Emilia Schunior Ramirez

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm proud to pass it along. Emilia Schunior was born right here in Hidalgo County in 1902, and from the very start, this Valley was her ground. She walked out of Edinburg High School in 1919, and two years later she married Rafael Ramirez.

Together they built a family of four children, and you might think that's where the story settles in and gets comfortable. But Emilia Schunior Ramirez was not a woman who settled. She went back to school, kept at it, and in 1940 she earned her bachelor's degree.

Then came the classrooms, the hallways, the schools of the Rio Grande Valley, where she served as both teacher and principal. She was learning and leading at the same time, and she wasn't finished. In 1950, up at the University of Texas at Austin, she completed her master's thesis in education.

The subject she chose says everything about where her heart was: the children of illegal Mexican immigrants in south Texas. Not an abstract topic, not a comfortable one, but a real one, and she put it on the page with the full weight of a scholar and a neighbor. After that, she moved into the college classroom at Pan American College, teaching as an assistant professor of Spanish.

She traveled to Spain, she traveled to Mexico, she was moving through the world with purpose. And then in 1960, she represented the Pan American Round Table of Edinburg at the Inter-American Alliance Meeting all the way down in Guatemala City. That same year, 1960, Emilia Ramirez passed from this world.

She left behind a record that the marker calls plainly what it was: a role model for Hispanic women and others, an educator and a historian who never stopped reaching. Hidalgo County raised her, and she gave it back something lasting.

What the marker says

Hidalgo County native Emilia Schunior (1902-1960) graduated from Edinburg High in 1919 and married Rafael Ramirez in 1921; the couple had four children. Emilia attended college and earned a B.A. in 1940, becoming a teacher and principal at several Rio Grande Valley schools. At the University of Texas at Austin, her 1950 master's thesis in education examined children of illegal Mexican immigrants in south Texas. Emilia later taught at Pan American College as an assistant professor of Spanish. She visited Spain and Mexico, and in 1960 represented the Pan American Round Table of Edinburg at the Inter-American Alliance Meeting in Guatemala City. As an eduator and historian, she was a role model for Hispanic women and others. (2007)