Maria Josefina Oconer Salazar Raborar was born in December of 1943 in Manila, Philippines. She grew up speaking the Philippine national language, Tagalog and American English as a second language, and her community often combines words from both languages within a sentence.

Raborar’s early life was in Central Luzon, which is surrounded by mountains and active volcanoes. Growing up, she celebrated many Catholic holidays like Easter, Christmas and Epiphany.

Her parents, Roman Salazar and Bienvinida Oconer, both came from big families and had lots of children themselves. Raborar is the third oldest of eight.

She graduated high school, second in her class, and studied dietetics in college. She left home at age 23 to move to the United States with her soon-to-be husband, Arteso. The two were married in 1967 in Cleveland, and later had three daughters: Aileen, Rowena and Farrah.

Since coming to Springfield, Raborar has made prolonged efforts to bring education and acceptance of Asian culture to the Ozarks. She embraced multiculturalism and believed in education, which inspired her to bring multicultural projects to the area.

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Read all of Raborar's story and the rest of the Ethnic Life Stories Project stories by clicking here.

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Music is Bach Cello Suite no. 3 by Colin Carr from the Free Music Archive.

Episodes are edited, recorded, mixed, and published by Diana Dudenhoeffer.