Unsuspecting X-ray technicians always had the same reaction.
“Mr. Gonzales,” they would say, perplexed, “Do you know you have a bullet in your chest?”
Ben Gonzales often gasped.
“Do I?”
Gonzales, the first Latino to serve as San Bernardino’s police chief, kept his sense humor and practical perspective until he died Oct. 15 of natural causes, daughter Laura Gonzales said this week.
He was 94.
“My dad’s outlook on doing his job as a police officer was very much the same as his outlook for everything else,” said Laura Gonzales, the youngest of her father’s three adult children. “He is a very kind and courageous man.”
Laura Gonzales, 68, was in high school when a counselor one day in December 1969 pulled her from class to tell her that her father, then a sergeant in San Bernardino, was shot in the line of duty.
“It was scary,” she recalled. “I didn’t know if he would die, if he would live. You know, all the things that go through a 16-year-old mind when thinking about that stuff.”
A few months earlier, Ben Gonzales was called to a house where a man was holding his wife hostage.
As his daughter recalled decades later, Gonzales tried talking the man down, to no avail. The 41-year-old sergeant ultimately entered the house, Laura Gonzales said, and after several hours of conversation, asked the man if his wife could make them coffee.
The wife went to the kitchen, where she escaped out a back door.
Gonzales subsequently disarmed the man.
“There are two things most people remember about my dad,” Laura Gonzales said, “and one is that hostage situation.”
The other nearly took Ben Gonzales’ life.
In December 1969, Gonzales and his older brother, Eliodoro, were the first officers to arrive at a robbery at the Bank of America near Mt. Vernon Avenue and 16th Street. One man darted toward Gonzales with a shotgun before the sergeant fatally shot him.
A second gunman snuck up from behind Gonzales and shot him in the back. As Gonzales fell, a second shot entered his head and grazed his skull before exiting.
Gonzales was rushed to the hospital.
“He knew all along it was possible that something like that could happen, and that it could happen to any officer,” Laura Gonzales said. “People thought maybe he would take it to heart and then be skittish. No. He knew that was a possibility. He was going to be fine.”
Doctors did not remove the bullet lodged inside Gonzales’ body, surmising doing so would delay his recovery.
So long as the slug wasn’t harming anything or at risk of moving, they suspected, it wouldn’t be an issue.
Gonzales was back at work three weeks later.
“Ben was totally dedicated to the city of San Bernardino, the San Bernardino Police Department and his family,” said Jim Penman, whose friendship with Gonzales goes back to when the two served the local Home of Neighborly Service – Penman as director and Gonzales as a board member.
“He was one of the bravest men I ever knew,” added Penman, who later served as San Bernardino city attorney and is presently running for mayor.
“Ben was a magnificent human being.”
In 1975, Gonzales received the Veterans of Foreign Wars J. Edgar Hoover Gold Medal Award as the nation’s most outstanding law enforcement officer.
Six years later, he became the first Latino police chief in San Bernardino.
Penman, a police commissioner during Gonzales’ time as top cop, recently credited his friend with reducing crime in town and bolstering the recruitment of minority officers. Complaints against the department dropped drastically on Gonzales’ watch, Penman recalled, and Gonzales retired in 1986 as one of the most popular chiefs in city history.
“He was a great chief for a significant segment of our population, which had historically suffered tremendous discrimination,” Penman added. “Ben, of course, always worked to change the department in that respect, and I think he made significant progress in doing that.”
Gonzales was as effervescent in retirement as he was on the job.
Always willing to lend a hand, the man stayed busy laying tile, putting up roofs, fixing washing machines, his daughter recalled. Could be for a family member, a neighbor or an acquaintance. He volunteered around town and completed service work in the only city he knew.
From humble beginnings in San Bernardino, Gonzales served his country in the Air Force during World War II. Once home, he operated cranes at the Santa Fe railroad before joining his brother in the police department.
While Gonzales ascended the ranks, he never passed up an opportunity to advise those below him.
“He liked mentoring people and helping people,” said Laura Gonzales, a retired division director with San Bernardino County Probation. “Whenever he came across someone who was interested in law enforcement, he would take time to answer their questions, meet up for coffee with them. He would try to help and give advice to anyone who wanted to learn things from him.
“He was always gracious and open to helping others.”
A simple X-ray reveals as much.
“Some people thought (the bullet) was shrapnel from the war,” Laura Gonzales said. “No, it was from that bank robbery. He carried that souvenir with him till the day he died.”
Gonzales is survived by his wife, Ermelinda, and brothers Eliodoro “Lolo” Gonzales and Daniel Gonzales; three children; seven grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.
A funeral service is scheduled for 10 a.m. Monday, Oct. 31, at Mt. View Mortuary & Cemetery, 570 E. Highland Ave, San Bernardino.
A private burial will follow.
