Funeral For Former Arizona Rep. Ed Pastor To Be Held Friday
The funeral mass for former Congressman Ed Pastor will be held Friday at 2 p.m. Pastor died at age 75 from a heart attack in November. He was Arizona’s first Hispanic member of Congress.
Pastor started his political career working for Raul Castro, Arizona’s first Hispanic Governor. He was elected to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in 1976 where he served three terms. Pastor was eventually elected to the U.S. Congress in 1991, where he would serve until 2015 when he decided it was time to "seek out a new endeavor."
He was a founding member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and a member of the International Conservation Caucus.
Pastor was born in Claypool Arizona in 1943, the oldest of three children.
He received a scholarship to Arizona State University and was the first in his family to go to college. He graduated from ASU in 1966 with a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry and went on to teach at North High School in Phoenix. He went back to school for his J.D. and graduated from ASU’s College of Law in 1974.
Pastor married his wife, Verma and had two children, Laura and Yvonne. In 2016 the House passed a bill to rename a Phoenix post office after Pastor. The building is also home to the Student Center on ASU’s Downtown Phoenix campus. He is survived by his wife, his daughters and his sister Eleanor.
