Maria Victoria Hernández Peeler

Maria Victoria Horta Hernández (affectionately known as “Matoya” within the family) was born on December 23, 1949, in Matanzas, Cuba. Maria Victoria was born a type one diabetic, but she never let that slow her down, regulating her sugar intake and taking insulin injections. Her mother, Haydée, was a social worker with a doctorate degree from the University of Havana, and her father Cesar was an agricultural engineer. The Hernández grandparents owned a farm which grew sugarcane, and Maria Victoria and her younger sister, Haydée (known as Haydecita by the family), were familiar with the annual crop harvest and the smells of processing the cane in the local sugar mill.

After enduring the Cuban Revolution and the Bay of Pigs, the Hernández family was determined to emigrate to the US. Visas were obtained and the departure was planned; however, when ready to board the departing plane, Cesar was not allowed to leave Cuba because the government believed his valuable work was needed. Haydée made the difficult decision to allow her daughters to board a plane through Operation Pedro Pan, departing Cuba with their young cousins to Miami, Florida, while she and her husband stayed behind. Haydée’s hope was that the families would remain together in Florida until she and Cesar could soon join them. The children left with nothing more than the clothes on their backs after having their suitcases and personal items searched by the government. Operation Pedro Pan was a program put together by a Catholic Priest (Fr. Walsh) in Miami, Florida, in conjunction with the Catholic Welfare Bureau, that helped unaccompanied Cuban minors ages six to eighteen leave Cuba and enter the United States. There was a reasonable fear at the time that the government was planning to terminate parental rights and place Cuban minors into communist indoctrination centers. Many families, including the Hernández’s, were scrambling to ensure their families stayed intact and safe, even after losing everything they owned. Their daughters’ health and safety were their priority.

After landing in Miami, the two sisters were separated from their cousins, and since they had no jobs awaiting them and no immediate family to care for them, they were left to the foster care system. While awaiting housing, the sisters stayed with nuns at a local Catholic convent. The Cuban immigrants were processed at the Miami football stadium and separated into groups for temporary housing, assisted by the Catholic Church and Operation Pedro Pan.

Maria Victoria and her younger sister were placed with a foster family in Quincy, Washington. Eventually they were paired with a different family in the same town, where they lived until their parents were able to reunite with them a few years later.

Cesar and Haydée eventually emigrated to the US after flying to Mexico City via Venezuela. At that time Cesar had been offered a job in Quincy, which was a precondition for their visa admission to the US. And later, Cesar, worked at a new and upcoming Washington State agency called the Department of Ecology. Haydée had secured a job as a social worker for DSHS in nearby Ephrata working on child abuse, adoptions, and elder care.

After becoming an A student and competing for Queen of Quincy during her senior year of high school, Maria Victoria received a scholarship to Seattle University where she proceeded to take mathematics, chemistry, and engineering classes at a time when very few women were allowed to study in those fields at US colleges – at times being the only female in her classes. After her first two years of college, she transferred to the University of Washington (UW). A few years later Haydecita went on to further her education at Washington State University (WSU).

In order to help pay for her education at UW, Maria Victoria became a resident assistant (RA) in a dormitory on the north end of the UW campus. Unbeknownst to her, her future husband, Dave Peeler, was also an RA at a south campus dormitory. In the second year of their work as RA’s they were both assigned to the same dormitory; hers was an all-women’s floor, and Dave’s floor was a mixed “random rooms” floor of both women and men. Much to her consternation, Dave’s floor was well known as a party group, while her charges were more studious. This of course caused some amount of disagreement among the two RAs, but nevertheless they began dating that fall and soon fell in love.

Maria Victoria graduated in June 1973 with two bachelor’s degrees in philosophy and Zoology from UW. While Maria Victoria worked with Cesar, and others, at various farming operations in Quincy most summers, she also interned one summer with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Dave worked at various jobs every summer to put himself through college, including as a steelworker, house painter and longshoreman.

Maria Victoria and Dave were married in June 1973. Maria Victoria then began working as an engineer at Pacific NW Bell (AT&T) in downtown Seattle, commuting by bus from their apartment in the University District. The following year Dave was offered a job with the newly established Washington State Department of Ecology in Spokane. Cesar and Haydee had moved from Quincy to Spokane, so the prospect of moving close to her parents swayed the decision to relocate there. Dave accepted the job offer and Maria Victoria transferred to the PNB office in Spokane.

After a very difficult pregnancy, which required Maria Victoria to stay in the hospital for several months due to her complications with diabetes, she gave birth to a daughter, Sarah Beth, in August of 1979.

Maria Victoria decided shortly afterwards to continue her education. She attended night school classes and eventually quit her PNB job so she could complete two master’s degrees at Eastern Washington University in Fine Arts Creative Writing and Technical Writing. During this time, the family enjoyed annual Halloween Parties, walks to the park, helping abuela Haydée care for her roses and Cesar tinker around with his cars and cameras, and hiking and camping in Eastern Washington.

A few years later, Dave was offered a promotion at the Olympia headquarters of the Dept. of Ecology and also decided to further his education. The young family moved across the state to Olympia, where both started new jobs in state government and Dave pursued a master’s degree at night with The Evergreen State College.

Maria Victoria began working as a public information officer for the Dept. of Ecology, and then for the Utilities and Transportation Commission, reflecting the breadth of her education and experience. Some years later, Maria Victoria transferred back to the Dept. of Ecology and later to the Dept. of Natural Resources, where she worked as an Assistant Director and then Deputy Director until there was a change in leadership. Maria Victoria then returned to the Dept. of Ecology where she worked as an environmental scientist in the Hazardous Waste Program until she retired with 30 years of state service.

During Maria Victoria’s working years, she had become interested in the League of Women Voters and eventually become the president of the Thurston County chapter. She could not shake the education bug and enrolled at St. Martins University and obtained a master’s degree in engineering management. Later she also enrolled at UW as a candidate for a doctorate degree in nanotechnology, which was fast becoming a major industrial issue and a possible source of pollutants to our state’s waters.

Due to Maria Victoria’s extensive education and experience with many different areas of industry and government, she was regularly invited to speak at conferences across our country and in foreign countries, including Mexico, Spain, Brazil and China.

Maria Victoria’s parents relocated to Olympia when Haydée was nearing retirement in 1985 – after all, their only grandchild lived there. Cesar had retired some years earlier. After Haydee’s retirement, Cesar was diagnosed with Parkinson’s and dementia and passed away in the fall of 1994. A few short years later Haydée was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Maria Victoria helped support and guide her mother through her remaining years, all while working, managing her own health needs, taking care of Sarah Beth, and volunteering within her community. In 2007, Haydée, Maria Victoria, and Dave watched Sarah Beth graduate law school, which was a great achievement to witness. With much love and laughter shared in between those years, we then lost Haydée on Valentines Day in 2011. And, in the fall of 2011, Sarah Beth married Matthew Huot, which would expand our family all the way to the upper east coast of New Hampshire.

Over the years Maria Victoria’s diabetes continued to worsen, but she optimistically volunteered with the University of Washington’s Medical Center to test new diabetic devices in hopes it would help her, and others, better manage their diabetes. During this time Maria Victoria was outfitted with a brand-new device, an insulin pump that had just come on the market. While this was an improvement over the regular shots, it still had some complications. Maria Victoria ended up as a Beta tester and user of three different improved insulin pumps, and the Nobel Pen, over the next 20 years. But eventually, her kidneys began to fail her, and she was scheduled to begin kidney dialysis in February 2003. Maria Victoria had also gone through lengthy testing to determine if she could be a viable candidate for a kidney transplant.

Maria Victoria had a few surgeries to have a fistula inserted to help conduct the dialysis, but they never took properly; her body was too weak already. The next step was to have to do so in her neck, which was risky. Miraculously, on the morning before her first dialysis was scheduled, she received a phone call from the UW Hospital transplant center – they had a kidney available and wondered if she could come up immediately for a tissue typing test to determine if she would qualify as a recipient.

At that time, their daughter, Sarah Beth, was also attending UW. After the tissue samples were taken for testing, the three of them waited anxiously for the results. Finally, the call came – there was a good match to the donor, and Maria Victoria was scheduled for surgery to perform a double transplant that very evening for both her kidney, and a new pancreas. The newly transplanted organs performed flawlessly, and Maria Victoria was technically no longer a diabetic – no more insulin shots for her! However, she continued to adhere to a kidney friendly diet, take special drugs to keep her body from rejecting the new organs, and undergo several blood tests every year to ensure the kidney and pancreas remained healthy. The transplants were a huge blessing, but they did not undo all the years of other damage to her body caused by the many years of diabetes. But they did last her throughout the remainder of her life and allowed her to live more than two additional decades.

Unfortunately, Maria Victoria was later diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at about the time she retired. After Dave’s retirement a few years later, they decided to make the most of the time she had left. They continued to travel frequently to visit friends and relatives in the US and also vacationed in Mexico and the Caribbean. But Maria Victoria never did return to Cuba.

Eventually the progression of Alzheimer's made it too difficult for long-distance travel, and by then a grandchild had arrived that was a delight to them both. So distant conferences and lounging on tropical beaches became a thing of the past except for one memorable trip to Hawaii with Sarah Beth, her husband Matthew, and their new grandson Gabriel David. And soon afterwards two additional grandchildren came along (Levi Teyo and Eliza Maria) to add to our growing family.

In the last few years Maria Victoria began to withdraw from her friends and community activities, spending more time at home with Dave. Even seeing the grandchildren became difficult for her as she began to no longer recognize them or her son-in-law. During these times Maria Victoria especially enjoyed watching the birds, deer, raccoons and other wildlife that regularly visited her home’s backyard for food and water.

Unfortunately, the time came when Maria Victoria needed more care than could be supplied by Dave at home, and she moved into a memory care home in the fall of last year. While Maria Victoria’s care was excellent, her health continued to decline. In her last days Maria Victoria was surrounded by her family day and night, and in the first hour of February 16, 2025, with Dave by her side, Maria Victoria joined her previously deceased parents, Cesar and Haydée, and her younger sister, Haydecita, in Heaven.

Maria Victoria had a strong personality full of color and depth, much like all the Hernández matriarchs of the family. Maria Victoria enjoyed nature, and all the outdoors had to offer, but she also loved a good shopping spree at Nordstrom’s with her mother, always staying in fashion (she once used to model for the Nordstrom chain!) Maria Victoria listened to loud rock music and heavy metal bands while driving around in her Italian red convertible and played in a women’s soccer league when she had time. Above all things dancing was her favorite love - from classical ballet to Spanish duets, head banging to hard rock, or starting a Conga line. Feeling the music was in her blood and she made sure to share the love of the dance floor with anyone who was willing.

While Maria Victoria suffered much trauma and hardship in her life, she chose to live life with passion and to help others and this planet move forward positively in unison with one another. Not only did she do this in her career, but also in her own time by joining and becoming an active member in The League of Women Voters – Thurston Co. Chapter, Hispanic Women’s Network, Thurston County Democrats, and later with Olympia Kiwanis Chapter.

Maria Victoria understood through her life experiences that we must share in our community to lift each other up, and so she dedicated the better part of her career and personal life in doing so. For without light, there is only darkness.

Maria Victoria leaves behind her loving husband, David Clayborne Peeler, her daughter, Sarah Beth Hernández Huot, her son-in-law, Matthew David Huot, and her three grandchildren, Gabriel David(age 10), Levi Teyo (7), and Eliza Maria (3). Maria Victoria also leaves behind her extended family of cousins in the Hernández family, the Perez-Heydrich family, and the Retureta family.

Maria Victoria’s family extends their sincere thanks to all the staff at The Hampton Memory Care, Assured Hospice, and to the expert doctors and clinicians who supported Maria Victoria through her health journeys over the years. We also thank the Alzheimer’s Association for providing information, guidance and support to Dave and to so many others through their publications and their caregiver support groups.

Finally, our hearts go out to all of the people suffering from Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, and to the families who are providing them the support they need to carry on as best they can. We fervently hope for a cure to be discovered soon to end this scourge and hope you too will support the Alzheimer’s Association towards that goal. Please donate to the Alzheimer’s Association in Maria Victoria’s name in lieu of donating flowers on the family’s behalf.

A Mass will be held on Tuesday, March 4th, at 12:00 PM at St. Michael’s Parish. There will be a rosary prior to the funeral mass at 11:15 AM if anyone would like to join and the mass will be streamed lived at:  youtube.com/c/saintmichaelparish.www A reception will follow in the gathering space, with a burial at Calvary Catholic Cemetery afterward.

In lieu of flowers, donations to the Alzheimer’s Association are greatly appreciated.https://www.alz.org/