Press worker saw ‘New Mexican’ through changes
Albert Velasquez grew up hunting raccoons on the Pecos River during the Great Depression. In high school, he learned to operate a linotype machine, a 19th-century invention for printing newspapers.
The craft brought him to Santa Fe, where he spent 38 as a crucial cog in the machine that put on the city’s doorsteps each day.
Velasquez died Sunday at 91 of natural causes, leaving behind a large family and plenty of handiwork.
“He knew what he had to do to get the paper out on time,” said Enrico Velasquez, the oldest of his nine children. “He grew up in some hard time but was ambitious, so he learned a trade and got to work.”
Velasquez grew up in Santa Rosa in the 1930s and ’40s. His father, Albert Velasquez Sr., operated a general store.
After graduating from high school in 1948, Velasquez caught wind of an opening for a linotype operator at the El Crepúsculo, now The Taos News, and headed north. According to family lore, he was driving in Taos when he spotted the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, Violetta Salazar, and jumped out of the car to talk to her. They dated for a time, but she broke his heart to move to San Francisco to work for a bank.
Alone in Taos, Velasquez’s brother Billy convinced him to go to San Francisco and win her back, and it worked.
They were married for more than 69 years, and Velasquez, a woodworker in his free time, built her an adobe house near the Santa Fe and San Miguel county line.
“We had to make all the adobe ourselves,” Enrico Velasquez said.
Violetta cooked and baked from scratch and her specialty was empanaditas — fried dough pies with minced meat.
Albert Velasquez had a habit of picking up hitchhikers off Interstate 25, bringing them home for food and shelter, then sending them
on their way.
Over the years, The New Mexican became part of the family.
“When everyone learned to drive, they had to take over the paper route, delivering The New Mexican across Pecos and Glorieta in a Volkswagen Bug,” Reynaldo Velasquez, the youngest of Albert’s nine children, said. “In the snow, driving up hills and breaking down with dogs barking in the back seat. It could be a struggle.”
Linotype eventually was replaced with computer typesetting, and Velasquez stayed on through the technological update to lead The New Mexican’s printing operation until 1993. He continued woodworking in his retirement, building bed frames for his kids and their families, and the altar for St. Anthony’s Catholic Church in Pecos.
Violetta Velasquez died in 2019; Albert will be buried next to her in a private ceremony in Pecos. The couple had 15 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.
Reynaldo Velasquez said he remembers one of the last times the family was all together at his parents’ house.
“I was eating breakfast and he sat down at the table and started crying,” Reynaldo Velasquez said. “He looked at my mother on the other side of the room and the grandchildren playing outside and just said, ‘I’m so happy.’ ”