Maria Ramirez of Woodin Road was the Imagen Foundation's Educational Leadership honoree at the organization's 2009 Latina Leaders Awards ceremony March 4.
The Los Angeles-based Imagen Foundation was established in 1985 to celebrate and recognize positive portrayals of Latin women in film and television. Its most recent effort is to expand beyond the group's entertainment roots.
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"The event in Washington was lovely," Ramirez said, "We spent the whole afternoon with Secretary of Labor (Hilda) Solis. But at one point during the evening I turned to my little sister and said 'Can you really believe two little Puerto Rican girls from Brooklyn are actually here?'"
Ramirez views her life as a mission and has made a philosophical connection to Miguel Cervantes' Don Quixote. The connection has evolved into collecting enough Quixote figurines and statuary representations to fill her house.
"It's been a real journey, a true quest, for a girl who dropped out of kindergarten because she couldn't speak English," she said.
Like Quixote Ramirez has made interesting friends along the way and battled her share of windmills. But unlike the fictitional character she has yet to find her personal Sancho Panza.
She made friends as a teenager with members of the storied Brooklyn Dodgers, earned degrees from St. John's University and Middlebury College, became the first Hispanic commissioner to serve in the state Education Department, lectured in colleges, and became a member of the Siena College Board of Trustees.
She has received honors from educational institutions in France, Poland, Russia and China, an honorary doctorate in letters and humanities from Hartwick College and a doctorate of law from her alma mater St. John's University.
And all through the years she remained committed to international and multi-cultural understanding and communication. She dedicated her entire working life to improving education for children, youth, and adults, especially those most in need.
Ramirez was baptized Maria del Carmen Alicia Rosa Teresa Josefina Ramirez-Perez in 1934 by her parents. Both were natives of Puerto Rico.
The two immigrated to the U.S. when Ramirez's father was offered a job at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Ramirez and two sisters were born there.
After bad experiences in kindergarten and first grade with Anglo teachers she met her savior, Mr. Elman in second grade.
"Mr. Elman was the first teacher to call me Maria," Ramirez said. "He told me that if I used my machine, the mouth, correctly everything would be OK. He taught me that no dreams are too high. The techniques he taught me for speaking properly have stayed with me all my life."
During high school she used to skip a late study hall and run the one block to the Dodgers baseball park, Ebbets Field. The players began to recognize her and grew to like her when she showed up nearly every afternoon.
"They gave me signed photographs, their ball caps and old baseball gloves, and then one day Duke Snider gave me his Dodger's jacket," she said. "Roy Campanella, Carl Furillo, Pee Wee Reese, they all knew me."
After high school Ramirez joined the Dominican Sisters and after college began working her way up from teaching elementary school classes to high school.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s she became active in the controversial bi-lingual education for schools movement.
"There was a growing population of young Cubans coming in who couldn't speak English," she said. "They weren't doing well in the schools because they couldn't speak the language. It was during the meetings and discussions about Title VI, the bi-lingual education law, that I was offered a job with the state Education Department."
Ramirez refused the offer to work for the state Education Department three times before she finally accepted.
"My "Ah-ha" moment came when I was confronted at a rally on Long Island by a State Education commissioner who said to me, "You lob bombs at us for not doing enough on bi-lingual education but when we offer you a job you refuse"."
She joined the education department in 1971 after receiving special permission to work in a lay position in Albany.
"It was weird," she said. "I felt like Clark Kent from Superman. I wore regular clothes all during the week, lived alone in an apartment, and then drove the church car back to New York and put on the habit for the weekends."
In 1975 after much prayer she left the church, regained her Latina name, and continued working for bi-lingual education and improving multi-cultural education as an employee with the state.
During the next few years she quickly learned about politics and how to get things done in the state legislature.
"As a state employee I couldn't lobby any of the legislators," she said, "but I knew that passing bills was key. I also knew I could cook good Spanish food and that there was a large contingent of Hispanic legislators up here from the city that missed home cooking."
Over the years her meals at the Woodin Road home led to what she refers to as "the rice and beans rationale". In 1971 state appropriations for bi-lingual education were $1.5 million. Today they are more than $100 million.
As an honoree in Washington Ramirez personalized her speech describing her early troubles in grade school and her debt to her second grade teacher.
She detailed how the experiences she had as a girl in Brooklyn never left her and described how important language is to a country made up of immigrants.
"The languages in the schools change because the children and where they're from change," she said. "When we finally set up the state's bi-lingual education program it was the first one in the country. When we were done the rest of the states copied ours. New York is a microcosm of the world."
