Julie Calvo was born Julie Bertha Mateus, the third child of Jesus and Chrisanta Mateus and was raised Roman Catholic. Julie, along with her two older brothers, Carlos and Robert spent her first twelve years in El Paso, TX while her father had a very successful Saloon/Bar business just across the border in Juarez, Mexico. The success of her father's business shortly after her birth resulted in her family living an upper class American lifestyle; this period of the early 1930s was the height of the Great Depression which crippled the working lives of many Americans. At the beginning of the decade in the 1940s before WWII, Julie and her family left El Paso, TX and relocated to Los Angeles, California for better opportunities as well as to be closer to her brothers who had left Texas to attend college in California several years earlier and who were now living permanently in Los Angeles. After living in East Los Angeles for two years, Julie and her parents relocated to Inglewood, CA in 1943 where she graduated from Inglewood High School in 1945 and then attended the University of California, Los Angeles. It was around this time that she met Raul Calvo through family members who resided near him in San Fernando, CA and in 1946 she and Raul were married in October and setup residence in San Fernando as the couple worked together at Las Delicias Caf , a Mexican Restaurant owned and operated by the Calvo family. After two years of marriage as a very young couple, they started a family and together they had three (3) children, Richard, born in 1949, Michael, born in 1957, and Julie, born in 1961 where they raised their family first in San Fernando, then in Inglewood as Raul was working at Douglas Aircraft Company in El Segundo, CA and finally in Seal Beach, CA where they relocated in 1968 and would remain in the same home together up to the time of Raul's passing in 2013. Julie began showing signs of early stages of Alzheimer's/Dementia in 2006 and 2007; after a severe fall in 2008 which accelerated and intensified the Alzheimer's/Dementia she ultimately had to have 24-hour in-home caregivers for the last seven (7) years of her life. She passed away at home on February 20, 2014 just eleven (11) days after her 87th birthday. She is survived by her children, Richard, Michael, and Julie; three (3) grandchildren, Brian, Brandon, and Kristina; one (1) great-granddaughter, Elise, and many nieces and nephews from both sides of the extended family.
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