Appreciation for the People Who Inspire Us to Be

To be… more of the YOU that you aspire to be. There are people who leave marks on your heart. They imprint on you. Move you. Shape you. Shift how you think/feel about the world. Role Models. Guardian Angels. Co-conspirators. Champions. Friends. Family. When I began working on the CU Boulder campus, I had the joy of meeting Teresa & Victor Hernandez. Something to know about them is that their family is a legacy on campus, known for advocating for underrepresented students and people, and they are a heart of the community. When asked “Who inspires you to build consciousness, awareness and participatory engagement around justice and equity in the world?,” they shared their mothers Cruz Nira Hernández and Cleopatra Marie Estrada Jaramillo, two women who passed away within a year of each other. Today, I invite us to appreciate even further back into our collective histories. They people we know. The people they know. A reminder to let this work be in service of the people and principles that matter to the people we’ve been shaped by and they have been shaped by. Whatever we are up to in life, and our personal growing and learning path, is a long term journey, an evolving discovery. In my opinion, we are lucky we get to be shaped by many people and influences, and to have new opportunities daily to be building relationships in our community, that uplift us and expanding our perspectives on connection, love and justice. I hold thanks for the people who have come before us and the people who held them up; may we continue to pave pathways for ourselves, each other and those who come after us.

CRUZ NIRA HERNÁNDEZ

May 8, 1953 – March 5, 2018

Cruz Nira Hernández was a first generation college student whose roots began as a migrant field worker and later as an established top rated teacher, a trainer of teachers, for 25 years. Cruz received the Teacher of the Year award while working with the Ricardo Flores Magon Academy in Denver’s Northside. In her nomination for the award, her school leader stated that “although Cruz has been in education long enough to be considered a master, part of what makes her truly masterful is her desire to continually get better at what she does. She is engaged in pulling in new learning and practices to support her students’ learning and always holds the highest expectations for them.” Cruz was a bilingual/bicultural linguistics expert who was dedicated to ensuring that her students were able to retain and uplift their bilingual and bicultural roots. As such, she committed to integrating Spanish and Mexican/Mexican American/Latino/a cultural interconnectedness in her lesson plans. Cruz was currently teaching 3rdgrade at Hanson Elementary in Commerce City. Cruz was also a spiritual leader and educator whose spiritual home was with Our Lady of Guadalupe community also in Denver’s Northside. She taught classes with children at the church, committed to her community meetings and gatherings, and regularly volunteered with the church. Cruz was born and raised in Greeley Colorado on May 8, 1953. She was married to her husband, Severo, for 42 years and has three sons, a daughter-in-law, and eight grandchildren. She passed away on March 5, 2018.

CLEOPATRA MARIE ESTRADA JARAMILLO

November 2, 1951 – February 23, 2017

Cleopatra Marie Estrada Jaramillo, for over 40 years, served in many professional roles for students of color and underrepresented students on campus via the initial Educational Opportunity Programs (EOP) into their current iterations. She was a CU Boulder alumnae and was one of the campus’s first EOP students (1969), having arrived during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. Cleopatra was born and raised in the San Luis Valley in Center, Colorado and worked as a youth migrant farm worker alongside her family and extended family. At CU Boulder, she was an active member of the United Mexican American Students (UMAS), and went from being their work-study secretary to becoming a professional counselor with the UMAS-EOP program, whose mission was to recruit and retain Chicana/o students to the university. In the Fall of 2014, the Women’s Resource Center (now called the Center for Inclusion & Social Change) instituted a scholarship in her name, the Cleopatra Estrada Jaramillo Activist Legacy Scholarship. She has two daughters, a son-in-law, four grandchildren, and seven siblings in total. She passed away on February 23, 2017.