Rita Viola (Senteno) Casias

Rita Viola (Senteno) Casias, Sonoma resident, died peacefully on May 10 – just four days before her 88th birthday – in Napa, following a persistent illness.

Rita is survived by three sons and their spouses, Paul and Maria Casias, Richard and Estelle Casias, Glenn and Tami Casias; and Rita’s six grandchildren, Nicholas, Benjamin, Teresa, Caroline, Joey and Christian. She is also survived by her youngest sister, Marie Senteno Podlas, of Washington state; and her 90-year-old brother, Ricardo Senteno, of Roswell, New Mexico.  Her other beloved siblings, Linda Senteno Ochoa and Louis Senteno preceded her in death.

Rita was born in 1926, the oldest daughter of Luis Senteno and Ruth Reyes Senteno in Los Angeles. When the Great Depression arrived in Southern California, the Senteno family moved up to Lone Pine and Keeler, in the Owens Valley, where Luis Senteno found work with National Soda Product Company.

Rita started elementary school in a two-room schoolhouse in Keeler, which was a company town. After a number of years in Lone Pine, Rita and her family moved back to their former Soto Street neighborhood in the Boyle Heights area of Los Angeles. It was there that Rita’s great-grandfather Rito Reyes had purchased many adjoining residential lots, which would serve as a neighborhood foundation for many of the Reyes families.

Rita went to high school at Roosevelt Senior High, where she first experienced loss when her close Japanese classmates were abruptly whisked away to Manzanar, in March 1942.

Her life would change again when she met her husband John Casias Jr., at a Knights of Columbus dance. John, who was an officer in the ROTC, must have swept her off her feet, because when she got home that night she told her mother she had “met the man that she was going to marry.” Following his time in the Marine Corps, John and Rita married in 1952 and danced together for 61 years until his passing in February 2013.

When a bilingual teaching opportunity presented itself, Rita and John moved to Puerto Ordaz, Venezuela (present-day Ciudad Guayana), where the family lived for over eight years while he worked as an elementary school principal for the Orinoco Mining Co., a subsidiary of US Steel Corporation. While living in Venezuela, they traveled locally and to islands within the Caribbean, regularly spending summers with their boys in Florida and the greater Southwest.

Rita and John moved back to California in the early 1970s. The Casias family moved to the hot desert of southeastern California where John worked at an elementary school in Calexico. Rita loved to work with numbers and details. She took accounting classes at the junior college, as well as the Imperial Valley campus of San Diego State, where she worked as a secretary for one of the deans.

Longing for a cooler climate, John and Rita moved up to the occasionally snowy mountains of Willits, where John worked as an elementary school principal. In Willits, Rita worked as a secretary, notary public and bookkeeper for several local companies. She retired from the Willits Unified School District where she worked as school secretary for her husband at Brookside Elementary School.

A student of art, Rita took classes and worked in several mediums. She loved painting with both oils and watercolors, and found it a peaceful hobby. She also loved roses – to grow as well as to paint. She had an especially green thumb when it came to getting orchids to re-bloom.

Rita moved with her husband, John, to Sonoma in 1997, where they took great delight in the community. Devout Catholics, they joined the St. Francis Solano Parish where they were active in the church, including the RCIA process. As Eucharistic ministers, Rita and John often brought communion to the sick and elderly.

During this time in Sonoma, they met their close friend Fr. Robert Castro, who was later assigned to be chaplain at Napa State Hospital. This allowed him to stand by her side during the last year of her illness.

A kind and generous soul, Rita was a friend to everyone she would meet. Rita and “John Dear” were well known at Taqueria La Hacienda, Mary’s Pizza, and with the morning crowd at McDonald’s who enjoyed pancakes together. She was also an accomplished cook with Sunday roasts, enchiladas and spaghetti.

A service will be held at St. Francis Solano Catholic Church on Monday, July 14, 2013, at 11 a.m. and all are welcome.

She has been interned alongside John at the Sonoma Veterans Memorial Cemetery, where they will be “Together Forever.”