Post by blackcrowheart on Nov 12, 2005 19:53:21 GMT -5
Oceanside, Luiseno matriarch, 97, remembered as advocate
By: LOUISE ESOLA - Staff Writer
OCEANSIDE ---- Not too far down the river from the place she was born,
97-year-old Louise Munoa Foussat passed away at home Tuesday morning.
Among the last of local Luiseno Indians from a long line of American
Indian blood, Foussat was remembered by community members and friends
Tuesday as an tireless advocate for the San Luis Rey Luiseno Band of
Indians, a community educator, a longtime historian, and a woman of wit.
Foussat died in her home along San Mateo Street near the San Luis Rey
River of natural causes, according to Diania Caudell, a second cousin.
Caudell said Foussat's death leaves a empty space in the Luiseno
community.
"She was our elder, she was our history," Caudell said. "She had
everybody's history in the Indian committee. She lived it."
While she may be gone, her name will resonate for years to come.
Children of Oceanside will play in the Louise Foussat Playground, in the
newly named Luiseno Park, a name championed by Foussat.
When the work is done in 2007 on a plot of land in northeastern
Oceanside, some children will attend Louise Foussat Elementary School, a
name selected by the Oceanside Unified School District as a way to honor
an Oceanside woman who could not attend local schools because of her
American Indian heritage.
And on Aug. 25 each year, the city will celebrate Louise Foussat Day,
after the City Council declared a day in her honor on her birthday
earlier this year.
Community members said they knew no other like Foussat, who often wore
red, white and blue to events.
"We lost one of the great leaders of Oceanside," said Concha Greene, a
community activist who works at the Chavez Community Center and who sat
alongside Foussat on issues affecting Oceanside. "Too bad there's no
more people like her."
Councilwoman Esther Sanchez called her a city "matriarch."
Foussat was declared "Senior Citizen of the Year" at a local senior
citizens expo in 2004.
During a speech at the expo, she called Oceanside, the land of her
birth, the "beautiful city by the ocean with the mountains to the east
of us," adding that "one of my great wishes is for us to live in peace
and harmony."
Foussat, whose mother was of the Pala tribe and whose father was of the
Pechanga tribe, was born on a cool summer evening in 1908 in a saloon
that sat at the foot of the hill crowned by the Mission San Luis Rey.
Her mother joined relatives and tribal members for a fiesta and powwow
near the river.
A saloon on Aug. 25, 1908, the same building is now the popular San Luis
Rey Bakery & Restaurant, stationed at the edge of historical Heritage
Park, where Foussat celebrated her 90th birthday in 1998.
As quoted in a newspaper article on that day, Foussat had her own
version of the story:
"My mother had come from Pala to go to the fiesta," Foussat said. "She
was dancing and having a good time, and I decided I'd come to the party,
too. So they brought my mother over here, and that's when I was
'dropped.' "
She was later baptized at the Mission San Luis Rey, then relocated
several times throughout Southern California.
According to newspaper archives, Foussat had a jigsaw puzzle sort of
education, attending school at the mission and in Carlsbad, a Roman
Catholic school in Los Angeles' Boyle Heights, a Quaker school in
Whittier, and the American Indian School in Riverside, where local
Indians were sent because schools in the area would not educate them.
She later traveled to Los Angeles and got a job at a variety store, then
as a live-in housekeeper for a family when she was in her late teens.
Then she married John Simon Foussat, who was from a pioneer Oceanside
family ---- for which the Oceanside thoroughfare Foussat Road was named
---- and who had joined the Navy. During his 21-year military career,
she lived in roughly half a dozen states and countries.
A real Rosie the Riveter during World War II, she worked as a pipefitter
in the San Francisco shipyards.
The couple later adopted three children, linked to her family by blood
---- Barbara, the eldest, and twin girls, Caroline and Marilyn.
In 1952, the Foussats moved to Oceanside permanently when John Foussat
retired. He died of a heart attack in 1970.
Since then, Foussat had been active in the community, up until the last
year when the city decided to name the park after the Indians. She
visited many schools to speak to children about the Indians and taught
Indian-education courses at Palomar College.
Shelley Hayes Caron, a friend, said Foussat knew her long life was
coming to a close.
"When I visited her in the hospital last week, she said, 'I can't last
forever, I had a good time,' " said Caron.
Contact staff writer Louise Esola at (760) 901-4151 or
lesola@nctimes.com.
By: LOUISE ESOLA - Staff Writer
OCEANSIDE ---- Not too far down the river from the place she was born,
97-year-old Louise Munoa Foussat passed away at home Tuesday morning.
Among the last of local Luiseno Indians from a long line of American
Indian blood, Foussat was remembered by community members and friends
Tuesday as an tireless advocate for the San Luis Rey Luiseno Band of
Indians, a community educator, a longtime historian, and a woman of wit.
Foussat died in her home along San Mateo Street near the San Luis Rey
River of natural causes, according to Diania Caudell, a second cousin.
Caudell said Foussat's death leaves a empty space in the Luiseno
community.
"She was our elder, she was our history," Caudell said. "She had
everybody's history in the Indian committee. She lived it."
While she may be gone, her name will resonate for years to come.
Children of Oceanside will play in the Louise Foussat Playground, in the
newly named Luiseno Park, a name championed by Foussat.
When the work is done in 2007 on a plot of land in northeastern
Oceanside, some children will attend Louise Foussat Elementary School, a
name selected by the Oceanside Unified School District as a way to honor
an Oceanside woman who could not attend local schools because of her
American Indian heritage.
And on Aug. 25 each year, the city will celebrate Louise Foussat Day,
after the City Council declared a day in her honor on her birthday
earlier this year.
Community members said they knew no other like Foussat, who often wore
red, white and blue to events.
"We lost one of the great leaders of Oceanside," said Concha Greene, a
community activist who works at the Chavez Community Center and who sat
alongside Foussat on issues affecting Oceanside. "Too bad there's no
more people like her."
Councilwoman Esther Sanchez called her a city "matriarch."
Foussat was declared "Senior Citizen of the Year" at a local senior
citizens expo in 2004.
During a speech at the expo, she called Oceanside, the land of her
birth, the "beautiful city by the ocean with the mountains to the east
of us," adding that "one of my great wishes is for us to live in peace
and harmony."
Foussat, whose mother was of the Pala tribe and whose father was of the
Pechanga tribe, was born on a cool summer evening in 1908 in a saloon
that sat at the foot of the hill crowned by the Mission San Luis Rey.
Her mother joined relatives and tribal members for a fiesta and powwow
near the river.
A saloon on Aug. 25, 1908, the same building is now the popular San Luis
Rey Bakery & Restaurant, stationed at the edge of historical Heritage
Park, where Foussat celebrated her 90th birthday in 1998.
As quoted in a newspaper article on that day, Foussat had her own
version of the story:
"My mother had come from Pala to go to the fiesta," Foussat said. "She
was dancing and having a good time, and I decided I'd come to the party,
too. So they brought my mother over here, and that's when I was
'dropped.' "
She was later baptized at the Mission San Luis Rey, then relocated
several times throughout Southern California.
According to newspaper archives, Foussat had a jigsaw puzzle sort of
education, attending school at the mission and in Carlsbad, a Roman
Catholic school in Los Angeles' Boyle Heights, a Quaker school in
Whittier, and the American Indian School in Riverside, where local
Indians were sent because schools in the area would not educate them.
She later traveled to Los Angeles and got a job at a variety store, then
as a live-in housekeeper for a family when she was in her late teens.
Then she married John Simon Foussat, who was from a pioneer Oceanside
family ---- for which the Oceanside thoroughfare Foussat Road was named
---- and who had joined the Navy. During his 21-year military career,
she lived in roughly half a dozen states and countries.
A real Rosie the Riveter during World War II, she worked as a pipefitter
in the San Francisco shipyards.
The couple later adopted three children, linked to her family by blood
---- Barbara, the eldest, and twin girls, Caroline and Marilyn.
In 1952, the Foussats moved to Oceanside permanently when John Foussat
retired. He died of a heart attack in 1970.
Since then, Foussat had been active in the community, up until the last
year when the city decided to name the park after the Indians. She
visited many schools to speak to children about the Indians and taught
Indian-education courses at Palomar College.
Shelley Hayes Caron, a friend, said Foussat knew her long life was
coming to a close.
"When I visited her in the hospital last week, she said, 'I can't last
forever, I had a good time,' " said Caron.
Contact staff writer Louise Esola at (760) 901-4151 or
lesola@nctimes.com.