Career in firefighting began on baseball diamond
It was baseball that led John George Toledo to a long career as a firefighter and helped him find the woman who would become his wife.
The youngest of 10 siblings born to a railroad worker father and a homemaker mother, Toledo attended Albuquerque High School, where he was a standout athlete playing both football and baseball. Upon graduation in 1950, he was recruited to play baseball for the Albuquerque Dukes.
Back in those days, it was difficult to pay the bills on just the salary of a part-time ballplayer, so Toledo also took a job as a bellboy at the Hotel Franciscan, then a popular Downtown hotel, said his daughter, Paula Toledo.
It was there that he met a young Nancy Mundt, who was working as a hotel housekeeper and who had just moved to “the big city” from Pueblo, Colorado, she said.
“One day, some guy was bothering her and trying to get a date with her, and my dad, who was in his bellboy uniform and could tell she was uncomfortable, went up to the man and said, ‘Stop bothering my girlfriend.’”
Nancy Mundt, who appreciated a man in a uniform — a baseball uniform, that is — did become his girlfriend. Turned out she was a huge baseball fan. The couple married that year and subsequently had five children.
John Toledo died May 2 in Marana, Arizona, one year after his wife of 69 years passed away. He was 88.
After playing for the Dukes for several seasons, Toledo was told his contract was to be sold to a team out of Texas. He refused to move away from his home state, where he and his extended family trace their ancestry back to the 16th century, his daughter said. His days of playing baseball had come to an abrupt end, or so he thought.
The Albuquerque Police
Department and the Albuquerque Fire Department each had a baseball team, and they had a fierce rivalry.
“The Fire Department wanted badly to beat the Police Department, and they knew my dad had played for the Dukes, so in 1956 they recruited him to become a firefighter, and that was the start of his 40-year career,” Paula Toledo said.
Her father left the Albuquerque Fire Department in 1967 as a lieutenant and went to the Silver City Fire Department, where he became the chief and was responsible for converting the volunteer firefighting squad into a professional department.
Toledo left that job in 1976 for a position as chief of the Las Cruces Fire Department, retiring from his firefighting career in 1996.
He and Nancy moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, where they both worked part time in airport security. In 2005, they relocated to Marana, outside Tucson.
Paula Toledo said her father was diagnosed with kidney failure around 2003, and after undergoing dialysis refused to continue the treatment. “He said it made him feel like a zombie and that he felt sicker after dialysis,” she said.
Twice, she said, family members went to his side to say what they thought were final goodbyes, “but he went on living for quite a long time, so I guess he had some really good DNA.”
Her father, she said, had a great sense of humor, was a wonderful storyteller and an avid sports fan. He also loved German shepherds, and for many years he bred the dogs for use by the U.S. Army.
“He was incredibly optimistic and chose to be philosophical rather than critical,” she said. “When people were mean or did things that were bad, he would see it philosophically and come up with an explanation for why that person was mean or acted badly. He wouldn’t just criticize them. He tried to understand their deeper motivations.”
In addition to his daughter, Paula, of Santa Cruz, California, Toledo is survived by daughters Renee Wise of Cliff and Julianna Toledo of Las Cruces, son John Toledo Jr. of Marana, four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
A teleconferenced memorial service for Toledo was held May 8. His cremated remains will be buried in Alma.
The family requests that donations in his name be made to Isleta Pueblo for educational programs.