CSU Channel Islands alum Antonia DiLiello, second from left, presents a check, from left, to Frank Barajas, associate professor of history; Jose Alamillo, associate professor of Chicana/o Studies; Marie Francois, chair of hstory and Chicana/o Studies, associate professor of history. Photo courtesy of CSU Channel Islands.
CSU Channel Islands has received a special gift this holiday season when one of its oldest graduating students presented a check to benefit the university’s Chicana/o Studies program.
When she was 80 years old, Antonia DiLiello graduated from CSU Channel Islands in 2006 with a bachelor’s degree in History.
On Dec. 13, DiLiello returned to the university to present a check to Jose Alamillo, associate professor of Chicano/o Studies, for $1,100 to benefit the Chicana/o Studies program.
DiLiello had asked her friends, on the occasion of her 85th birthday, to donate to this program instead of buying her gifts, the university reported in a media release.
“I’ve seen so many kids who wanted to go to school and couldn’t afford it,” DiLiello stated in the release. My brother wanted so badly to stay in school but he was ashamed that he didn’t have the right clothes to fit in. Isn’t it a shame not to go to school because of clothes? I hope my gift will help others in some way.”
DiLiello can trace her own history back to 1918 when she said her father had come to El Paso, Texas with his brother and brothers-in-law. They worked for the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe Railroad. He moved his family to Oxnard in 1932, when DiLiello was four.
When DiLiello married she moved to Los Angeles but six months later her husband was killed in a car accident, so she returned to Oxnard where her first baby was born. DiLiello remarried and the family moved to Camarillo where they lived for 20 years and her second husband worked at Camarillo State Hospital, now CSU Channel Islands.
In 1991, DiLiello went to Arizona for a year to teach bilingual orphans in a residential facility. “I really loved working with the kids and I think they loved me,” she said. “I would have stayed but I got homesick and, at the end of a year I moved back to Oxnard. I always move back to Oxnard.”
DiLiello said she was motivated by a love of learning and began taking classes at CI not because she wanted a degree but simply because learning gave her great pleasure, particularly history classes. She recounted that in one class someone asked the professor a history question to which the professor responded, “Ask Antonia. She is history.”
However, earning a degree was a challenge.
“I worked eight hours a day, ran a house and cared for a family, and went to school,” she said.