My Sister Remains A Primary Role Model
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We didn’t have money for books, so I read what Rose Marie was reading in her high school and college classesTo Kill A Mockingbird, Moby Dick, Crime and Punishment, Don Quixote and other serious works of literature. Not surprisingly, I startled my barrio teachers with a rather extensive vocabulary, which led them to think I was smarter than I was. They pushed me harder and as a result I did better academically than I otherwise would have. Reading works. Entice your kids to read, and the best way to do so is by example.
Another remarkable trait about Rose Marie was that she didnt rest on her laurels. After winning scholarships to go to college, graduating and working as a grammar school teacher, she had three kids one after another (Mexican triplets). Even with all of the work and effort that three kids can entail, she kept on teaching. As the kids got older, she went back to grad school and finished her M.A. in education from UC Irvine and started to work for the Santa Ana Unified School District as head of their bilingual education program.
When her kids came to college age, the oldest went to Princeton, the middle child to Stanford and the baby to Harvard. So I was not the only beneficiary of her guidance.
After the last graduation, she went back to school, this time to Stanford to complete a Ph.D. from the Department of Education in Language, Literacy and Culture. Way cool.
She now works as an independent qualitative researcher with a specialization in ethnographic research in the U.S. Hispanic market. She is absolutely amazing with kids and teens (her house was always the hangout for the entire neighborhood), with moms and seniorsthe best I have ever seenand she does this in Spanish and English.
Giving Thanks
Rose Marie continues to give back through her work to the community she loves:
She sits on an advisory board for KQED, the PBS station in the Bay Area.
- She is on the board of the Coast Siders Foundation, a group dedicated to helping seniors who live in the Half Moon Bay area where she lives.
- She is an education advisor on Mujersissimas.com.
Her work also contributes mightily to the understanding of the Latino community, benefiting the commercial clients, foundations and organizations that are clever enough to hire her. She still suffers for every high school dropout, every pregnant teenager, every obese child with type 2 diabetes, and every senior with no one to care for them. I think we all still have a lot to learn from her.
