DeOcampo Family Collection

Dublin Core

Title

Description

Paul “Skippy” Tabalan DeOcampo was born municipality of Santo Domingo, in the Ilocos Sur region of the Philippines on August 17, 1909 or 1910. The exact date of his birth is unknown. DeOcampo immigrated to the United States in 1928 following his brother Leon Tabalan DeOcampo, who immigrated in 1927.

Paul settled in the Pajaro Valley working as a farmer at the Lazo-Rosser Ranch, which was owned by his cousins Leon Lazo and Cipriano Lazo and Cipriano's wife, May Rosser. He also worked as the head foreman at the Resetar, Sheehy, and J.J. Crosetti ranches. He served at J.J. Crosetti for fifty years where he managed the business' apple orchards. It was there where he later met his wife, Gloria Molina, a fellow J.J. Crosetti employee. They married on November 16, 1954.

Gloria was born in La Salle, Texas on February 18, 1932 or 1937. The exact date of her birth is unknown. Her parents, Margarita Molina and Ascenscion “Chon” Molina, and their family left in 1945 for Michigan and Washington before eventually settling in Watsonville in 1952 to escape harsh agricultural working conditions in Texas. After years of saving money working in the agricultural sector, Paul and Gloria purchased five acres of land in Aromas in 1960 and began their farm where they grew cucumbers for pickling.

They had three children, who were all born in Watsonville and raised in Aromas: Veronica Marie Hernandez (b. 1958), Antoinette Yvonne DeOcampo-Lechtenberg (b. 1960), and Paul Phillip DeOcampo, Jr. (b. 1967). All three children worked alongside their parents at the J.J. Crosetti Ranch until they pursued careers outside of agriculture.

Paul passed in 1995 at the age of 86.

The DeOcampo Family Collection was contributed to Watsonville is in the Heart by Paul and Gloria DeOcampo's children, Veronica Marie Hernandez, Antoinette Yvonne DeOcampo-Lechtenberg, and Paul Phillip DeOcampo, Jr., in 2021. The collection contains seventy-eight items in total. It includes oral history interviews with Veronica, Antoinette, and Paul in which they discuss their parents' histories and their experiences growing up in the Pajaro Valley. It also contains seventy-three material culture items that document their extended family's labor and leisure, most notably Paul DeOcampo's agricultural tools and photographs of their family network, which includes the Lazo, Rosser, and Tuzon families.