Time to discover the learning and growing of family life.

I was born in Laredo in 1961, to Rosalio and Berta. I graduated from Raymond and Tirza Martin High with the class of 1979, went on to Laredo Junior College, and sat in on theology classes at St. Mary's University because I wanted to understand what I was teaching. Then I went to work at Dr. Joaquin G. Cigarroa Middle School and taught music and choir there for more than thirty two years.

Raquel and I raised eight children. Seven of them graduated from Dr. Leo G. Cigarroa High School. One of our girls is in heaven. The rest are a graphic artist, a teacher and coach who left the classroom to become a registered nurse, a youth minister and religion teacher who also cares for my parents, a musician with his own Ricky Ram Band, and three who are still in school at Del Mar, at TAMIU, and in medical assisting. Raquel died on March 28, 2019.

Somewhere in all those years of teaching I noticed something. The parents wanted to help their children. They just had not been given the words.

So in the spring of 2014 I started writing sessions for them. I wrote fifty two for the district. Today there are more than a hundred. I have delivered more than a hundred and eighty of them, in person and on a screen, in English and in Spanish, to more than ten thousand parents and neighbors. The State of Texas recognised the curriculum. I have presented it in Austin, Edinburg, Mercedes, Frisco and San Marcos, but the room I care about most is still a cafeteria in Laredo on a weeknight.

I have been a catechist for over forty years. I teach Confirmation, I train other catechists through the Diocese of Laredo Pastoral Institute, and I serve the Knights of Columbus as State Council Growth South Hispanic Development Chairman. In 2012 the Knights named our family Family of the Year for the State of Texas.

In 2022 the City of Laredo put our names on a building. The Santo Niño WIC Clinic is now the Carlos René and Raquel G. Ramírez WIC Clinic and Health Center. I still have not found the words for that one.