Cesar Chavez attended more than 30 elementary schools before he finished the eighth grade. He was, of course, the son of a mother and father who were migrant workers, following the crops every year, from Yuma, where Cesar was born, to Oregon and Washington. Chavez served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, and then became a community and labor organizer. In 1962, he moved to Delano in the lower San Joaquin Valley of California and formed the National Farm Workers Association. In 1965, he organized a grape strike, and in 1966 began to sign a series of contracts with important grape growers. He next moved against lettuce growers, but with only minimal success, brought on, in part, by opposition from a rival union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. In 1977, Chavez's union, the United Farm Workers, negotiated an agreement with the Teamsters giving the UFW the right to organize field workers. The significance of this achievement, however, was compromised by internal dissension, punctuated by charges that Chavez had disrupted the union staff by pushing group encounter sessions, holistic medical practices and faith-healing. Many staffers quit, the UFW membership dropped from 50,000 to 30,000, and the hopes of organized a truly national farm workers union seemed more remote than ever. Cesar Estrada Chavez died in 1993. Chavez was a simple man with no guile. His terrible earnestness, and his honesty, endeared him to a whole generation of idealists in the 1960s, including such non-hippy types as Walter Reuther and Robert F. Kennedy, who gave the kind of moral and financial support that could have vaulted the UFW to success if the UFW had had a different kind of leadership able to use all that support in effective ways.

MODEL: Cesar's simplicity and honesty. When Cesar told you it was so, it was so. He was never afraid to report the bad news.

Never give up. If you were born on March 31, you fight to the bitter end, no Matter what. You may have new ideas that go unspoken simply because you want to hang on to your current position. When crisis looms, however, you can dream up creative yet practical solutions that save the day. Ruled by the number 4 and the planet Uranus, you can be stubborn and argumentative.

Change. You may face the opportunity to change careers. If you go for it, you'll probably succeed, though it will take time. If you pass it up, your secret talents may never see daylight. You handle changes well, but your sense of security and financial realism cause you to prefer calculated risks to reckless gambles.

Your role. You can sit in the head honcho seat but thrive as a partner or associate where your innovative thoughts can contribute to the team. In your personal life, you may not actively look for relationships. You can live alone for years, but may take on a family late in life as a step-parent.

Carefully affectionate. Public displays of affection kind of frighten you. Thus, you are not warm and cuddly but display affection through gentle teasing and humor. You have a deep need for caring and require a warm-hearted mate who can read you and knows when to turn it on and off. In fact, you are a little suspicious of those who are sunny every minute of every day.

Some Advice : Everyone fears rejection, but you have to keep trying. Don't shut yourself off from love and affection. Try not to turn everything into an argument. And weigh common sense with your gut instinct

Also born on this day:
Rene Descartes (French philosopher) Franz Joseph Haydn (Austrian composer) Cesar Chevez (migrant worker unionist) Al Gore, Jr. (US vice-president, senator Tennessee) Gordie Howe (6x NHL scoring leader) John Fowles (novelist) Christopher Walken (actor) Liz Claiborne (fashion designer) Nagisa Oshima (Japanese film director) Shirley Jones (singer, actress) Richard Chamberlain (actor) Herb Alpert (trumpeter, co-founder A&M Records) John Jakes (screenplay writer)