Autobiography - The Galindo Group

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Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 170 In Antofagasta, the Chilean port of our destination, my father put the whole clan up in a little waterfront inn. I followed my cousins, most of them older than me, in exploring everything on the rocky ocean shore. I looked at everything, from the fishermen’s nets to a pelican’s bill, discovering creatures I would never have dreamed existed. It was the first time I smelled the pungent odor of clams and seaweed and felt the salty sea-spray off the rocks. On the rocky shores I saw little monsters scampering about that turned out to be crabs and mollusks and had nightmares at night. In vengeance I started to chase them the next day. At the beach, I waded in the ocean and resisting the waning surge of the waves that crashed on rows of white-capped walls of water I felt shifting sand under my feet. It was a little scary but I loved it. Not to my liking, I tasted fresh fish in the restaurant. For the first time I met people who talked with a different accent. It was a true trip of discovery. In early 1952, when Dad was in charge of building a railroad through the jungle from Brazil to Bolivia, he took us by plane to a beachfront hotel on the world famous Copacabana Beach, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. There we stayed for a whole month, and my brothers and I really had fun in the surf. I believe that my serious love affair with the ocean started then. We also spent part of that summer in Corumba, Brazil, a town on the Paraguay River that marks the border between Bolivia and Brazil. It was the railroad’s headquarters and Dad’s base of operations. The main pastime was piranha fishing but we also did some learning. Dad took us to see a nearby steel smelter, the first industrial installation I had ever seen. Air conditioning was unknown in Corumba, but life for we children was enjoyable despite the fact that most of the year the heat and humidity there make Houston in the summer feel like spring in New England. On another occasion in 1954, we went to the Pacific port of Arica, as a reception committee for my sister Toqui who was returning by ship with my father after attending prep school in Pennsylvania. Although my parents believed correctly that traveling opened up the world to us, I now think that the main lesson we learned was the dedicated filial love that they had for their children. They shared everything they could in the most exemplary way, establishing a pattern of generosity that we would all follow with our own families in our adult lives. We formed our characters on their image and passed them on to our own children. Another environment that without a doubt was very instrumental in forming my character was the school I attended. As I mentioned in Chapter 2 of this book, I went through the complete cycles of elementary and secondary education in a Catholic school operated by the LaSalle Christian Brothers of Spain. It was a boys-only school that excelled in the quality of its graduates. We learned stuff that, unbeknown to me at the time, was of college level, as I discovered at Villanova University. We didn’t have labs or fancy textbooks but we took ample notes and were given a lot of homework, which we did. Anyone who consistently did not do homework was kicked out. Autobiography.doc 170 of 239
Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 171 As I stated before, athletics were not an important part of our training, but there were other activities encouraged by the system. The school had a marching band and I played the drums at the frequent civic parades we were obligated to attend. We were expected to visit the chapel daily and were forced to go to Sunday mass, lest we go straight to hell. Probably because the school was not free and those who attended had parents who made sure their children got their money’s worth, and also because nonachievers were expelled, by and large the quality of kids was of superior grade, and the brothers made us compete fiercely for the top honors. I hovered among the top five out of a class of fewer than 50. My brother Chris was the perennial first of his class, so we appeared to be smart, but in fact I don’t think we were above the norm. We did have a father who made us do all the homework, helping us as necessary. My parents hammered into us the importance of choosing the right friends, for they said that those around us ultimately define our character. How right they were and how thankful I am for that zealously enforced counsel! Given the remoteness and inaccessibility of Cochabamba, it is remarkable that among the school graduates with whom I am still acquainted, so many have succeeded. To make the point of my little school’s contribution to America I can name a few who have added their grain of sand to our pyramid of progress. Ray Rivero achieved the highest levels of corporate America in the oil business at Atlantic Richfield and Occidental Petroleum. So did David Benadoff at Tenneco Oil and Fernando Soria at Warner Lambert. Jaime Pero, after developing the international business branch for Boyle Engineering from California, built up his own coal exporting business in Chicago and is now a real estate entrepreneur in that city. Gaston Schwartz, J. Carlos Ramirez and Carlos Mitre have famous medical offices in Canada, Spain and various states of the Union. Juan Carlos d’Avis rose up to chief surgeon of Walter Reed hospital in Bethesda, MD. My own brother Chris runs an engineering practice in Texas with such a reputation that he selects his clients rather than the other way around. My youngest brother Chuso, as the intellectual author, creator of its charter and spokesman for the political party Alianza Democratica Nacional (ADN), was elected vice president of Bolivia in 1985. He unsuccessfully ran for the presidency in 1997, after being a member of the Bolivian House of Representatives and a Senator in the intervening years. Based in Tokyo, he is currently Bolivia’s ambassador to the Pacific Rim countries. The little Cochabamba LaSalle School, with graduating classes of fewer than fifty, indeed made a few sand-grain contributions to the greatness of America and the improvement of the world. Clearly the virtues learned at that small nucleus were well applied in the outlying sphere. ---043--- Autobiography.doc 171 of 239
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Bernard Bailyn, THE IDEOLOGICAL ORI
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George Fuermann, HOUSTON LAND OF TH
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Council for Natural Cooperation in
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Autobiography - The Galindo Group

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