A former Salvadoran revolutionary, a bookmaker a father, a husband, an aspiring playwright, and a trained biochemist, J. Hector Gonzalez lived a rich life full of twists and turns. That life was cut short this spring by Covid-19 at age 58.
Gonzalez was born in El Salvador in 1961, and as a teenager became involved with the rebels in the country’s civil war against the military-led government. As the movement for democratization formed in the late 1970s, Gonzalez joined as an educator, teaching people why the fight for freedom was important and what they were up against.
As the conflict escalated, Gonzalez fled to Mexico, where he studied biochemistry, but he gave that up and eventually made his way to the United States.
In 1986, he met his future-wife, Janet, in the singing class of a Puerto Rican traveling theater.
“The teacher loved him, loved the way he sang. All the girls would go crazy over him,” Janet said. “We would go for coffee after rehearsals. After a few weeks he told me he was in love with me.” A few years later, they married and had two sons: Brian and Jake.
The couple raised their kids in New York City, where being a dad was Gonzalez’s priority.
“He had different talents but he never pursued them all the way, because I think he saw the responsibility of being a husband and a father,” Janet said. “He put that first, so he just put his dreams on the back burner.”
Gonzalez entered the U.S. illegally, but he was pardoned by the Raegan administration and eventually become a citizen. For the last two decades of his life, Gonzalez worked for the at Oxford University Press.
“He loved his books,” Janet said. “I used to hate when he would bring home books. He was always trying to sneak in books.”
He loved to read and write. “Sometimes he wrote little plays and would use all my one liners. He would say: ‘That’s a good one, I’m going to write that down,’” Janet said.
“He was always a very artistic person,” his son Brian said. “He read so much, he knew so many random things. There were so many books in this house. As a child I would always ask him how to spell a word or what a word meant.”
Jake, Gonzalez’s younger son, said his dad’s passion for music rubbed off on him. “Him and my uncle, they would always just play music all the time,” he said. “Songs I wasn’t used to, songs that weren’t popular in my school. … My first introduction to music was through my dad.”
But in March, Janet, Hector and Brian all become sick with the coronavirus. Janet and Hector were working from home already, but Brian was working at a fast-food restaurant.
“We live in a small apartment,” Janet said, “No matter who got sick, we were all going to get sick.”
Janet and Jake took Hector to the hospital, but he was sent home. Three days later, Janet said he couldn’t breath, and she was having trouble breathing herself.
“When I went to check on my husband, I thought he had died on the sofa,” she said. She and Jake carried him arm and arm downstairs and took a cab to the hospital.
“I thought I would see him in two weeks,” she said. “I never saw him again.”
Gonzalez eventually was put on a ventilator and languished in the hospital for two months.
“The last text he sent me was, ‘I think I’m losing the battle,’” Janet said. He died on May 11.
“I still think he is going to be coming home soon,” she said. “It does feel that way.”
