Remembering George Ramos

"You're always looking for inspiration and mentors,

and that's exactly what George Ramos turned out to be

for me."

-Josie Tizcareño Pereira, editor of Ahora Utah

"He was someone that I felt very comfortable trusting and visiting in his office, because he was a good person and because he was very grounded."

-Sara Wright, former student

"He had a real passion. He just really believed in what we're teaching here."

-Tess Serna, administrative systems coordinator for the Cal Poly Journalism Department

The lives he touched:

Remembering George Ramos

teacher, mentor, journalist and friend

George Ramos's Legacy:

Gerry Autry, Mr. Ramos's army buddy

Josie Tizcareño Pereira

"I don't know of another member of the journalism department that loved it more than he."

-Linda Halisky

"I think courage plays a big role, and that's what this

guy had."

-Josie Tizcareño Pereira

"“He was boisterous and opinionated and a champion of the underdog.”

- Linda Halisky, dean of Cal Poly's College of Liberal Arts

“He was 100% a newspaper reporter. He didn’t aspire to be anything more or anything less than that. He had so many other accomplishments, but his pride was in reporting. And I think that that’s the legacy he’s left.”

-Tess Serna

Family, friends, students, and the journalism community mourn the loss of George Ramos, Cal Poly professor and pulitzer prize winning journalist.

The autopsy revealed that Ramos died of a heart attack. He was found in his home by his CalCoast News co-worker, Karen Velie, and local law enforcement authorities. According the to autopsy, Ramos had likely been dead for about 7 days.

A memorial service will be held on Saturday, August 6, at the Veteran's Memorial building in Morro Bay, located at 209 Surf Street. The service will last from 1 pm to 4 pm. The public is invited to attend.

Cal Poly students and faculty will also honor Ramos with a memorial tribute. The tribute will take place in the fall when students return to the campus. More details about this memorial will emerge as plans solidfy.

“He didn’t just write with his head; he wrote with his heart.”

-Linda Halisky

You will be missed.

“I think probably the thing that hit me most was that he cared. He cared about society. He cared about people. He cared about causes, and he was willing to take some stands.”

-Gerry Autry

“George had previously worked at the school paper, and when he checked into the commanding unit, the first thing that the commanding officer did was kind of appoint him as an informal public information officer. He was a real unauthorized one, but the colonel saw George as kind of a good way to promote his career. So he had George writing articles about the unit and that kind of stuff.”

“George went to Vietnam before I did. While he was in Vietnam, George was writing, and because he was a writer, he was writing five, six, seven page letters. I’d write three lines back his direction. And suddenly his letters stopped. I assumed he’d been killed. Well, it turned out what happened is he’d been wounded, and then he got ‘Dear John-ed’ at the same time, so while he was in the hospital, he got ‘Dear John-ed.’ So he was pretty depressed, and he just stopped writing. “

“I think that his greatest legacy will be as a teacher and as a mentor – almost as a friend to young people.”

-Frank Sotomayor

“I assumed George was dead, and a few years later, I’d come back. And I had gone to school again, working on my master’s degree. George had gone to work for the San Diego Union, and they sent him up to Montreal to get ready for the Montreal Olympics. And my assumption, like I said, was that George was dead. And I’m sent up by my company to do some training, and I’m walking across the hotel, across the lobby. And I hear this long-haired hippie going, ‘Gerry?’ And it was George.”

“So we reconnected then, lost connection. I don’t remember the exact scenario, but somehow we lost connection again. And a number of years back, there was an airliner over San Diego. It was hit in the cockpit, and George was given the responsibility by the San Diego Union of getting permission to publish a picture that had been taken. The picture had been taken by a guy on his honeymoon. And he was down in San Diego for the first part of his honeymoon, and then he was coming up to the Seattle area for the second part of his honeymoon. And George got the telephone number for where he was going, and it happened to be my roommate’s telephone number.So I’m sitting there, knowing George wasn’t dead this time but having lost contact, and I get this telephone call. ‘Hi, my name’s George Ramos from the San Diego Union.’ So two really like miracle things back to back. “

“I met him when I was in my last year at Cal Poly, a journalism major. I was there in 1997. That was my last year, and that’s when Dr. Havandjian was the head of the journalism department. He told me, ‘Josie, you have to go to this NHJ convention. You have to be a member. There’s somebody you need to meet over there who’s sponsoring you.’ And I’m like, ‘Really? Oh my gosh. How can this be? I thought it was such a big thing that he would sponsor me just because I was a Latino student.”

George Ramos gave Josie a $500 grant that covered nearly all of the convention's expenses.

“When I did thank George Ramos, you know, he’s that kind of a guy that he didn’t really say, ‘Oh yeah, I did it.’ He was kind of shy to say it. I remember him just saying, ‘Well you know, this is what it’s all about. We are here just supporting anybody who is willing to move on and to join the field.’”

“With time, I would go to other conventions, and I did see him again. I remember seeing him the year of 1998. That was the next convention that I went to. I remember he would just introduce me to people I wouldn’t expect to meet, you know? Like this national anchor with Univision…and he was just like ‘Josie, come with me.’ He was just like, ‘Hey, this is what it’s all about. Let’s get into it.’”

"When I saw him last June, in Orlando, that was the last time, and it’s really sad for me to think of it that way. But I did have a precious moment talking with him in the hallway, and I remember telling him, ‘This is one of the best conventions that I’ve been to, and I know that I owe you a lot things, George. But you need to know that I’m going to be in this panel.’ It was my first time ever that I’ve been invited to a panel, and I thought it was kind of neat. And I told him, ‘If you want, you should come.’ I really wanted him to go, you know? Because I really wanted his input and his participation in it, and he sat in that panel for the whole time. I felt very special that he was there listening.”

"The issue was a very hot one. It was about journalism ethics…George Ramos at the end of this panel told me, ‘Josie, you know, you really got me interested.’ And for him to tell me that, that was kind of like the most amazing thing he could have told me, because if I can get George Ramos interested in something, then it must be good, right? And he said, ‘This is a very important issue. Hopefully you will continue with it. Let me know what you need, and if I can help you, I’m here.’ So that’s the kind of George Ramos that all of us know. George Ramos was willing to give everything he can, and that’s what I’m really going to miss.”

“By that time, I was starting to work in housing projects in the inner city, and I remember going to visit George one time. And he took me to the Mexican restaurant, but he also took me to the neighborhood where he had been brought up. And having worked in the inner city for 5 years, I wouldn’t even get out the door. I mean, it was a pretty scary neighborhood, and yet this was a place George seemed to be pretty comfortable with. Here I’ve been working for years in housing projects. That place was beyond what I was used to.”

“George also shared about, I guess he’d been nominated for a Pulitzer but didn’t get it while he was down in San Diego. It was for actually going across the border and then sneaking back across illegally, trying to get caught by the border patrol, and when he snuck across the border the first half a dozen times, they didn’t catch him. But sooner or later, they did catch him, and they were busy doing the rubber hose routine on him. And he looks up and he goes from speaking gutter Spanish to suddenly look up and in broad English say, ‘My name is George Ramos. I’m with the San Diego Union, and my editor knows where I am.’ And he figured he had to drop the editor’s name or else he figured he’d have ended up in a ditch somewhere dead. Again, the guy’s got a lot of nerve. He’s got a lot of nerve.”

“Now, for some reason the guy came up in a conversation. You know, he’s part of who I am, so he came up in a conversation. And somebody said, ‘Hey, Gerry, you need to look him up again.’ So I had actually gone on Facebook only to discover that he died. I was trying to reconnect a third time, but this time it didn’t work. That was a shock to me. What’s the chance that a guy living in Seattle and a guy living in San Diego are going to meet in a hotel lobby in Canada? Not much. Or out of all the homes in the Seattle area, he’s going to specifically call the home that I’m living in. It makes you think about a higher power, sometimes. ”

“From what I remember, George definitely cared. George cared for people. He cared for causes, and he was willing to invest in those things. His life definitely stood for something.”

Frank Sotomayor, co-editor of the LA Times Latino series

"He called himself a native son. He called himself a kid from East LA."

“He was threatened by a man who had a gun (during the LA riots.) When George went outside, outside the LA Times, rioters were breaking windows at the LA Times. He went down there to report it. And he had his notebook, and he was taking down notes of what was going on. And a man came up to him with a gun and pointed it at George, and George kept on working and said, ‘I don’t know what you’re going to do, but I’m doing my job.’ And he said, ‘I’m a reporter, and I’m doing my job.’ So the man looked at him for a while, and then he kind of flung a rock at the Times and went on. So as I said, George was very focused.”

“...I remember him always saying, ‘It is what it is.’ He was very philosophical about it. He’d work very hard. He’d try to do the best, but then at the end of the day, he’d say, ‘It is what it is.’ And I think he’d tell students, ‘Well, if you made an error, that’s okay. Learn from it, and there’s another day tomorrow. Come back and do even better.’”