Edward R Roybal

Across the city he represented for decades, building after building is named after Edward Roybal. And the reputation of Roybal, one of the most influential and trailblazing Latino politicians in U.S. history, reaches far beyond his political base in East Los Angeles, where there's the Edward Roybal Comprehensive Health Center. In Atlanta, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention named its main campus after him. In downtown Los Angeles, there's the Edward R.

Edward R. Roybal, who championed the rights of the underprivileged and the elderly during 30 years in the House of Representatives and was the mentor to scores of Latino lawmakers in Los Angeles, died Monday. He was 89. Roybal, who had a pioneering role in the city's politics, died of respiratory failure complicated by pneumonia at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, according to an announcement from the office of his daughter, Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-East Los Angeles).

Hundreds are expected to attend services this morning for former Rep. Edward R. Roybal, a pioneering Latino officeholder and one of Los Angeles' most enduring political figures. A funeral Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles will begin with a walking procession from the Great Bronze Doors into the cathedral at 8:45 a.m. From 8 a.m. to noon the following streets near the cathedral, at 555 W. Temple St.

Serenaded by mariachis and eulogized as a trailblazer by elected officials he had helped inspire, Edward R. Roybal was laid to rest Monday not far from the Boyle Heights neighborhood where he began his political career more than half a century ago. City Councilman Alex Padilla, 32, told those gathered at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles about how his immigrant parents had looked up to Roybal, who was already in Congress when their son was born.

The patriarch of Latino politics in California is sick and tired but still holding forth, seated at the kitchen table of his bright Spanish stucco house in Pasadena. Battling illness and old age, Edward R. Roybal, 84, sounds like a grandfather giving a scolding. Sure, Roybal says, Latinos have come a long way. There are 30 times as many Latino lawmakers in California as when he first took office 50 years ago. The Assembly speaker is Mexican American. So is the lieutenant governor.