Tom Ramos
It’s Friday, September 25th. I’m at Peaberry’s. This is Esther Newman and I’m with Tom Ramos, an interview for Steel Valley Voices.
E – And, Tom, from what I understand, your family was one of the first (Mexican families) to arrive here. Can you tell me a little bit about their arrival in Youngstown?
T – I can’t tell you about their arrival but I can tell you they were among the first Mexican families in Youngstown. There were other Mexican families that came later but they just, they didn’t all come at the same time, you know. Like the Berroterans. There were others, Aguilars, the Aguilars were related to Juan Aguilar that came, you know. Cousins or something. There were others that were called Herreras that also lived in Monkey’s Nest. There was another family called Nolascos, and had children my age, you know. And then, later on, other Mexican families came. Macias. But the Ramirezes, they came much later. But there was a group, I would say there must have been at least 20 families and they lived pretty close together in Monkey’s Nest. There were scattered families, like my family that lived on Superior Street. Nolascos lived on Oakland. There was another family, I’m trying to think of their last name that lived on Funston. But they were the only ones, you know.
E – And did you… were you born in Youngstown?
T – Yes. I was born in Youngstown, went to Jefferson Elementary, and then to Hayes Junior High and then to Rayen where I graduated in ’52.
E – Tell me a little bit about that Brier Hill neighborhood, about the makeup of it and what it was like when you were growing up.
T – Well, when you think of “Happy Days” where everybody’s going around singing songs and that, that’s basically what Brier Hill was like. It was one of those type of neighborhoods where you could walk for ten or fifteen blocks and nobody would bother you, you know. When you would go by different types of stores and businesses, you could… there was a movie house, the Fox Theater, St. Anne’s Church on Federal Street. But one of my fondest recollections was, usually on Saturday mornings, I would be sleeping on the upstairs floor and you could smell bread, fresh bread, being baked ten blocks away and those were the Italians that had the outdoor ovens and you could just smell this bread, you know. Which was unusual for us because, up until I was probably in elementary school and that, we basically ate Mexican food, tortillas, which my mother made fresh every day.
E – But the Brier Hill neighborhood you said did not have very many Mexicans living in that neighborhood so it was a conglomeration of ethnicities.
T – Right. I would say that the mixture of the neighborhood in there, the Mexicans were probably, well they were in the minority, you know.
E – Your father arrived in 1917 according to this information. Where was he from? How did he come? Who came with him?
T – Oh, that’s a good question. You’re going into genealogy which I’m not that sure of but from what I heard, from what I heard, he came from a state called Michoacan and he came from a family of ranchers. He was a rancher. From what I heard, his, it was either his father or grandfather, and I can’t authenticate this, but I understand that he had received a huge tract of land in that area and so he was… they had a hacienda there. And when I went to, when he took me to visit Mexico, he showed me parts of it but it was so large, we never saw all of it. Somewhere in the Spanish American War or the War of Independence with Mexico and that where the government took that land back, was probably what changed his life and, where he ended up having to come to the United States to make a living. And, but I’ve never explored that. That would be interesting.
E – So he came alone? Was he married at the time?
T – Yes, he was married. He came, when he first, from what I understand, when he first came here, he came through Texas and he worked as a rancher in Texas. And then, with my mother, and then from there, and I had a brother, my brother Frank was born in Texas. And then from there, he went to Colorado, where my sister Elizabeth was born. And then from there, he began his work on the railroad, and he came to Iowa and I have my second brother was born there, Fred. And I think my sister Mary was also born there. And then from Iowa, he came to Youngstown. And so my brother Lupe, my bro…my sister Rosie and myself were born here in Youngstown.
E – All together that’s seven children?
T – Yes. Four brothers, no there would be five of us. Eight, all together.
E – Did your parents speak English when they were in Youngstown?
T – No.
E – Either outside or inside the home?
T – No. My parents spoke very very little English, you know. They might be able to say things like “Pepsi-Cola, Coca-Cola,” or “coffee,” but other than that it was strictly Spanish, you know.
E – And, did your… so… how did they navigate their lives? Did the children serve as their interpreters?
T – Oh, absolutely, yeah. In fact, my mother, that I know of, other than going to the doctor, never left the house. But she knew, she knew what was going on in the Mexican community because the other Mexican women would visit the home, would visit our house. And they would have afternoon coffee or tea or whatever it was and relate the latest news. So she knew what was going on. She knew who was ill, who was well, you know, those type of things. And the same thing with my father, you know. He worked Monday through Friday, but he was always off on Saturday and Sunday, and it was not unusual that from 8 o’clock in the morning until the wee hours of the evening that someone would not be visiting the house and they would sit on the porch or in the kitchen drinking coffee or whatever, you know. And..
E – Did this group mostly come from say, the Monkey’s Nest or even further? Was there a community connection that extended beyond Youngstown?
T – There was nothing outside of Youngstown. There may have been, as new families came into Youngstown, there were some that may have settled on Poland Avenue, some may have settled… oh, you know, there may have been one that settled like in the, in the Girard-Youngstown area, the extreme west side of Youngstown. May have settled there, you know, but that was their extent. But they would migrate, you know, to Superior Street, and they would talk to my dad.
E – Did church play a central role to your family or to your parents? Was that…
T – No, church was never a big part of our life other than the fact that my father and my mother expected us to go to church, go to Catechism, that sort of thing and that. And there was a rule in our house that if you didn’t go to church, you couldn’t do anything social. (laughing) No movies, no play, no playing outside with your friends so church was always first, you know.
E – Let’s see. Did, how did, did you become involved with the Mexican Club?
T – Yes, well, my dad was one of the original founders of the Sociedad MutualistaMexicana. They used to have meetings at each other’s house on Sundays and so I knew about the meetings and you know, especially when the men came to our house. So as I grew up, I always wondered, you know, what the club was doing. And so, as I would drive my dad to the meetings, I was old enough and that so that I was asked to join and so I did. I joined and then I became active in the club.
E – What kinds of things did you do? What kind of role did you play in the club?
T – Well, when I first joined and that, I was strictly a listener. I was there because my dad was there, you know, but then I always wondered why the Mexican people were not showing off their culture. Why they did not show off some of the good foods and customs that they had and so I became more involved. And as I became more involved, I would call up friends like James Berroteran and his brothers, and Frankie Nolasco, so that they could be involved as well. And so that’s what we did. So we became, so the club became more youth oriented and that’s what we did. And then as we became involved, then we were trying to establish ourselves as a culture here in the Youngstown area. And that’s what we did, you know. We worked toward that end.
E – How did, did you invite non-Mexican…how did you spread the culture? What… did you have events?
T – Well, we always had the, the original club had always had a 16th of September dance and I think they may have had a Cinco de Mayo dance. That one I’m not sure of but I knew that they had the 16th of September. And they also had a picnic. The club would sponsor a picnic and they would go to places like Pleasant Valley, off of 90, you know, off of Belmont. And a couple other local places, and that, and they would invite all the Mexican people to come, you know. And so when we became active, the Berroterans and myself, and Frankie Nolasco and some others, we established the same thing. We wanted to have Mexican people get together and so that’s what we would do. And we would also have the dances. We reinstituted the dances because they had died off after a while, you know. And so, we did that. And then what we did is we made some long range plans that we would someday have a building of our own and so that’s what kind of motivated us. And then we got involved in the community. We got involved with the International Society that was down on Lincoln Avenue, learning how to speak English and be American. We did the Canfield Fair, the International booth at Canfield Fair. And then, there was some other things that we did, too, so instead of just having one picnic and that, we may have had two or three, you know. And then, as we got our own building and that, we started having monthly doings at the building, you know, letting everybody know that this was our address and this is where we existed. And then we started getting more ideas and more families joining which we didn’t know of before.
E – Did you sponsor or encourage families to go to the International Center to learn English? Was there any…
T – Well, we did that, plus the fact that we had, we did some of our own. We had people that, like the Ramirez family, who, gifted in the dance culture. Gloria, Carlos’s sister, knew all the ethnic dances and so we invited the children and anybody else that wanted to come to the club, at that time, you know, on Midland, to learn the dances and also to bring the music, and we did that.
E – You had mentioned that your father didn’t speak a lot about Mexico of his youth, so you were… what made you, what inspired you to really keep your culture going?
T – Well, he never, he never told us any personal things about Mexico, but I always felt that he, when he talked about himself, that he considered himself a visitor to the United States, and that his home was still Mexico. He never lost the feeling that Mexico was still his home, you know, and that he was just a visitor here. He never became a citizen probably because he couldn’t speak English, but he always, he just had that burning desire that Mexico was still his home.
E – And your mother felt the same way?
T – Oh yes, yes, yes. Even though, from what I understand from my sisters, my mother was not, other than the fact that she was born in Mexico and that, that she was not of pure blood, you know. I think my father was basically pure Spanish, you know. My mother was a combination of Spanish and French and she may have had a little bit of Indian in her, you know. But that’s just what my sister told me.
E – But your father was, he did take your family back to Mexico.
T – Yes, we went back when I was in the seventh or eighth grade. And we visited Mexico and I got the chance to see my aunt who was probably, you know it’s hard to tell people’s age, but I would say she was probably, at that time, in her seventies, you know, mid-seventies, still spry. The first thing I noticed about her was the fact that she was fairly tall, I would say, for a, and she was probably around 5’7” or 5’8” which I consider tall, very slender and still very active. She would get up early in the morning and, and water all her flowers in the front. The other thing that was amazing about her is the fact that, you know, she was widowed. She lived in this really nice brick home with her three daughters. She was, she rented out rooms to student engineers. There was a big railroad depot there in Irapuato. And she would rent out these rooms and then, she also had a couple maids which told me that she was not a commoner. (laughing) In fact, one of the things that happened while I was there was, I would go outside and there was a bunch of boys that were playing soccer just a half a block from where she lived. And so I would go out and see what they were doing because I was not familiar with soccer, you know. And after a while, they would invite me to kick the ball with them, which I did, you know. And after a few days of doing this, my dad kind of nonchalantly sent me to another city where my other cousin, Domil(?19:45:30), where the other cousins and he just said he wanted me to meet them. And unbeknownst to me, my sister later told me that my aunt had told me that I should not be playing with those, with those boys.
E – How were your language skills in Mexico? Did you, did you feel completely comfortable? The Mexican… the Spanish that was spoken in your home in Youngstown, were you perfectly comfortable when you went to Mexico?
T – Yes. In fact, I was surprised that with the limited language skills that we had at home, that other than a few words, a few phrases and that, they were not much different than they were in Mexico. In fact, while we were there, we met someone that had lived in Youngstown but had gone back to Mexico and he came to visit us while we were in Irapuato and he helped give us a tour of the city.
E – After you graduated from high school in Youngstown, what did you do next?
T – Well, I didn’t have much choice. After I graduated, naturally I was looking for a job and shortly after I got a job, maybe six months or so, I was drafted into the service. And so I went away for a couple of years in the service and that. Then when I came out from the service, I was eligible for the G.I. Bill and so, maybe within a year after I got out, I started at YSU. And I started in the evening while I was still working but I didn’t find that, I didn’t find that really enjoy… evening classes enjoyable. So I went a semester and then I dropped out a semester cause I was unhappy. But then I says, you know, college has to be more exciting than that so what I did is I made arrangements to go to school during the day and then work in the afternoon or evenings and that, and it made all the difference in the world.
E – Where were you working?
T – I was working in Republic Steel. I’d spent thirteen years there, you know.
E – What courses did you take at YSU? What was your major?
T – Okay, when I went to YSU, I had no idea about courses or anything like this. You also have to remember that even though I had four other brothers and three sisters, not one of them graduated from high school. So I had no one to really mentor me as to which way to go or what to do, what to take, because they hadn’t finished school neither, you know. So I was kind of on my own at that time. But I was kind of fortunate because I had good teachers and other people that kind of guided, guided you and put you in the right direction. So I became a business major, and I, and I, you know, I liked it. And the more I learned about the business field and that, the more passionate I got, you know. And so, after I graduated in 1965 from YSU, I had, I took some jobs in sales but I just didn’t see any future in sales and that and so I met people in education and that. And so, what they just said to me was, “you’ll find it more exciting if you go into education,” and that’s exactly what I did. And they were right. I did. Education is a very exciting field.