Flora Arca Mata
Flora Arca Mata (December 19, 1917 – September 11, 2013) was an American teacher in Stockton, California. She became the first Filipino American teacher in California.[1] In 2019, a new elementary school was named after her in the Stockton Unified School District.[2] BiographyMata was born in Honolulu, to Jose Arca and Victoria Salcedo,[3] who were from Cavite and Bacolod respectively.[4] Mata's family moved to Stockton when she was two;[5] they were attracted to Stockton because of Little Manila, which had one of the largest Filipino communities in the United States at the time.[6] She was the second youngest of six siblings.[3] While baptized a Roman Catholic, as a child she attended an interfaith Protestant church, and converted to Protestantism.[7] In 1930, her father who was working as a labor contractor, died in an automobile accident.[4] Funded by an older sister, who was working as a farmworker, Mata attended college at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).[5] While at UCLA, she got to know her fellow student Jackie Robinson.[8] She became the first Filipino American to graduate from UCLA.[5] She married her classmate Vidal Mata.[8] The then-Dean of UCLA encouraged both of them to move to Hawaii, due to the difficulty of educated Filipinos to be hired as professionals in California during that time.[6][8] After graduating in 1940 she worked as a tutor and domestic worker for the Dorrance family;[3][5] her husband worked for Boris Karloff.[3] Later that year, they moved to the Philippines,[5] where they sought jobs as teachers.[8] They remained in the Philippines during World War II and returned to the United States afterward with Karloff's assistance.[3] In 1948, Mata was hired as a teacher by the Stockton Unified School District;[6][8] she became the first Filipino American teacher in California.[3][5] Throughout her career, Mata taught in schools outside of north Stockton, as it was uncommon for minority teachers to teach in schools in north Stockton.[6][8] In 1980, Mata retired, yet continued to substitute teach well into the rest of the decade.[5] In 2013, Mata died, survived by two children, and twenty one grandchildren and great-grandchildren, one of whom is a kindergarten teacher.[5] LegacyIn late 2019, through the efforts of the Filipino American community, a new elementary school in the Quail Lakes neighborhood of Stockton was named after Mata.[9] The efforts were led by the organization Little Manila Rising, who initially placed her name as an option for the new school.[2][5] References
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