Edward Chavez

Major: Business administration
Hometown: Santa Fe, N.M.

Making it through his first year at Eastern was a turning point for alumnus Edward Chavez, now chief justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court.

The Santa Fe native was the first in his immediate family to go to college 30 years ago, and he wasn’t sure it was for him. After following cousins to ENMU in Portales, he wanted to drop out after the first semester. “I had been working for awhile and saw that I could have money and studying was not really doing it for me.”  

He stayed because he didn’t want to disappoint his parents, who told him they had borrowed the money for his first year of college.

The goal of becoming a lawyer came from his friend, Rudy Chavez. “The idea of training yourself to help others who are less fortunate than you sounded good.”    

After that, he took every class Eastern offered in law. While earning his bachelor’s degree in business administration, he met business professor Ross Sanchez, now district court judge in Bernalillo County, who told him how to become a lawyer.

While attending Eastern, he joined the Association to Help Our Race Advance (AHORA), serving as president for a term. “It was very useful being a member of AHORA. We studied together and helped each other to succeed.”   

The 1978 ENMU graduate says Portales turned out to be a good fit. “I would have not done well in life if it was not for Eastern; a small university did it for me. I would have been lost in a big one.”

And he looks back fondly on his college days for another reason. “The best thing that has happened in my life happened to me at Eastern. I met my wife, Sandra, there.”