[Editor’s note: The greater Madison community is welcome to join Lucía Núñez’s family in a celebration of her life at Centro Hispano of Dane County, 2403 Cypress Way, on Thursday, May 29, 4-7 p.m., that will feature an exhibition of Lucía’s art, writings, and journals. Dinner will be provided by the Centro Hispano Mercadito.
In lieu of flowers and gifts, the family welcomes a donation to the recently launched Lucía Núñez Becas (Scholarship) Program at Centro Hispano, which will support Latine, immigrant and under-resourced students in pursuing their dreams of higher education.]
During the year and some months leading up to Lucía’s death, our house was a constant stream of people, including friends, neighbors, co-workers, college friends and family from all over the country. Relationships Lucía had nurtured her entire life: her family, birthed, wed, and chosen, surrounding her and giving of themselves to bring her every possible comfort. She invited this chosen family to celebrate her life with her in her last days. This convergence of her life’s history in the form of a stream of loved ones was Lucía’s expression of all she valued. Humans. The potential for love and acceptance and belonging. When she walked in the room, be it a crowded conference room to begin her speech, or a neighborhood party, her warm spirit filled the space around her.
She loved and was loved. So much. Her booming laughter could be heard over the din of the crowd. Authenticity and humor and humility brought people to her. She believed her female power to nurture without judgment was the best management strategy in any scenario. She had no time for bullying or asserting her authority. She wanted her chosen community to walk beside her, to buoy her all the way to the end.
As people flowed by, she connected with them about shared passions; the latest knitting project, writing memoir stories, creating volumes and volumes of journals and family travel books. Community thanked her for her boundless generosity — gifts of knitted baby sweaters, embroidered panels in honor of lost loved ones, stories that touched their hearts, handwritten cards with poems that made them cry. In the final days before Lucía’s death, the house reached a crescendo of loving presence. People filled the garden, the kitchen, the couches and floor and chairs around Lucía’s bed. Every morning, her mother folded up the sheets from the makeshift beds of those who had stayed the night. The dining room table was filled with fragrant Cuban roast pork, perfected by a friend who learned how to make it from Lucía’s father, Rodolfo.
Lucía was positively animated as she laughed and shared stories and hugs with every single person in the room. Even as her frail body failed her, her drive to express her love for her community gave her superhuman strength. She dispersed nuggets of wisdom like a benevolent queen on her throne. A kingdom of her making. The testament of a life well-lived surrounding her. The day before she died, her brother-in-law called her wife outside and said he wanted to show her something in the garden. He pointed to the asters in the terrace prairie. Each flower had a fat bumblebee perched on the yellow center. Another friend read that in the fall, the bumblebees are old and tired and sometimes can’t make it home after a busy day of foraging. So they settle on the asters camouflaged under the goldenrod to safely rest and pass the night until they can get the pollen home the next morning. They, too, had come to rest by Lucía’s side.
Lucía’s story began in Cuba, in the tiny town of Caimanera. Her family immigrated to the U.S. as refugees of post-revolution Cuba. The family first sought safety in Spain before returning to the Guantanamo Naval Base, where her father had worked from the age of 14. Lucía’s family lived in a civilian trailer park amongst other Caribbean refugees until her father found stable work and they moved to the U.S. Virgin Islands. At 16, having exhausted every educational resource available to her in St. Thomas, Lucía won a work-study scholarship to complete high school at the Williston Northampton School in Massachusetts. She graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in political science and Hispanic studies from Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut, worked in international development for several years, and then in 1985, she volunteered for the Peace Corps in Honduras, where she met her partner, Heidi.
Lucía applied her formidable spirit, intelligence, and integrity to 40-plus years of professional life in the public, non-profit, social service, and education sectors. As an immigrant and a gay Latina who forged her path through an elite educational system, she believed in education as the key to individual empowerment and community building. While in graduate school, Lucía taught at The Care Center in Holyoke, Massachusetts, empowering pregnant teens and young parents to earn their GEDs — an experience she described as the most powerful position she ever held in her life. After earning her master’s degree in international education from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Massachusetts, Lucía developed and published books for teachers as the senior curriculum specialist at the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.
In 1999, Lucía and her family moved to Madison when she became the executive director of Centro Hispano of Dane County, where she built education and community programs. In 2003, Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle appointed Lucía as the Deputy Secretary for the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, and the Equal Rights Division Administrator for the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development (DWD). She then became the first director of the newly formed City of Madison Department of Civil Rights before returning to education to become the first vice president of Equity, Inclusion, and Community Engagement at Madison College.
Lucía Núñez Suarez passed away on Sept. 30, 2024, with her querida familia by her side: her partner of 35 years, Heidi Vargas, their children, Carina Vargas-Núñez and Mateo Vargas-Núñez, her mother, Maria Caridad Núñez Suarez, and Mateo’s partner, Cecily Muñoz-Pastrana. She was preceded in death by father Rodolfo Gerardo Núñez Martinez and brother Rudy Núñez, Jr. She is survived by brother, José Núñez, and sisters-in-law, Kathy Stammers Núñez and Terri Yaples Núñez, nieces, nephews, and partners: Rudy III, Cassandra, DJ, and Isaac, Peter and Becky, Kortney, Niko, and in-laws Karen, Thadd, Mari, William and Jack Vargas.
