Four-part video homage on PAC recognizes Patricia & Renato Ramirez

By María Eugenia Guerra

Native Laredoan Dr. Neo Gutierrez, a Los Angeles educator, returns to his hometown every year just after Christmas, and he comes bearing gifts in the form of the documentaries he makes about Laredoans and other South Texans he believes have lived lives of service and merit in and out of the area.

The most recent series of 12 video vignettes has aired on Public Access TV, including a four-part homage to Zapata banker, rancher, and community activist Renato Ramirez and his wife, lifetime educator Patricia Lozano Ramirez.

What you will learn from the Renato and Patricia Ramirez story is that they have made the generous decision to share the wealth they have been fortunate enough to amass in banking, ranching, mineral income, and other investments. Last year they established the million dollar Renato and Patricia Ramirez Scholars endowment at Texas A&M International University .

Renato is the one-man dynamo who over 21 years has expanded the Zapata County branch of the International Bank of Commerce into one of the most visible and highly profitable of the bank's holdings. With five branches now open and five more in the works, Ramirez anticipates doubling IBC Zapata's $310 million in assets over the next five years.

“I have the goal that IBC Zapata will be a billion dollar bank by the time I'm 70 and they turn me out to pasture,” Renato said. “Actually, I guess I'll turn myself out. I'll know when it's time to go,” he quipped.

Ramirez has made sure that as the bank has grown over the last two decades, so has the bank's profile as a community supporter of events and efforts that benefit education and the youth of the area, including the Zapata County Fair and the purchase of youth livestock projects. Ramirez's good turn goes to kindness in the annual donation of those livestock projects to the Sacred Heart Orphanage in Laredo .

The most heartfelt of the video vignettes, which were shot on location by Rey Fuentes, is of Ramirez visiting with the children of Casa Hogar in Cd. Mier, the orphanage that he and IBC have adopted. Over seven years ago, Ramirez and volunteers from the bank began the work of the construction of a new kitchen, dining hall, classrooms, washateria, a covered play area outdoors, and a water reservoir equipped with hydraulic pumps. Those are the larger improvements. Other donations include commercial kitchen equipment and appliances to meet the needs of Casa Hogar, as well as playground equipment, bicycles, computers, clothing, a bus, and a Suburban. In this particular video segment, the children of Casa Hogar thank Ramirez on the day he has visited, and the camera has captured that there's not a dry eye in the place.

For those who have known Ramirez as the hardball-playing banker and the articulate fiscal watchdog of county government, or who have by choice or by chance been on the opposite side of the political chasm from him, the tears are as unexpected as the news that he recites poetry from memory in the sentiment-charged declamations of the work of Alberto Cortez and Juan Carlos Gil. Those declamations punctuate Neo Gutierrez's video story of Renato's life.

Never forgetting that membership in the Boys Club in Laredo had much bearing on his life, Ramirez worked relentlessly to engage other community leaders in establishing a Boys and Girls Club in Zapata. With IBC bank shares totaling over $400,000 from the bank and Ramirez, coupled with the generosity of the Lamar Bruni Vergara Trust, the club became a reality several years ago.

The club, however, needs a natatorium, Ramirez is quick to point out, and the $2.8 million project could be built in partnership with the school district, Zapata County , and Texas Parks and Wildlife.

Like Los Ebanos, the golf course Ramirez carved from the brush lands 20 years ago, he said the natatorium could have great utility for senior citizens and visiting snowbirds, school children, and athletes.

Cut to the fairway at Los Ebanos. Renato is wearing neither bank nor ranch clothes, but golf attire instead, and for a second you are taken aback because everyone knows he's too busy to play golf. Looking back, he said, no one even knew how to play golf, but the course just west of Hwy. 83 ended up becoming important to visitors and townspeople alike. “It's a very nice facility, run very tightly. It has never been a moneymaker, but it is enjoyed by locals, tourists, snowbirds, groups from the Valley and Nuevo Laredo, and students. The resident deer, birds, and other wildlife make it a unique setting,” he said, adding that the news that three Zapata athletes have been awarded college golf scholarships is ample proof that Los Ebanos serves the community. Twenty years after he built it, Ramirez himself has recently taken up golf and is now often found at Los Ebanos.

A family segment shot on Thanksgiving Day is filled with good natured banter and sparring between matriarch Patricia and Renato and their children Ricardo Xavier, Roberta Grisel, and Ruben Jaime. Patricia, recalling moments over her 40-year partnership with Renato, calls marriage “an act of faith.” Patricia and Renato have seven grandchildren -- Erica, Abigail, Kaitlin, Kristin, Kathryn, Hugo, and Dahlia.

A solo interview with Patricia tells of her love of Zapata and its small town ambience and the commitment she and Renato have made to ensure that Zapata continues to offer children educational and recreational venues and opportunities.

An earlier video segment of testimonials lauds Renato Ramirez's acumen not only as a banker but also as a former university educator. Among those who remember Ramirez are several of his former Laredo State University students who now work in finance, including Leonor Gutierrez, a financial officer at Sames Motor Company. “He was not only a professor, he was also a friend. He taught us there are no obstacles in life, only challenges. He was a real mentor to me,” Gutierrez said of Renato.

“Sometimes Renato's intellect has been misunderstood for various reasons and in various venues,” said Laredo National Bank auditor Conrado Hein, a native Zapatan. “Renato is a man who has a lot to offer. You can learn a lot from the man. He's a very hard worker. He's not afraid to get his hands dirty. He leads with purpose for something better, not only for himself and his family, but for all those around him. He has shared his fortune and in doing so has improved the lives of a lot of people.

“I respect him and cherish his friendship, and he knows he can count on me any time, any place. Folks ask me what I will do on a weekend. They are going fishing or skiing. I say I am going to play golf at Los Ebanos. I really look forward to that Friday night or that Saturday night, to sit across the table from Renato, drink a beer or two, and discuss a variety of subjects -- the world situation, the global economy, the state of our own economy, what happened at his ranch, and what happened on the golf course,” Hein concluded.

Some of the prettiest footage was shot on the Ramirez ranch and features Renato team roping (header), a sport he calls “the best exercise in the world for a 60-year-old.”

The next vignette, the last, is perhaps the most revealing. In a deer blind on a Zapata County ranch, with deer roaming behind him, Renato expounds on the importance of being competitive and where that has taken him in life. “I used to wrestle in college. As a 137-pounder I took on a 250-pound guy and I beat him. I'm going to go out and do the best thing I can do, and I would hope that is going to go forward to my children, my grandchildren, and my great grandchildren -- that I was a competitor. How else would a guy come from shining shoes in beer joints when he was 12 years old to where I am now being able to make a donation to Texas A&M International of a million dollars? It's because I have been so competitive that I have been so successful, and so I would hope that would inspire my offspring to be just as competitive whether roping or playing golf,” he said as the sun began to set in earnest across the brush lands, the shadows beyond the blind growing longer.

In the closing shots of Dr. Neo's videography, Renato Ramirez rides into the sunset, the hooves of his good horse raising a grainy filter of dust, a straight-backed unimposing man who knows history will remember him well.

- - - - - - -

Though I might have told the story without the tedium of a seated, in-studio Q & A session 50 miles from where the Ramirezes live large lives, and though I might have relied more on action footage on home turf, the homage was nonetheless well worth watching as an informative, heartfelt tribute from Dr. Neo Gutierrez to Renato and Patricia Ramirez.

Patricio Salinas co-edited the Ramirez documentary with Juan García, Public Access TV's technical director and editor. Among the other vignettes Dr. Gutierrez produced this Christmas were segments featuring Martin High School graduate Gus García, who was the first Hispanic mayor of Austin; Dallas educator Liz Gallego who was the 2004 Disney Fine Arts teacher of the year; and Houston dance instructor Rogelio Rodriguez. In previous years, Dr. Gutierrez has featured Carlos Landin, Noe Esparza, Estela Zamora Kramer, Bede Leyendecker, Edmundo Duarte, Sara Puig Laas, Armando Hinojosa, Dr. Norma Cantu, Johnnny Eng, Altagracia Azios García, and Ani Vera.

Dr. Gutierrez resides in Los Angeles.

María Eugenia Guerra