"He died of AIDS."
I reel inside. My favourite teacher is dead.
Unexpectedly, she follows up, "He was such false man."
As though her surviving by pure chance into retirement somehow made her superior.
"I loved him dearly," I replied flatly. "He did have a roommate Chris that he used to speak of quite a bit." He spoke of the death of Chris' mom to teach us in a heart-rendingly personal confession about loss. This conversation didn't seem like it was going to match that. "Maybe they were more than friends."
"All that time with Lily, the third grade teacher. It was a scandal. And what with all the machismo back then, the men on staff got all the love from Conrado, the principal, and it was such a boys' club. You know, a few years later, Ramon didn't even take his class into art anymore. He said it wasn't important, they didn't need it, and Conrado said that was just fine."
Ah, so that's what it was about. Of course this was the "art teacher" who declared "There's no wrong way to do art" and proceeds to unnecessarily modify the aesthetics of what you're trying to create. Fucking hypocrite. Maybe Ramon figured that out, too.
"To the contrary, I remember he actually touted art. He even won an award in college for a little sculpture called 'Medulla'."
Judy Abrams seemed to think for a second before partially backpedalling, "Well, I didn't know him that well. He was good in the beginning, before all the politics."
The justice here is that even if Ramon was fabulous enough to be incidentally gay, at least he will never be eulogized for having a paintbrush stuck up her useless ass.
And who was Ramon Martinez? The man I knew was a young firebrand who was a Chicano in the best sense of the word. A responsible, divorced single-father who drove a white convertible MG. He took care of himself, ate a tablespoonful of honey every morning for health. Honest enough to fail the student teacher Benny who didn't know fractions any better than we did. Ramon would speak first with joy about his mother, then with frankness about her loss which happened that very same year, having to be strong to come back to the chalkboard. So audacious as to teach us about Juan Diego & the Virgen de Guadalupe in a public school, the Mexicano hero-martyr Jesus Garcia who saved Nacozari from a burning trainload of dynamite, required a verbatim recitation MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech and the hope that it encapsulated. With science, it was astronomy's Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, nuclear power generators and bombs, brought a practicing neurologist in with an actual human brain on a tray and gave us gloves so we could touch the curves and crannies in the gray matter, even the mind-bending ideas of the big bang and oscillating cosmologies. The curriculum pulled no punches, raised questions, made us not only learn but want to think. So ambitious his classroom made front page above the fold of the metro section with its presentations on race and classroom philosophies. The passion and conviction in his teaching was palpable, and equally effective.
I last ran into Ramon around 1991 and we talked for about 45 minutes straight. He'd changed his name after some ancestral research and said he was working on drafting educational software to teach children about Mesoamerica. I'd always meant to follow up with him after that chance meeting, but getting my double degree and other personal involvements took the intention off my radar, regrettably. It seems the only thing I can do now is ask people who knew him to fill in the blanks for me. But what I learned from him and remember of Ramon Martinez, an enlightened man and teacher, I will never forget. Thanks for everything, Mr Martinez.
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| [Sartorially suited Ramon Martinez in the left foreground. Third from the right, lil' young me sporting the "Pak Rat" shirt at the height of videogame arcade culture.] |
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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.
