I have been very blessed beyond anything I dreamed, but that American dream is still alive and well at TJC for others, if you have the “ganas”! Biography Without my parents and family and without the TJC family, I would not be who I am as a person, and I surely would not be General Counsel at Trinity Mother Frances Hospitals and Clinics.
TJC gave me the foundation, both educationally and personally, to be successful in my future pursuits. That enabled me to graduate with honors in my bachelor’s degree program and helped prepare me for the rigors of law school. I also studied hard and graduated Magna Cum Laude from TJC. Before long I found myself suiting up as the Apache mascot at athletic events and having a wonderful time. Besides great academic programs, TJC’s student life is outstanding. Rhey Nolan, were awesome because they genuinely cared about students and their success. It was a great decision and it changed my life. I fell in love with TJC and Tyler and even though, as my high school’s class valedictorian, I had other opportunities, TJC was the only place I applied. Fair, a wonderful man, showed me around Tyler Junior College and encouraged me to attend. While in high school, I came to Tyler to help my oldest brother who worked as a maintenance man for the Fair family. My siblings have all contributed positively to society, not only as great fathers and mothers, but as educated maintenance men, a dental hygienist, a licensed vocational nurse, a surveyor, teachers, coaches, and social workers. My parents understood and embraced that American dream and instilled it in their children. Later in school I learned about America’s founding fathers and their vision to create a country in which anyone could rise up as high as his energies, talent and ambition could take him (or her!). Though they had no formal education and neither spoke nor read English, they inspired us with their generosity, responsibility, perseverance, and prayerfulness. My mother was kind, faithful, loving and patient beyond words and she always encouraged us to do our very best in school. My father, the ranch foreman, would emphasize the need to pursue a good education in the midst of our hard work in the fields. Our two wonderful parents gave us the most important things in life: a strong work ethic, a loving and close knit family, faith in God, and belief in the power of education. Saying that times were tough doesn’t capture the reality of the world in which we grew up, but we were also very blessed. And “ganas”, that fire in your belly to get ahead in life, was what they helped give their children. “Dale con ganas a tus estudios” was what our parents told us.
To a young person, those rows seemed to go on forever and Dad reminded us that if we didn’t want to do this forever, we had to study hard. During summers, we migrated to California to work in the onion, potato and watermelon fields. Digging post holes, branding cattle, or cutting brush on a hot, dusty day helped inspire us all. Jacoby Ranch, near Leakey, Texas and our first home was an old converted horse barn. We grew up on a working cattle ranch, the H.F. “El Norte” wasn’t a land of milk and honey for them. “Si Dios quiere, entre todos se puede” (“God willing, together we can”) was my Dad’s philosophy. They believed that in America anything was possible for those who had faith and worked hard. Both my parents were born in Coahuila, Mexico. I grew up as a first generation American, born into the middle of a family of 11 (made up of 9 boys and 2 girls) on a ranch near Leakey, Texas.
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