Beloit family mourning the loss of beloved father of 7
Armando Gonzalez died from on cancer on June 25th
BELOIT, Wis. (WMTV) -A family in Beloit is mourning a devastating loss. Armando Gonzalez is a father of seven children. He passed away less than two weeks ago from cancer and now his wife and children are vowing to keep his memory alive.
“I feel very sad because I don’t understand why…why him?” said his wife Minerva. “Maybe because he was a very good man and God has another plan for him.”
Minerva said she met her husband 24 years ago in choir at church. She says they both always wanted a big family.
“We planned 12 (kids) because he said he wanted a soccer team,” Minerva said with a laugh.
In January of 2021, Armando was diagnosed with cancer. He and Minerva waited nearly a year to tell their children.
“When we tell the kids, he was in remission,” said Minerva. “I didn’t really think it was true,” said 16-year-old Armando Jr.
His oldest daughter Karina is 18 -- and just graduated from Beloit Memorial High School. Her father was too weak to go to the ceremony.
“I remember I came back home, and I stood at his doorway and showed him my diploma and he wrote down that he saw everything online and he was very proud of me,” said Karina.
Armando was 48 years old when passed away on June 25th. In addition to the two eldest children Karina and Armando, there’s also Cassandra, 14, Giovanni, 11, Karely, 9, Jeremias, 7, and Isaias, 5.
Armando was always a man of strong faith and was a leader at St. Peter Catholic Church in South Beloit.
“He was a really thoughtful man, he always thought of others before himself. He always told us that we were here to serve others not to be served,” said Armando Jr. “He was like my best friend,”
Armando Jr. remembers one night how he had to help get his father in the car to get him to the hospital. His father was trying his best to fight back against the cancer.
“He couldn’t walk so I had to drag him to the car…it was really sad it was heartbreaking because I saw how weak he was and he couldn’t walk and he was crawling on the ground,” said Armando Jr.
“Everyone that knew him, knew the kind of man he was,” said Karina.
Karina is attending UW this fall – plans she thought she would have to put on hold.
“I wasn’t even sure if I should go to college. I didn’t know if I should stay at home and work, but my dad always valued a good education and he told me I shouldn’t worry about that kind of stuff yet,”
The Gonzalez family doesn’t know what the future holds, but they will always have each other and the memory of their beloved father.
“At his visitation, a lot of people came up to me and were like ‘your dad changed my life’ and it’s not hard to believe because everyone that he met he like touched their hearts,” said Karina.
Armando was the sole provider in the Gonzalez family – Minerva was a stay-at-home mom and took care of the kids.
There’s a GoFundMe page set up for the family and so far, it’s raised more than $25,000.
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