10/06/2026
Fred Cordova used to carry a measuring tape into libraries, his wife Dorothy told The Seattle Times, to measure how much shelf space the books about Filipinos took up. At the University of Washington, she said, it was 3 to 5 inches.
A few inches, for a whole people's history. He and Dorothy spent their lives adding to that shelf, and one thing they added is on your calendar every October.
It's Filipino American History Month, and it started as Fred's idea.
A FARM KID FROM SELMA
Fred was born on June 3, 1931, in Selma, California. As a boy, he was adopted by Leoncio and Lucia Cordova, who ran crews of migrant farmworkers from farm to farm across California.
He never forgot, The Seattle Times wrote, the prejudice he faced growing up among farmworkers.
His birth mother died when he was about 10, and at her funeral he met his older brother Phil for the first time. Phil remembered the boy showing up "dressed like Little Lord Fauntleroy," and I love that he still remembered the outfit decades later.
SEATTLE, AND DOROTHY
At Seattle University he met Dorothy Laigo, a Seattle girl whose parents had come from the Philippines in 1928. As students, they put out a publication together called Bamboo: The Filipino People in American Life.
They married in 1953, raised eight children, and stayed married for 60 years. Fred was a newspaperman, then ran university news offices, managing the University of Washington's from 1974 to 2000.
THE DRILL TEAM
In 1957, they started Filipino Youth Activities of Seattle, where Filipino American kids learned sports, dance and their own culture. Fred's drill team marched to Philippine drums and gongs and won awards.
At his funeral, a former member remembered a 1961 state fair where people shouted racist names at the team. Fred always told the kids to ignore taunts like that and "just focus on your steps and moves."
Then she asked every former drill team member in the church to stand. More than 100 of them did.
FILLING THE SHELF
In 1982, in Seattle, Dorothy founded the Filipino American National Historical Society, with Fred as its founding president. She has said she pictured a research group, but Fred wanted chapters all over the country, digging up the Filipino history of their own towns.
In 1983, he published Filipinos: Forgotten Asian Americans, a book of old photographs and essays edited by Dorothy. It starts in 1763, the year the society counts as the first lasting Filipino settlement in the United States, in Louisiana.
Fred also created the National Pinoy Archives, now among the largest collections of Filipino American history anywhere.
THE MONTH
Dorothy has said the idea just came to him: other American groups had their own months, and Filipinos deserved one too.
On February 15, 1991, at a board meeting in Seattle, Fred introduced a resolution. It passed, and the first Filipino American History Month was set for October 1992.
October was picked for a reason. On October 18, 1587, Filipinos from Luzon, sailing on a Spanish ship, came ashore at Morro Bay, California, the earliest record of Filipinos in what is now the continental United States.
That's 33 years before the Pilgrims reached Plymouth Rock.
In 2009, both houses of Congress passed resolutions recognizing the month. And in 2019, more than five years after Fred died, Washington State made it law, and The Seattle Times named him among those who had pushed for it.
UNCLE FRED
Generations of Filipino Americans called him Uncle Fred. He belonged to the same Seattle parish for 50 years and was ordained a deacon in 2003.
When he preached, a parishioner remembered, he'd say, "Look around. This is what heaven looks like." His daughter Cecilia said he didn't hesitate to add "Pray for the Seahawks!"
He died on December 21, 2013, at 82. Cecilia said he would be dressed for his funeral in a Doug Baldwin Seahawks jersey beneath his vestments.
DOROTHY KEPT GOING
In 2019, at 87, Dorothy was still coming to the archive five or six days a week, for no salary.
Fred's old chair and desk were still there. "I still talk to him but he doesn't answer, but what the heck," she said.
For years, the society ran with no paid staff, raising money by selling T-shirts, books and lumpia. In October 2025, at 93, Dorothy was hosting an online series on how Filipinos came to America.
So this October, when you see those four words on a school calendar or in your feed, think of a man with a measuring tape, and the woman who kept that shelf growing after he was gone.
Source: The Seattle Times, 2014 and 2019; Northwest Asian Weekly, 2014 and 2025; Filipino American National Historical Society, including its 1991 resolution; Rodel Rodis, Positively Filipino, 2014; Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project; South Seattle Emerald, 2022; 4Culture, 2023; Internet Archive book record →
