{"id":4902,"date":"2025-01-03T11:08:52","date_gmt":"2025-01-03T16:08:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/obituaries\/?p=4902"},"modified":"2025-01-03T11:08:55","modified_gmt":"2025-01-03T16:08:55","slug":"lucia-nunez-78","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/obituaries\/2025\/01\/03\/lucia-nunez-78\/","title":{"rendered":"Luc\u00eda N\u00fa\u00f1ez ’78"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Luc\u00eda N\u00fa\u00f1ez, a Cuban American educator, community activist and LGBTQ+ pioneer, died on September 30, 2024, in Madison, Wisconsin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luc\u00eda was born January 3, 1960, in Cuba and left with her family in 1965. At age 16, Lucia went to boarding school in Easthampton, Massachusetts. She studied political science at Connecticut College and international education at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

In 1985, she joined the Peace Corps to support women, children, and schools in Honduras, and continued advocating for immigrant youth while working at Stanford University. After scouting locations from Oregon to New York, Luc\u00eda relocated her family to Wisconsin in 1999. At the time, the Hispanic population of Dane County was seeing triple-digit growth, with little to no infrastructure in place to provide culturally competent support. She joined Centro Hispano as executive director. She also served as deputy director of the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, administrator of the State of Wisconsin Equal Rights Division, and the first director of the City of Madison Department of Civil Rights. She marched at Madison\u2019s Latino immigrant rallies and was featured in Somos Latinas: Voices of Wisconsin Latina Activists, published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press. From 2016 until her retirement, she was the vice president of equity, inclusion, and community engagement at Madison Area Technical College.

Luc\u00eda is survived by Heidi Vargas, her wife of 35 years, and their two children, Carina Vargas-Nu\u00f1ez, and Mateo Vargas-Nu\u00f1ez.

To read the complete obituary please visit Wisconsin LGBTQ History Project<\/a> and to make a memorial donation to the Luc\u00eda N\u00fa\u00f1ez Becas (Scholarship) Program please visit Centro Hispano of Dane County<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Luc\u00eda N\u00fa\u00f1ez, a Cuban American educator, community activist and LGBTQ+ pioneer, died on September 30, 2024, in Madison, Wisconsin. Luc\u00eda was born January 3, 1960, in Cuba and left with her family in 1965. At age 16, Lucia went to boarding school in Easthampton, Massachusetts. She studied political science at Connecticut College and international education … Continue reading Luc\u00eda N\u00fa\u00f1ez ’78<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[169,283],"class_list":["post-4902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1970s","tag-class-of-1978","tag-williston-northampton-school"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/obituaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4902"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/obituaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/obituaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/obituaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/112"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/obituaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4902"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/obituaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4904,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/obituaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4902\/revisions\/4904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/obituaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/obituaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/obituaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}