Mexican-born, Lorain-raised teacher, subject of new "Dash Between" feature in Elyria's Chronicle

After graduating with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Akron in the early 1970s, Leticia Chavez Fischer sought a teaching job with the public school system in Lorain, Ohio - against all odds.

The Mexican-born child of a teacher and an autoworker had been told that the Lorain schools weren’t hiring Hispanic women. She applied anyway, got a job teaching Spanish at Lorain High and within a short time was named head of foreign languages.

Leticia is the first subject of my new obituary feature for The Chronicle, a.k.a. Chronicle-Telegram, the daily newspaper of Elyria, Ohio. The feature, which like this column is titled “The Dash Between,” debuts Sunday, November 1, 2009.

In this first story for The Chronicle, I examine the dash between Feb. 7, 1949, when Leticia was born in Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico, and Oct. 24, 2009, when she died at age 60 at St. John West Shore Hospital in Westlake, Ohio.

The Dash Between, which shares the lives of recently deceased regular folks from Lorain County, Ohio, and adjacent areas, is scheduled to run every other Sunday in The Chronicle. Please read it in the print edition of the paper, if possible. Otherwise, visit the paper's website at www.chroniclet.com and/or use this link.

Please contact me at info@obitsohio.com to suggest a subject for “The Dash Between” in The Chronicle, for any other Ohio newspaper or for ObitsOhio.com.

Read more about Leticia at the website of the Dovin Reber Jones Funeral Home of Amherst, Ohio, at www.dovinreberjones.com.

Alana Baranick won the 2005 American Society of Newspaper Editors Distinguished Writing Award in the Obituary category for similar obit features she wrote for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio.

This "Dash Between" column was originally posted on ObitsOhio.com on Oct. 31, 2009.