STOCKTON - Nearly 40 years ago, reflecting on what it meant to be the first Asian-American teacher in Stockton Unified, Flora Arca Mata said it really didn't mean so much at all.


"To be first is not that important," Mata told The Record in 1975. "It's what you do after that that's important."

But by breaking new ground 65 years ago in the school district, Mata helped pave the way for countless minority educators and set the example for numerous relatives who followed her into the teaching profession.

"Education has just been a part of our family," Sheree Mata, a kindergarten teacher at Lincoln Elementary and one of Flora Mata's grandchildren, said Monday afternoon. "I think it runs in the blood."

Flora Mata, 95, died Wednesday after a brief stay at Hospice of San Joaquin in Stockton. She became Stockton Unified's first Asian-American teacher in 1948, one year after Wilhelmina Henry became the school district's first black teacher.

Mata was born in Honolulu in 1917, and her family moved to the Little Manila section of Stockton in the early 1920s. "My father said he heard about Filipinos in Stockton, so he said maybe that's a better place," Mata recalled in author Dawn Mabalon's 2013 history of Stockton's Filipino community, "Little Manila is in the Heart."

Mata attended Stockton schools before heading to the University of California, Los Angeles; her tuition paid by an older sister who worked in the fields.

At UCLA, according to Sheree Mata, Flora made the acquaintance of Jackie Robinson, another future trailblazer. Flora and classmate Vidal Mata, who became her husband, also worked for the Campbell's Soup family and for screen legend Boris Karloff of "Frankenstein" fame, Sheree said. Vidal Mata died 10 years ago.

When Flora and Vidal graduated from UCLA, they were unable to find teaching jobs in the United States. A UCLA dean advised the young couple that if they wanted professional jobs commensurate with their educations, they should move to Hawaii. In Mabalon's 2002 "Voices: A Filipino American Oral History," Flora recalled posing a pointed question to the dean.

"Why is it that America would educate the minority and not give them an opportunity to use this education?" she asked. "Why is it that they need a college education to be dishwashers?"

Instead of listening to the dean and moving to Hawaii, the Matas headed to the Philippines to find teaching work. They returned to Stockton in the aftermath of World War II, at which point Flora saw a Stockton Unified classified ad seeking substitute teachers. Flora called the school district, and in the 1975 interview with The Record, she recalled the conversation.

"You must come in," she was told. "You don't sound like a minority."

The following year, Mata was hired full-time, teaching kindergarten classes at two south Stockton schools from a bygone era. She was assigned to teach younger children, she told The Record, because "they seemed to think there would be less prejudice with little ones than with older students."

She taught in Stockton Unified until her retirement in 1978, but only at south Stockton schools until later in her career, when she was assigned to Kennedy Elementary. For much of her career, it was unusual for minorities to be assigned to north Stockton schools.

Through it all, Mata told The Record, she was seldom bitter about the obstacles she faced.

"My mother imbedded in us the idea that you cannot hold hate," she said. "My mother always said, 'If you want to change the thinking of people, go into the classroom.' "

Mata continued working as a substitute teacher into her 80s, and often volunteered in Sheree Mata's kindergarten class.

"Up until two years ago, she never missed any of my kindergarten graduations," Sheree said.

Flora Mata's viewing will be from 4 to 8 p.m. today at Frisbie Warren & Carroll Mortuary, 809 N. California St. in Stockton. Burial is scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday at San Joaquin Catholic Cemetery. A celebration of life will be held at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday at Quail Lakes Baptist Church, with a luncheon after. Donations in Mata's memory can be made to Hospice of San Joaquin.
