Last Saturday, about 150 people gathered in and around the house at the corner of East Avenue and Tulipan Street in Southmost to help Teodoro Ramirez, a retired gardener, celebrate his 100th birthday.
Ramirez and his wife Francisca got married in 1944 and have lived in Brownsville since 1956. They have 16 children, 49 grandchildren, 88 great grandchildren and 20 great-great grandchildren and counting, so any type of family gathering can get a little crowded.
Most of the children, six boys and 10 girls, live in Brownsville or Los Fresnos, with a few in Austin, granddaughter Corina De La Garza said.
Many of the children were born in the Salinas, California, area, where the family migrated until 1975 to plant and harvest strawberries.
They were involved alongside union organizer Cesar Chavez in the struggle to establish the United Farm Workers union and lived in a small house in Campo 21. Some of the children and Ramirez himself were arrested in the struggle to win farm worker rights, De La Garza said.
A picture of Ramirez as a young man standing with Cesar Chavez hangs on one wall. Taking the photo down to have their picture taken with it, Teodoro and Francisca sat on a couch and talked with evident tenderness, apparently reminiscing about those days.
Both are in good health, although Franccisca uses a walker.
Julian Ramirez, 52, their youngest son, who they adopted and who the family knows as the “youngest son/oldest grandson,” provided details on the family’s trajectory on speaker phone.
“They were migrant workers and they would travel to California, and he was actually involved with the United Farm Workers. I traveled as a child. I didn’t work because I was too young, but I did travel for a few years toward the end of their time when they were migrant workers. That ended in about 1975,” he said.
Ramirez and his youngest son remembered a peaceful, more tranquil Brownsville.
“My biggest memory is the fact it wasn’t as populated and we would hunt and ride around on our bikes. From the point of Morningside Road on, Southmost Road used to be a dirt road, so we lived a good childhood back then because it was less populated and we could run around and be kids. That’s my memory of growing up in the Southmost area,” Julian Ramirez said.
De La Garza said COVID has taken a toll on her grandfather.
“He doesn’t remember that well any more because he got COVID two years ago. It affected his memory a lot. So before that he knew everything and now sometimes he’ll forget, like what he did yesterday, 30 minutes ago, he’ll forget. He knew everything, everybody’s birthday, what day it was, but when he got COVID that affected his memory,” she said.
“He ended up in the hospital, like three days. He got it in 2021, the end of January. He didn’t want to go to the hospital… but he had to. He got sick, and thank God we still have him because when he came back, it wasn’t him. His memory wasn’t the same,” she said.
“Up to when he had COVID, he would go by himself to H-E-B and go bring groceries… Or he would go to the bank, to Wells Fargo on Southmost, and he would walk by himself, so he was fine. But he got COVID. Family members alternate, they come and take care of him and stuff, so we we help out.”
Julian Ramirez added that his father “still has the balance to walk on his own. He bathes himself, things of that nature. He’s doing well for his age no doubt.”
The family always gathers on the big holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas. New Year’s, Easter, at Tulipan and East Avenue
“As the family has gotten larger and larger, we all have different schedules and it’s kind of hard to get everybody together but we do manage to get 60, 70, 80 people here sometimes. But for his 100th birthday I think there was about 150 people. …About three different commissioners from the City of Brownsville showed up to congratulate him. It was pretty nice of them to take some time away from their busy day to congratulate him,” he said.
These days Teodoro Ramirez often spends time sitting on a couch at the front of the garage, watching the cars go by on East Avenue.
Behind him a sign on the wall says “La Casa de Abuelito y Abuelita — Donde los Primos se vuelven mejores amigos,” meaning Grandpa and Grandma’s house, where cousins become best friends.
