Editor’s note: The Caprock Chronicles edited by Jack Becker, today’s column is more of a personal memory of Scott Sosebee than an official article. Sosby Cavazos personally knew and also admired him as the true “Trailblazer of Texas”. Cavazos died on March 15 at his home in Concord, Massachusetts.
The most prevalent patriotic slogan within the United States is that our nation allows anyone to become what he wants, or to rise to the heights of wealth, fame, prestige, or perhaps all three of them through hard work and perseverance.
Such is the case with Lauro F. Cavazos Jr. The son of a worker at the legendary King Ranch to be president of the Greater Texas University and then the first Latino to serve in the presidential cabinet.
Cavazos was born at King Ranch in South Texas in January 1927. His initial education came at a school for Latino students on the farm, but a change occurred when his parents moved to neighboring Kingsville expressly for the purpose of making sure their children received a proper education.
Texas Tech Pioneer: Former University President, Cabinet Secretary Loro Cavazos dies at 95
Cavazos’ mother, Tomasa Quintanilla Cavazos, purposely enrolled her five school-age children in the “white” school rather than the separate “Mexican” campus. When she was told she “couldn’t do that,” she sat in the principal’s office until he relented. Her children became the first students of Mexican descent at the previously segregated school. This wouldn’t be the first barrier Lauro Cavazos has broken through.
After graduating from high school, Cavazos joined the army. After his heels ended, he returned to Kingsville and told his father that he intended to become a commercial fisherman.
It so happened that the two were driving through the campus of Texas A&I University (now Texas A&M-Kingsville) when the unveiling was made. His father looked at him sternly, pointed at the college, and said, “Tomorrow morning you will be joining it.”
Punishing, the young Cavazos did just that. He became a journalism major at A&I, but while there he discovered that he loved science. He moved to Texas Tech University, whose campus in Lubbock was as far from Kingsville as he could get and still in Lone Star State. He graduated from Texas Tech in 1949 with a degree in zoology and then a master’s in cytology.
He then traveled to Ames, Iowa, where he received his Ph.D. He received his Ph.D. in physiology from Iowa State University in 1954. That same year he married Peggy Murdock, a native of Littlefield. The couple had ten children.
The young couple moved to Richmond, Virginia, where Cavazos taught physiology and anatomy at Virginia Medical School (now part of Virginia Commonwealth University). He stayed there for nine years before taking a position at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, where they enjoyed living. He became dean of the medical school in 1975 and held that position until 1980, when he and Peggy decided to “come home.”
Lauro F. Cavazos took over as president of Texas Tech University in 1980, becoming the first Hispanic president of Texas Tech and the first alumnus of the university to hold the position. He pursued Texas Tech Cavazos not only because of his connection to the university, but because of his desire to find more minority students and to promote and strengthen the Texas Medical Technical School, founded in 1969.
Cavazos came to Texas Tech during an important transition period. Texas Tech, like many institutions of higher education in the 1970s, was growing in student population, but Tech wanted to enhance its academic reputation as well as increase student enrollment, especially in underrepresented groups.
Cavazos will serve as TTU President until 1988 and will achieve most of these goals. The school’s population has grown to more than 25,000, the proportion of minority students has also increased, and medical school enrollment – and law – and its reputation has also been boosted.
His tenure was not without controversy. He clashed with faculty over his ideas about job reform, to the point where he got a “no-confidence” vote from the College of Technology’s Senate in 1984.
Lauro Cavazos did not finish off the “firsts”. When President Ronald Reagan’s controversial Secretary of Education, William F. Bennett in 1988, President Lauro F. Cavazos is unlikely to be appointed to a cabinet position.
Easily confirmed by the Senate, Loro F. Cavazos, Jr. became the first Latino Minister of Education and the first Latino Cabinet member in United States history. After George H.W. Bush’s victory in the 1988 election, he kept Cavazos as Secretary of Education. Cavazos’ main focus during his tenure was to increase educational opportunities for minority students.
He remained in service until his resignation in 1990, at which point he returned to Tufts to take up the professorship again.
Lauro Fred Cavazos Jr. passed away. Peacefully as he sleeps at his home in Concord, Massachusetts, on March 15, 2022. His wife of 67 years was by his side.
If you would like to learn more about Cavazos’ life, I urge you to read “Quininhos’ Journey: In Family, Learning, and Public Service” by Lauro Cavazos and Jane B Prius. It is available via Amazon or Texas Tech University Press.