Remembering Pancho (Posted 10/21/2009 02:16 pm)
To the editor:
Francisco “Pancho” Ramirez lived a quiet life. He labored and expected little from the world surrounding him beyond fair pay for his work. Pancho loved his family and provided for them the best he could. But Pancho found his escape from his harsh existence in a bottle, and this led to his illness.

Pancho died this week, and will labor no more. At Mass, the priest recited and the gatherers responded in Spanish, quietly mumbling words they have heard their entire lives, signing the cross, heads bowed.   

Few words were spoken at graveside by the rather large gathering of brown faces. A Mariachi band played and sang quiet music, on and on. An English-speaking friend told me that the band was expensive for the family, but the music was traditional and reassuring, and gave them hope. Symbolic sprinkling of fine soil upon the casket, tears, hugs, and more Mariachi music followed.

Laborers, eyes respectfully downcast, placed the casket upon a frame and lowered it into the earth as the mourners watched. A backhoe came and placed a bucket of fine earth gently into the grave, and the music played on. 

The laborers continued their work as the band continued theirs. More earth was needed, and the backhoe purred away to a distant location and eventually returned with another bucketful. Still the band played; the mourners quietly and reverently chatted among themselves. 

Perhaps an unspoken comment on the work ethic of their culture, no one left until the task was completed and Pancho placed into his final rest in the earth. Curiously, his grave is just across busy Sylvania Avenue from the home he made for his family, in clear view of his widow’s front door.

You don’t know Pancho, but you’ve seen him every day, alongside the roadway in hard hat and safety vest, toiling away quietly. His life is hard, but he will not ask for your sympathy for his plight. He will not expect charity and would not accept it if offered. He is proud that his labor takes care of his family, which is most of what is important to him. He will hope that his children will do better than he has and will care for him when he needs it.

I felt the need to eulogize Pancho, but my English would not be understood by many of his mourners, some of whom had traveled from homes in Mexico. But I think the best statement, unspoken, was made by the mourners themselves, who left their work, unpaid, to come and remember him in numbers greater than I have seen assembled for rich and powerful men. Tomorrow they will return to their work at jobs no one wants, quiet and unassuming, laboring and serving, cleaning, mowing, and hoping that their children can do better.
Dan McClendon

Burleson

via e-mail