FACES OF FREEDOM: Andrea Chavez
During the past two weeks, Times-Dispatch newsroom staff members asked people in the Richmond region, "What does freedom mean to you?"
We'll run their photos and answers in Saturday's Times-Dispatch as part of our special Fourth of July weekend coverage. Andrea Chavez of Chesterfield County came to the United States in 1979 from El Salvador. She and her husband, Juan, raised three daughters here and started the Association of Hispanic-Americans of Richmond.
Chavez, 60, is a nurse at Crossover Ministry, a nonprofit group that provides free health care to low-income families and the uninsured. She said providing a good education for her children was a primary reason she came to the U.S.
"Freedom for me is education, because people without education will not know freedom," said Chavez, now a grandmother of three. "Over here in the United States, you have many opportunities to be educated, so if you want to be educated, you can be."
-- Bill Lohmann
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Reader Reactions
Interesting how there are dozens of comments about the tired baseball discussion and only one comment about what Freedom Means to You. Shame, shame…
Freedom to me, ultimately, means choices. Thousands upon thousands have given their lives so Americans could have choices.
Whether or not Richmond scores a baseball team or how a venue is going to be selected and who is going to pay for it is insignificant in the scheme of things.
My parents also came to the US from Colombia in 1967 and forged a path to bring my brother and myself to the US to get an education. They wanted their children to have the best and that’s what we got. Freedom to me and my family is being able to get the education you want and to go and do great things with your education. My parents instilled us that in order to receive we always had to give back. We have always been involved in the communities we’ve lived in and given back because without that there is no freedom.
We have the FREEDOM to CHOSE and that is the greatest freedom of all. I choose to live in this great country that my parents adopted as their own back in 1967 and I thank them everyday for making the sacrifices they made to make a better life for us. I am an AMERICAN and very proud to say so.
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