'El Jefe' guides Latinos to the American dream - consejero para el desarrollo universitario, Martin Ortiz - TT: 'The Boss' guides Latinos to the American dream - TA: counselor for college study, Martin Ortiz

One of the golden virtues of the American way-of-life which can open doors of opportunity to the American Dream -- is access to higher education -- obtaining a college degree. But young Latinos who believe that college is beyond their reach just haven't met Martin Ortiz. He is the inspiration and the guiding force behind many thousands of Latino youth who have achieved this goal.

For the past 26 years, Ortiz has been director of the Center for Mexican American Affairs at Whittier College in Southern California. When he graduated from that University back in 1948, he was the only Latino to receive a diploma. The situation is quite different today -- Whittier takes pride in the fact that some 34 percent of the student body is Latino -- 94 percent of whom are in college on scholarships.

Today, Ortiz, long considered by educators the nation's father of minority student programs, is the college's first Latino namesake of a multimillion-dollar-scholarship endowment for Latinos.

"Don't just cry, qualify" is an Ortiz original. He motivates, inspires, and guides the students to work hard, find scholarships, arrange tutors, secure jobs and empower themselves by completing their college educations. It is interesting to note that 94 percent of those students that Ortiz has worked with -- are the first generation college students in their families.

By his personal touch, his chivalrous and charismatic way with people, he recently lured 700 Latino students and their parents to Whittier College for an afternoon meeting and reception. It is the parents and kids whom Martin Ortiz, himself a humble and shy man, is quick to praise for the college students in their midst. But on the campus, his leadership and influence have earned him deserved respect as a Whittier College elder known as 'El Jefe' (the boss).

Through the decades, in his low-key but persuasive style, Ortiz tells parents who never finished high school themselves, who never considered higher education, to change history by giving their kids a shot at the American Dream. He reassures Latinos that attending college, instead of working full time to help their families, is the right thing to do. And he manages to alleviate fears about fitting in at the Whittier campus, where white students are in the majority.

And he speaks from experience.

His own father never encouraged education because he never went to school.

"Not even for one day", Ortiz says. Tirso Ortiz rode with Pancho Villa during the Mexican Revolution and later immigrated to the United States, settling in Wichita, Kansas. Martin was born in a Wichita barrio called El Huarache, and grew up in poverty. His mother died when Martin was only 4 years old, and although his father later remarried, he says he never bonded with his stepmother. There were too many children, he recalls. The oldest of 12, he worked whenever he could to help as he was growing up.

Although he could not speak English, he understood enough of the language to love school -- until the eighth grade. A heartless teacher taunted him about his inability to speak English, and pinned a note on him which said "retarded". Although the youngster at the time did not know what the word meant, it was an ordeal that fired a resolve within him "to never let that happen to anyone again" and to dedicate his career to creating proper learning opportunities for Latinos.

Destiny must have played a part in bringing this gentleman to a place where he could touch many lives, and where he could fulfill his resolve and help tear down the barriers that keep many Latinos from going to college.

When he counsels students, it is not uncommon that there might be a personal conflict in the young person's life which could easily deter him or her from getting an education. School dropouts among Hispanic students are disproportunately high.

In such conferences, Ortiz might surely be able to advise from a point of identification, since he himself made a brief escape from school at the age of 13.

Frustrated and pressured by discrimination in school and alienation at home, he and two friends went to the local railroad yard and caught the first freight train headed for Kansas City.

"We became hobos for 3 1/2 years," Ortiz recalls. He remembers jumping aboard boxcars filled with two or three families, riding atop and underneath cars, and even getting locked inside a boxcar for days at a time.

"I was on the move, but I didn't beg or steal," Ortiz (whose nickname at that time was Wichita) says of those runaway days. He worked on a sugar beet farm, gathered potatoes, picked cotton, harvested apples, slept in railroad jungles, heated food in tin cans over campfires, and learned to speak English. He admits that in those days he had no "direction" -- I went wherever the tracks took me with no destination in mind."

At age 16, tired of living a useless life, and with a more mature attitude, Martin returned home and enrolled in high school, one of three Latinos. In his senior year, he became the school's first Latino student council president.

Still, he never planned to attend college, and worked at the local Safeway Market, sacking groceries.

How Ortiz got to college is a story worth repeating.

It seems that one morning, some Anglo friends who felt that he was college material, routed him out of bed and out of his mundane existence, and took him to a Quaker-run school, Friends University, with the words "You're going to college."

They not only provided him with a proper shirt for the occasion, but they dipped into their own pockets -- and came up with Ortiz's $200 tuition. In addition, these remarkable young men later tutored Ortiz themselves.

"What those fellows did for me is what I have been doing all these years at Whittier College," Ortiz gratefully acknowledges. "Nurturing the minds of young people with potential.

In his own experience, Martin put in one semester at Friends, then signed up with the Marines in 1942, serving in the South Pacific as an aerologist and language specialist. After World War 11, he enrolled at Whittier because it offered a YMCA management program.

"Back in college, I kept to my own and in my own place because it was more comfortable to do that," he recalls. Ms skin color, his last name, his sack lunches of tacos or whatever, he says, kept him from being accepted by other students.

The town itself had its prejudice in those days, and no barber would touch his head, no restaurant would give him a table, no landlord would rent an apartment to Ortiz and his young Cuban-born bride. So, the couple lived in veterans housing near City Hall and persevered.

Upon graduation, the couple moved to Chicago, where Ortiz got his master's degree in sociology from George Williams College. He also at that time founded the city's Mexican-American Council and taught Spanish at a YMCA.

His young wife, Maria, was found to have a brain tumor, and after two operations, she lapsed into a coma which lasted for several years, after which in time she died. She was only 26 at the time of her demise.

In 1970, two years after returning to Whittier to teach Chicano studies, Ortiz, then 49, became the founding director of the college's Center for Mexican American Affairs. At that time, the school's enrollment was a mere 5.5 percent Latino. Five years later, it reached 16 percent. This year, 34 percent of the student enrollment is Latino.

Ever mindful of the helping hand which was extended to him by some of his friends to enroll in college -- Ortiz makes a labor of love of his life's work.

James Ash, president of Whittier College, says "Mr. Ortiz has generated enormous respect both at Whittier College and across the country for his work. He is an amazing man -- very modest, but a real giant in the education field.

Indeed, this dedicated man full well understands that although a young man or woman may exhibit potential for achieving more in his life, he may never go through the door of opportunity unless someone opens it for him, and perhaps shows him the way and guides him through it. It worked for Martin Ortiz, and now he has made it work for thousands of promising young Latinos.

The Whittier College president put it so aptly, when he said, "Ortiz is a man whose work is the glorious fulfillment of his hopes and dreams."

He has certainly created a network that empowers students. And he has also forged lifelong friendships in the process. Ortiz remarried in 1980. He and his wife Linda, a bilingual kindergarten teacher, share a home in La Habra with various dogs and cats. During relaxation time, he may be found working in his rose garden, reading one of five newspapers or reliving his long-ago hobo years, by attending an occasional meeting of the National Hobo Association. When he is not deeply enmeshed in work at the Center, he may be found serving on commissions, committees, and boards across Southern California. He is also involved in writing a book about his father, Tirso, Ortiz, and his adventures with Pancho Villa during the Mexican Revolution.

When asked if he has any children, his answer is, "Well, this year I have 464.

COPYRIGHT 1997 Hispanic Times Enterprises
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group