing my college education.

Through all those working years, music stayed close to her heart.
My mother came from a musical family.
Her mother sang opera, and named her children after operas – Aida, Carmen….
Her brother Daniel is an accomplished musician, and her siblings and their children all have musical ability and talent.
So did my mom, but she never really discovered and exercised it until her later years.
That's when she walked into a Mass one Sunday and heard they were looking for volunteers for the Spanish language choir at St. Charles Catholic Church.
She joined and relished it.
She found happiness in this, and she found it a challenge that kept her wanting to improve.
In the last five years, she took lessons to hone her mezzo-soprano voice, learning theories behind the music and absorbing the fundamentals like a sponge.
She found a passion in these years and dug into it with gusto.
She could sing all day, and many times she did.
Often you could here her voice echoing outside of her kitchen as she practiced, in between making one of her several recipes – some yummy tamales or some great pork stew.

I know my mom is singing now.
I'll always be listening for her, and singing along.

She's survived by her son Ryan; her siblings, including her brother Daniel; sisters Carmen, Patricia and Julie; several nieces and nephews; and my godmother, Violet Hutchens. Her mother Maria died earlier this year.
Her closest friend, Edda Trejo, was like a sister. And they spoke always and until my mom's final days. And Lulu Walton – always a cherished close friend -- was there to sing a song for my mom in her final days.
Burial services will be private, under the direction of Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills, in Los Angeles.
A gathering to remember my mom is in the works.

Thank you all.